Chapter Text
It is early morning when they spot Moby Dick, when Ahab and Tashtego both sing out for him simultaneously from aloft — Tashtego from the main masthead, Ahab from the basket Starbuck hoists for him into the air.
When Ahab is lowered back down to the deck, he and Starbuck exchange a glance. Starbuck is reaching for him already, brow furrowed, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, but Ahab steals away before he can say anything. The captain calls a “Stay on board, Mr. Starbuck, and keep the ship” over his shoulder as he climbs into his boat, Fedallah already at the bow.
“Captain!” Starbuck shouts after him, but the boats are already lowering, and the chase is already begun.
Starbuck can do nothing but watch. Watch as Ahab, and Stubb, and Flask, and all their assembled crew, chase Moby Dick’s wide spout and snow-capped hump through the horizon; watch as the whale breaches his whole magnificent marbleized form before submerging out of sight; watch as his captain and crew wait with bated breath for the whale to show himself again.
Starbuck watches. The white sea-fowl that had followed Moby Dick and his pursuers now flutter frantically into the air, towards Ahab’s boat, and all of a sudden the whale breaches again, his glittering mouth yawning beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb, and it is only Ahab’s quick, deft steering that whirls the whaleboat aside in time to avoid the whale’s crushing jaws.
Then the distance and the chaos of the waves and the wind and the spray make it difficult to make out what comes next. There is splashing and shouting and crying. Starbuck hears a great, terrible crashing sound, louder than anything he’s ever heard, like a thousand trees snapping and falling to some horrific, crushing weight, and when the spray clears Ahab’s boat has been snapped between the White Whale's jaws, and captain and crew now lay floundering in the churning waves around them. Moby Dick thrusts his great white head up and down in the water nearby, sending waves and spray higher and higher into the air.
“Square the yards!” Starbuck cries, climbing a shroud to gain better sight of the scene. “Helmsman, sail down the whale!” he calls to the helmsman — one of his oarsmen, also spared from the chase, by way of Starbuck and his boat having been ordained not to lower. The Pequod lurches as she turns toward the carnage, where Moby Dick now swims ever-contracting circles around Ahab and his crew; the other boats, though nearby, dare not approach closer, for fear of agitating Moby Dick to bring his wrath upon Ahab and his crew in the water, and for fear of becoming caught themselves in the whirling eddies the whale creates.
Ahab calls up from where he struggles to stay afloat. “Sail on the—” A crashing wave overtakes him, cutting him off. He struggles to the surface again, riding the crest of another oncoming wave. “Sail on the whale! Drive him off!”
The Pequod cuts her way through the contracting circle, separating Moby Dick from Ahab. Starbuck runs across the deck, eyes searching wildly, as Ahab and all his crew are pulled into Stubb’s boat. The mastheads above him continue to descry all the ensuing events, and Starbuck’s gut twists with every successive peril.
For a time, Ahab lays limp in the bottom of Stubb’s boat, briefly yielding to his body’s anguish. From deep within him, nameless wails peal out, as desolate sounds from out ravines. Starbuck can hear him from the ship.
Still, Ahab does not relent. Now double-banked, two men at each oar, Stubb’s boat chases down the whale, who flees from them with as yet unseen speed and power. Soon enough, Ahab gives the order to return to the Pequod , and she picks up her straggling crew, then continues to sail hard down the wake of the whale.
Ahab does not look at Starbuck when he climbs back onto deck, hair and clothes plastered flat to his skin with the seawater, stalking past him to the binnacle watch to mark the hour. He is restless, agitated, determined and defiant and so full of furious life, so much a departure from the exhausted, desperate man with whom Starbuck had spoken the night before. “Set the stun-sails,” he calls, “crowd all sail, and carry on, dead to leeward! Where’s the doubloon now; d’ye see him?”
The day wears on like so, with all silent but for the occasional order from Ahab — now to raise a sail still higher, now to spread one still wider, now to call out the position of the whale. The Captain paces back and forth, passing by the wreckage of his stove boat, which had been dropped upon the quarter-deck, and lay there reversed, broken bow to shattered stern. Finally, he pauses before it, and as in an already over-clouded sky fresh troops of clouds will sometimes sail across, so over Ahab’s face there now stole such an added gloom as this.
Starbuck attempts to make his way to him, to reach out for him, but ere he does, Stubb advances, perhaps intending to demonstrate his own unabated courage, and thus keep up a valiant place in his Captain’s mind. Eyeing the wreck, Stubb exclaims,“The thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir! Ha! Ha!”
“What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man! Did I not know thee brave as fearless fire, and as mechanical, I could swear thou wert a poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck.”
“Aye, sir,” says Starbuck drawing near, “’tis a solemn sight; an omen, and an ill one.”
“Omen? omen?—the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright, not shake their heads, and give an old wives’ darkling hint. Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors!” He turns his back on both the officers. “Cold, cold—I shiver! How now? Aloft there! D’ye see him? Sing out for every spout, though he spout ten times a second!”
“Ahab!” Starbuck calls after him, but Ahab has already moved to mark the hour on the binnacle watch again.
The day is now nearly done, only the hem of its golden robe still rustling. Soon, it is almost dark, but the lookout men still remain at the mastheads.
“Can’t see the spout now, sir; too dark,” cries a voice from the air.
“How heading when last seen?”
“As before, sir—straight to leeward.”
“Good! He will travel slower now ’tis night. Down royals and top-gallant stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before morning; he’s making a passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm there! Keep her full before the wind!—Aloft! come down!—Mr. Stubb, send a fresh hand to the foremast head, and see it manned till morning.” Then, advancing towards the doubloon in the mainmast, he cries, “Men, this gold is mine, for I earned it, but I shall let it abide here till the White Whale is dead, and then, whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man’s; and if on that day I shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye! Away now! The deck is thine, sir!”
And so saying, he places himself halfway within the scuttle, and slouching his hat, resolves to stand there till dawn, except to occasionally rouse himself to see how the night wears on.