116. CHAPTER CXVI.
THE DYING WHALE.
Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's
favorites sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch
somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging
sails fill out. So seemed it with the Pequod. For next day
after encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were seen and four
were slain; and one of them by Ahab.
It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of
the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset
sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such
a sweetness and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons
curled up in that rosy air, that it almost seemed as if far over
from the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles, the
Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to sea,
freighted with these vesper hymns.
Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who
had sterned off from the whale, sat intently watching his final
wanings from the now tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle
observable in all sperm whales dying—the turning sunwards of
the head, and so expiring—that strange spectacle, beheld of
such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness
unknown before.
“He turns and turns him to it,—how slowly, but how steadfastly,
his homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his
last dying motions. He too worships fire; most faithful, broad,
baronial vassal of the sun!—Oh that these too-favoring eyes
should see these too-favoring sights. Look! here, far waterlocked;
beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in these most
candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks furnish
tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still rolled
on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the
Niger's unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of
faith; but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the
corpse, and it heads some other way.—
“Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones
hast builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of
these unverdured seas; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too
truly speakest to me in the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the
hushed burial of its after calm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards
turned his dying head, and then gone round again, without
a lesson to me.
“Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power? Oh, high aspiring,
rainbowed jet!—that one strivest, this one jettest all in
vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with you
all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not
again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if
a darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath
me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled
as air, but water now.
“Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the
wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the
sea; though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my
foster-brothers!”
