286 
MOBY DICK; OR 
head was hoisted against the ship’s side — about half-way out of the 
sea, so that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native ele- 
ment. And there with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, 
by reason of the enormous downward drag from the lower masthead, 
and every yardarm on that side projecting like a crane over the waves; 
there, that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod’s waist like the 
giant Holofemes’s from the girdle of Judith. 
When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the ^seamen 
went below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous 
but now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow 
lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves 
upon the sea. 
A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone 
from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused 
to gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took 
Stubb’s long spade — still remaining there after the whale’s decapita- 
tion — and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended mass, 
placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood leaning 
over with eyes attentively fixed on this head. 
It was a black and hooded head ; and hanging there in the midst of 
so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphinx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou 
vast and venerable heap,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished 
with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, 
mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, 
thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon wdiich the upper sun now 
gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. .Where unrecorded 
names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot ; where in her 
murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of 
the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most fa- 
miliar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went ; hast slept 
by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives 
to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from 
their flaming .ship ; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave ; 
true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st 
the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; 
for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw ; and his 
