52. CHAPTER LII.
THE ALBATROSS.
South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a
good cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed
ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she slowly drew
nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head, I had a good
view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean
fisheries—a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like
the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this
spectral appearance was traced with long channels of reddened
rust, while all her spars and her rigging were like the thick
branches of trees furred over with hoar-frost. Only her lower
sails were set. A wild sight it was to see her long-bearded
look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed clad in the
skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had
survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops
nailed to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless
sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided close under our
stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each other that we
might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to
those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly
eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own look-outs,
while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.
“Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?”
But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks,
was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow
fell from his hand into the sea; and the wind now rising
amain, he in vain strove to make himself heard without it.
Meantime his ship was still increasing the distance between.
While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod were
evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first
mere mention of the White Whale's name to another ship,
Ahab for a moment paused; it almost seemed as though he
would have lowered a boat to board the stranger, had not the
threatening wind forbade. But taking advantage of his windward
position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her
aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly
bound home, he loudly hailed—“Ahoy there! This is the
Pequod, bound round the world! Tell them to address all
future letters to the Pacific ocean! and this time three years, if
I am not at home, tell them to address them to —”
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and
instantly, then, in accordance with their singular ways, shoals
of small harmless fish, that for some days before had been
placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what seemed
shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with the
stranger's flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings
Ahab must often before have noticed a similar sight, yet,
to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry
meanings.
“Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing
over into the water. There seemed but little in the words, but
the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane
old man had ever before evinced. But turning to the steersman,
who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish
her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,—“Up helm!
Keep her off round the world!”
Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire
proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct?
Only through numberless perils to the very point whence
we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the
time before us.
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward
we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more
sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon,
then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit
of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase
of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before
all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they
either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.
