515 
THE WHITE WHALE 
of this hand a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. 
This whole act’s immutably decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me 
a billion years before this ocean rolled. Tool! I am the Fates’ 
lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou 
obeyest mine. Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down 
to the stump ; leaning on a shivered lance ; propped up on a lonely 
foot. ’Tis Ahab his body’s part ; but Ahab’s soul’s a centipede, that 
moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes 
that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere 
I break, ye’ll hear me crack; and till ye hear that , know that Ahab’s 
hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called 
omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown, 
drowning things will twice rise to the surface ; then rise again, to sink 
for evermore. So with Moby Dick — two days he’s floated — to-morrow 
will be the third. Aye, men, he’ll rise once more — but only to spout 
his last! D’ye feel brave men, brave?” 
“As fearless fire,” cried Stubb. 
“And as mechanical,” muttered Ahab. Then as the men went 
forward, he muttered on: — “The things called omens! And yester- 
day I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. 
Oh ! how valiantly I seek to drive out of other’s hearts what’s clinched 
so fast in mine ! — The Parsee — the Parsee ! — gone, gone ? and he was 
to go before : — but still was to be seen again ere I could perish — How’s 
that ? — There’s a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the 
ghosts of the whole line of judges: — like a hawk’s beak it pecks my 
brain. Fit, Til solve it, though!” 
When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward. 
So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly 
as on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum 
of the grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by 
lanterns in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and 
sharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the 
broken keel of Ahab’s wrecked craft the carpenter made him another 
leg ; while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within 
his scuttle; his hid heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on 
its dial ; set due eastward for the earliest sun. 
