To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used
in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order.
He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some
respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover
the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority
involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual,
the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation.
Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced will were Ahab's, so long as Ahab
kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain; still he knew that for all this
the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his captain's quest, and could he,
would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it.
It might be that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whale
was seen. During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to fall
into open relapses of rebellion against his captain's leadership,
unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial influences were brought
to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle insanity of Ahab
respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly manifested than in his
superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the present,
the hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative
impiousness which naturally invested it; that the full terror of the
voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background (for few men's
courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action);
that when they stood their long night watches, his officers and men must
have some nearer things to think of than Moby Dick.
Pages:
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353