f of this. I'll hold the musket boldly while I think.--I come
to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and
doom,--THAT'S fair for Moby Dick. It's a fair wind that's only fair for
that accursed fish.--The very tube he pointed at me!--the very one;
THIS one--I hold it here; he would have killed me with the very thing I
handle now.--Aye and he would fain kill all his crew. Does he not say
he will not strike his spars to any gale? Has he not dashed his heavenly
quadrant? and in these same perilous seas, gropes he not his way by mere
dead reckoning of the error-abounding log? and in this very Typhoon, did
he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods? But shall this crazed
old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom
with him?--Yes, it would make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and
more, if this ship come to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my
soul swears this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this
instant--put aside, that crime would not be his. Ha! is he muttering in
his sleep? Yes, just there,--in there, he's sleeping. Sleeping? aye,
but still alive, and soon awake again. I can't withstand thee, then, old
man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to;
all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands, this is
all thou breathest. Aye, and say'st the men have vow'd thy vow; say'st
all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!--But is there no other way? no
lawful way?--Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What! hope to wrest
this old man's living power from his own living hands? Only a fool
would try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes
and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would
be more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the
sight; could not possibly fly his howlings; all comfort, sleep itself,
inestimable reason would leave me on the long intolerable voyage. What,
then, remains? The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan
the nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and
a whole continent between me and law.--Aye, aye, 'tis so.--Is heaven
a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed,
tindering sheets and skin together?--And would I be a murderer, then,
if"--and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the
loaded musket's end against the door.

"On this level, Ahab's hammock sw