And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly
heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience;
and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long
sin and suffering it had bred.
Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto,
as called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences
that before had attended us, we found ourselves launched into this
tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowls
and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without
any haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon.
But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain
of feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before,
the solitary jet would at times be descried.
During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming
for the time the almost continual command of the drenched and
dangerous deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom
than ever addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these,
after everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing more
can be done but passively to await the issue of the gale.
Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists. So, with his
ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand
firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand
gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet
or snow would all but congeal his very eyelashes together.
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