r since that
hour we both saw--thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in
this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm 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. Fool! 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 yesterday I talked the
same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I
seek to drive out of others' 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. _I'll, I'll_ 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; sat due eastwa