38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DUSK.
By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.
My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by
a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms
on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my
reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel that
I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has
tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut.
Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries;—aye, he would
be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below!
Oh! I plainly see my miserable office,—to obey, rebelling; and
worse yet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read
some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there
hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the
round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its
glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge
aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole
clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no
key to lift again.
[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.
Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small
touch of human mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the
sharkish sea. The white whale is their demigorgon. Hark!
the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward! mark the unfaltering
silence aft! Methinks it pictures life. Foremost through the
sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but
only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his
sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and
further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl
thrills me through! Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch!
Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held
to knowledge,—as wild, untutored things are forced to feed—Oh,
life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me!
that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human
in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures!
Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!
