When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen
went below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before
tumultuous but now deserted deck. An intense copper calm,
like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding
its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused
to gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took
Stubb's long spade still remaining there after the whale's decapitation
and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended mass,
placed its other end crutchwise under one arm, and so stood leaning
over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst
of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert.
"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab,
"which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there
lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us
the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived
the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams,
has moved amid this world's foundations.
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