497 
THE WHITE WHALE 
deadly faint, bowed, and bumped, as though I were Adam, staggering 
beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God! — crack 
my heart ! — stave my brain ! — mockery ! mockery ! bitter, biting mock- 
ery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and 
feel thus intolerably old ? Close ! stand close to me, Starbuck ; let me 
look into a human eye ; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky ; better 
than to gaze upon God. By the green land ; by the bright hearthstone ! 
this is the magic glass, man ; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. 
No, no; stay on board, on board! — lower not when I do; when branded 
Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, 
no ! not with the far-away home I see in that eye !” 
“Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after 
all ! why should any one give chase to that hated fish ! Away with me ! 
let us fly these deadly waters ! let us home ! Wife and child, too, are 
Starbuck’s — wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, playfellow 
youth ; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, 
paternal old age ! Away ! let us away ! — this instant let me alter the 
course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we 
bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have 
some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.” 
“They have, they have. I have seen them — some summer days in 
the morning. About this time — yes, it is his noon nap now — the boy 
vivaciously wakes ; sits up in bed ; and his mother tells him of me, of 
cannibal old me; how I am aboard upon the deep, but will yet come 
back to dance him again.” 
“ ’Tis my Mary, my Mary herself ! She promised that my boy, 
every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse 
of his father’s sail ! Yes, yes ! no more ! it is done! we head for Nan- 
tucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! 
See, see ! the boy’s face from the window ! the boy’s hand on the hill !” 
But Ahab’s glance was averted ; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, 
and cast his last cindered apple to the soil. 
“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it ; what 
cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor com- 
mands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep 
pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly 
