Shame upon them! Put one foot upon the table.
Shame upon all cowards.--Hist! above there, I hear ivory--
Oh, master! master! I am indeed down-hearted when you walk over me.
But here I'll stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they
bulge through; and oysters come to join me."
CHAPTER 130
The Hat
And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide
a preliminary cruise, Ahab,--all other whaling waters swept--
seemed to have chased his foe into an oceanfold, to slay him
the more securely there; now, that he found himself hard
by the very latitude and longitude where his tormenting wound
had been inflicted; now that a vessel had been spoken which on
the very day preceding had actually encountered Moby Dick;--
and now that all his successive meetings with various ships
contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which
the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against;
now it was that there lurked a something in the old man's eyes,
which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see.
As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong, arctic,
six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze;
so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant
midnight of the gloomy crew.
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