But though his whole
life was now become one watch on deck; and though the Parsee's
mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet these two
never seemed to speak--one man to the other--unless at long
intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary.
Though such a potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain;
openly, and to the awe-struck crew, they seemed pole-like asunder.
If by day they chanced to speak one word; by night, dumb men
were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal interchange.
At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood
far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee
by the main-mast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other;
as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab
the Parsee his abandoned substance.
And yet, somehow, did Ahab--in his own proper self, as daily, hourly,
and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,--
Ahab seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave.
Still again both seemed yoked together, and an unseen
tyrant driving them; the lean shade siding the solid rib.
For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and keel was solid Ahab.
At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was
heard from aft,--"Man the mast-heads!"--and all through the day,
till after sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour,
at the striking of the helmsman's bell, was heard--"What d'ye see?--
sharp! sharp! sharp!"
But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting
the children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen;
the monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity;
at least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed
to doubt, even, whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook
the sight he sought.
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