519 
THE WHITE WHALE 
“Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so.” 
Some ships sailed from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, 
Starbuck !” 
“Truth, sir : saddest truth.” 
Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full 
of the flood; and I feel now like a billow that’s all one crested comb, 
Starbuck. I am old; — shake hands with me, man.” 
Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck’s tears the glue. 
Oh, my captain, my captain ! — noble heart — go not — go not ! — see 
it s a brave man that weeps ; how great the agony of the persuasion 
then!” 
“Lower away!” — cried Ahab, tossing the mate’s* arm from him. 
“Stand by the crew!” 
In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern. 
“The sharks ! the sharks !” cried a voice from the low cabin-window 
there; “O master, my master, come back!” 
But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; 
and the boat leaped on. 
Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, 
when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters 
beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every 
time they dipped in the water ; and in this way accompanied the boat 
with their bites ? It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the 
whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently 
following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over the 
banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the first 
sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had 
been first descried ; and whether it was that Ahab’s crew were all such 
tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the 
senses of the sharks — a matter sometimes well known to affect them, 
— however it was, they seemed to follow that one boat without molest- 
ing the others. 
“Heart of wrought steel!” murmured Starbuck, gazing over the side, 
and following with his eyes the receding boat — “canst thou yet ring 
boldly to that sight? — lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and 
followed by them, open-mouthed, to the chase; and this the critical 
