464 
MOBY DICK; OR 
jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed the 
black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted mouth of 
Tashtego revealed his shark- white teeth, which strangely gleamed as if 
they too had been tipped by corposants; while lit up by the preter- 
natural light, Queequeg’s tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames on 
his body. 
The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once 
more the Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. 
A moment or two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed 
against some one. It was Stubb. “What thinkest thou now, man; I 
heard thy cry; it was not the same in the song.” 
“Ho r no, it wasn’t; I said, the corposants have mercy on us all; and 
I hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces ? — 
have they no bowels for a laugh ? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck — but it’s 
too dark to look. Hear me, then take that masthead flame we saw 
for a sign of good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is 
going to be chock a’ block with sperm oil, d’ye see; and so, all that 
sperm will work up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three 
masts will yet be as three spermaceti candles — that’s the good promise 
we saw.” 
At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb’s face slowly begin- 
ning to glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: “See! see!” 
and once more the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed 
redoubled supernaturalness in their pallor. 
“The corposants have mercy on us all,” cried Stubb again. 
At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the 
flame, the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab’s front, but with his head 
bowed away from him ; while near by, from the arched and overhang- 
ing rigging, where they had just been engaged securing a spar, a num- 
ber of the seamen arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung 
pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. 
In various enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or run- 
ning skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the decks; 
but all their eyes upcast. 
“Aye, aye, men!” cried Ahab. “Look up at it; mark it well; the 
white flame but lights the way to the White Whale ! Hand me those 
