462 
MOBY DICK; OR 
“Avast, Stubb,” cried Starbuck. “Let the Typhoon sing, and strike 
bis harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt 
hold thy peace.” 
“But I am not a brave man ; never said I was a brave man ; I am 
a coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it 
is, Mr. Starbuck, there’s no way to stop my singing in this world but 
to cut my throat. And when that’s done, ten to one I sing ye the dox- 
ology for a wind-up.” 
“Madman ! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.” 
“What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else, 
never mind how foolish?” 
“Here!” cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, and point- 
ing his hand towards the weather bow; markest thou not that the gale 
comes from the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for Moby 
Dick ? the very course he swung to this day noon ? now mark his boat 
there ! where is that stove ! In the stern-sheets, man ; where he is wont 
to stand — his standpoint is stove, man! Now jump overboard, and 
sing away, if thou must!” 
“I don’t half understand ye: what’s in the wind?” 
“Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to Nan- 
tucket,” soliloquised Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb’s question. 
“The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it into a 
fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward, all 
is blackness of doom ; but to leeward, homeward — I see it lightens up 
there ; but not with the lightning.” 
At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, follow- 
ing the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at the same 
instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead. 
“Who’s there?” 
“Old Thunder!” said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to 
his pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by 
elbowed lances of fire. 
Now, as the lightning-rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry 
off the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea 
some ships carry to each mast is intended to conduct it into the water. 
But as this conductor must descend to considerable depth, that its end 
