n 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
eastward for the earliest sun.

CHAPTER 135. The Chase.--Third Day.

The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the
solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the
daylight look-outs, 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 beat 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
turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this
moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort
of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy 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