490 
MOBY DICK; OR 
tered Moby Dick ; — and now that all his successive meetings with vari- 
ous ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with 
which the White Whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned 
against ; now it was that there lurked a something in the old man’s eyes, 
which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting 
polar star which through the livelong, arctic, six months’ night sustains 
its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Ahab’s purpose now fixedly 
gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It 
domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings, 
fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a 
single spear or leaf. 
In this foreshadowing interval too, all humour, forced or natural, 
vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more 
strove to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed 
ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped 
mortar of Ahab’s iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved 
about the deck, ever conscious that the old man’s despot eye was on 
them. 
But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours ; 
when he thought no glance but one was on him ; then you would have 
seen that even as Ahab’s eyes so awed the crew’s, the inscrutable Par- 
see’s glance awed his ; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times 
affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the 
thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men 
looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed 
he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the 
deck by some unseen being’s body. And that shadow was always hover- 
ing there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been 
known to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for hours: but 
never sat or leaned ; his wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say, “We 
two watchmen never rest.” 
Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon 
the deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot- 
hole, or exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits, — the 
mainmast and the mizzen; or else they saw him standing in the cabin- 
scuttle, — his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step ; his hat 
slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he stood, 
