516 
MOBY DICK; OR 
CHAPTER CXXXIV 
THE CHASE THIRD DAY 
The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more 
the solitary night-man at the fore-masthead was relieved by crowds of 
the daylight lookouts, who dotted every mast and almost every spar. 
“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight 
“In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that’s all. 
Helm there ; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely 
day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house 
to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, 
a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here’s food for 
thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only 
feels, feels, feels, that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s 
audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or 
ought to be, a coolness and a calmness ; and our poor hearts throb, and 
our poor brains heat too much for that. And yet, I’ve sometimes 
thought my brain was very calm — frozen calm, this old skull cracks 
so, like a glass in which the contents turn to ice, and shiver it. And 
still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must 
breed it ; hut no, it’s like that sort of common grass that will grow any- 
where, between the earthly clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. 
How the wild winds blow it ; they whip it about me as the torn shreds 
of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that 
has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards 
of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as 
innocent as fleeces. Out upon it! — it’s tainted. Were I the wind, I’d 
blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I’d crawl some- 
where to a cave, and slink there. And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic 
thing, the wind ! who ever conquered it ? In every fight it has the last 
and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. 
Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand 
to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing — a nobler thing 
than that. Would now the wind hut had a body; but all the things 
that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are 
bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There’s a most 
