From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea;
nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side;
and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless
sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around.
Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near
to him, and stood there.
Ahab turned.
"Starbuck!"
"Sir."
"Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky.
On such a day--very much such a sweetness as this--I struck
my first whale--a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty--forty--
forty years ago!--ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty
years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on
the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land,
for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep!
Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not
spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led;
the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of
a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any
sympathy from the green country without--oh, weariness! heaviness!
Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!--when I think of all this;
only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before--
and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare--
fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul!--when the poorest
landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken
the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts--away, whole oceans away,
from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for
Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow--
wife? wife?--rather a widow with her husband alive? Aye, I widowed
that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then,
the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow,
with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously,
foamingly chased his prey--more a demon than a man!--aye, aye! what
a forty years' fool--fool--old fool, has old Ahab been!
Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm
at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer
or better is Ahab now? Behold.
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