But once gone through, we trace the round again;
and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally.
Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?
In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest
will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden?
Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die
in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave,
and we must there to learn it.
And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side
into that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:--
"Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride's eyes!--
Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways.
Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down
and do believe."
And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that
same golden light:--
"I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes
oaths that he has always been jolly!"
CHAPTER 115
The Pequod Meets The Bachelor
And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down
before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been welded.
It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged
in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches;
and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat
vain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships
on the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.
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