THE WHITE WHALE 
453 
repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again: and 
are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final har- 
bour, whence we unmoor no more ? In what rapt ether sails the world 
of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s 
father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded 
mothers die in bearing them; the secret of our paternity lies in their 
grave, and we must there to learn it. 
And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s side into 
that same golden sea, Starhuck lowly murmured: — 
“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s 
eye! — Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping can- 
nibal ways. Let faith oust fact ; let fancy oust memory ; I look deep 
down and do believe.” 
And Stuhb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that same 
golden light: — 
“I am Stubh, and Stubb has his history ; hut here Stuhb takes oaths 
that he has always been jolly!” 
CHAPTER CXIV 
THE PEQTJOD MEETS THE BACHELOR 
And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came hearing 
down before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab’s harpoon had been 
welded. 
It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor , which had just wedged in 
her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, 
in glad holiday apparel was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, 
sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previ- 
ous to pointing her prow for home. 
The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red 
bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, 
bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the 
long lower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and 
jacks of all colours were flying from her rigging, on every side. Side- 
ways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of 
sperm; abcive. which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slepder 
