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_ Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favourites
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-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring
sights. Look! here, far water-locked; 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 yon 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!" _
Read next: CHAPTER 117 The Whale Watch.
Read previous: CHAPTER 115 The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
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