23. CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LEE SHORE.
Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall,
new-landed mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust
her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should
I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with
sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in midwinter
just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could
so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term.
The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things
are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs;
this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let
me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed
ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port
would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety,
comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's
kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land,
is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one
touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her
shudder through and through. With all her might she
crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very
winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed
sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into
peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of
that mortally tolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking
is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence
of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth
conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling
infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if
that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven
crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so
vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee
grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—
straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
