est thou Pip was, boy?

"Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!"

"And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of
thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve
through! Who art thou, boy?"

"Bell-boy, sir; ship's-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip!
One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high--looks
cowardly--quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip the
coward?"

"There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look
down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him,
ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home
henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou
art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let's down."

"What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's hand,
and feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this,
perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope;
something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come
and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I
will not let this go."

"Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse
horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in
gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods
oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not
what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come!
I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an
Emperor's!"

"There go two daft ones now," muttered the old Manxman. "One daft with
strength, the other daft with weakness. But here's the end of the rotten
line--all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new
line altogether. I'll see Mr. Stubb about it."

CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.

Steering now south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, and her progress
solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod held on
her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such
unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled
by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed
the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.

At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the
Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep dark