More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any
other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.
CHAPTER 29
Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb
Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod
now went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which at sea,
almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August
of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing,
redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up--
flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed
haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride,
the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!
For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and
such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather
did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world.
Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mild
hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice
most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies,
more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life,
the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
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