The wind that made great bellies
of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible
as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency
which so enslaved them to the race.
They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all;
though it was put together of all contrasting things--oak, and maple,
and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp--yet all these ran
into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way,
both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so,
all the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear;
guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness,
and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord
and keel did point to.
The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of
tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs.
Clinging to a spar with one hand, some reached forth the other
with impatient wavings; others, shading their eyes from the
vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars
in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their fate.
Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek
out the thing that might destroy them!
"Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when, after the
lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard.
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