THE WHITE WHALE 215 
each man had slipped himself into a sort of bowline secured to the rail, 
in which he swung as in a loosened belt. Few or no words were spoken ; 
and the silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day 
tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac 
waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of 
the ocean prevailed ; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines ; still 
wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed 
demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never 
could Starbuck forget the old man’s aspect, when one night going down 
into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw him with 
closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair ; the rain and half- 
melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before emerged, 
still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the table 
beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and currents which 
have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his tightly 
clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back 
so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale 
that swung from a beam in the ceiling . 1 
“Terrible old man!” thought Starbuck with a shudder; “sleeping in 
this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.” 
CHAPTEB LI 
THE ALBATROSS 
South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruis- 
ing ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Alba- 
tross) by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the 
foremast head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro 
in the far ocean fisheries — a whaler at sea, and long absent from home. 
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the^ 
skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral ap- 
pearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her 
spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over 
1 The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the 
compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the 
course of the ship. 
