________________________________________________
_ Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of
mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her
on like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze
abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the
whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning
light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of
his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings,
as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything.
The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with
light and heat.
Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every
time the tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he
turned to eye the bright sun's rays produced ahead; and when she
profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun's
rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his
undeviating wake.
"Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot
of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun
to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the
sea!"
But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards
the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
"East-sou-east, sir," said the frightened steersman.
"Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched fist. "Heading East at
this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?"
Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then
observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its
very blinding palpableness must have been the cause.
Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one
glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment
he almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked,
and lo! the two compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as
infallibly going West.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the
old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, "I have it! It has happened
before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our
compasses--that's all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I
take it."
"Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said the pale
mate, gloomily.
Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more
than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic
energy, as developed in the mariner's needle, is, as all know,
essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is
not to be much marvelled at, that such things should be. Instances
where the lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite
down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at
times been still more fatal; all its loadstone virtue being
annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use
than an old wife's knitting needle. But in either case, the needle
never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or
lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected, the same fate
reaches all the others that may be in the ship; even were the
lowermost one inserted into the kelson.
Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the
transpointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended
hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the
needles were exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship's
course to be changed accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once
more the Pequod thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for
the supposed fair one had only been juggling her.
Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said
nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and
Flask--who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his
feelings--likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though
some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their
fear of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained
almost wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a
certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible
Ahab's.
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But
chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper
sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.
"Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I wrecked
thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so.
But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck--a lance
without a pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker's
needles. Quick!"
Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now
about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have
been to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile
skill, in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses.
Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles,
though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by
superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.
"Men," said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed
him the things he had demanded, "my men, the thunder turned old
Ahab's needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his
own, that will point as true as any."
Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as
this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic
might follow. But Starbuck looked away.
With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the
lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade
him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the
maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he
placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly
hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as
before. Then going through some small strange motions with
it--whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely
intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain--he called for
linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two
reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by
its middle, over one of the compass-cards. At first, the steel went
round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last
it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching
for this result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing
his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,--"Look ye, for yourselves,
if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and
that compass swears it!"
One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes
could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they
slunk away.
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his
fatal pride. _
Read next: CHAPTER 125 The Log and Line.
Read previous: CHAPTER 123 The Musket.
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