Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest
leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck.
It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much
to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits
were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks.
"It feels like going down into one's tomb,"--he would mutter
to himself--"for an old captain like me to be descending this
narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth."
So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night
were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below;
and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors
flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it
to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this
sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent
steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man
would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way.
Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these,
he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his
wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel,
such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step,
that their dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks.
Pages:
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217