ere this through prison
corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and
now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!--it's
tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable
world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a
noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight
it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run
through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not
stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing--a nobler
thing than THAT. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things
that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are
bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most
special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I
say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and
gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the
clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous
mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of
the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the land swift
and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal
Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these
Trades, or something like them--something so unchangeable, and full as
strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there! What d'ye see?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun!
Aye, aye, it must be so. I've oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye,
he's chasing ME now; not I, HIM--that's bad; I might have known it, too.
Fool! the lines--the harpoons he's towing. Aye, aye, I have run him by
last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but the regular look
outs! Man the braces!"

Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's
quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced
ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own
white wake.

"Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck to
himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. "God keep
us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside wet my
flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!"

"Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen bas