THE WHITE WHALE 
CHAPTER CXXXI 
495 
THE SYMPHONY 
It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were 
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air 
was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust 
and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s 
chest in his sleep. 
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, 
unspeckled birds ; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air ; 
but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed 
mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks ; and these were the strong, 
troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. 
But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades 
and shadows without ; those two seemed one ; it was only the sex, as it 
were, that distinguished them. 
Tied up and twisted, gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly 
firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in 
the ashes of ruin ; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the 
morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s fore- 
head of heaven. 
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, 
and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, 
the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But 
the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for 
a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that 
winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the stepmother world, 
so long cruel — forbidding — now threw affectionate arms round his 
stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, 
that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save 
and to bless-. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear 
into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one 
wee drop. 
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over 
the side ; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless 
sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful 
