By heaven, man,
we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass,
and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky,
and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him
to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man!
Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?
But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the airs
smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making
hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers
are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how
we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust
amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left
in the half-cut swarths--Starbuck!"
But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side;
but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there,
Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail.
CHAPTER 133
The Chase - First Day
That night, in the mid-watch when the old man--as his wont
at intervals--stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned,
and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely,
snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing
nigh to some barbarous isle.
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