"
"Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate!
that the unconquerable captain in the soul should have such
a craven mate!"
"Sir?"
"My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane--there, that
shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet.
By heaven it cannot be!--missing?--quick! call them all."
The old man's hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company,
the Parsee was not there.
"The Parsee!" cried Stubb--"he must have been caught in-"
"The black vomit wrench thee!--run all of ye above,
alow, cabin, forecastle--find him--not gone--not gone!"
But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee
was nowhere to be found.
"Aye, sir," said Stubb--"caught among the tangles of your line--
I thought I saw him dragging under."
"My line! my line? Gone?--gone? What means that little word?--
What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were
the belfry. The harpoon, too!--toss over the litter there,--
d'ye see it?--the forged iron, men, the white whale's--no, no, no,--
blistered fool; this hand did dart it!--'tis in the fish!--Aloft there!
Keep him nailed-Quick!--all hands to the rigging of the boats--
collect the oars--harpooneers! the irons, the irons!--hoist the
royals higher--a pull on all the sheets!--helm there! steady,
steady for your life! I'll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe;
yea and dive straight through it, but I'll slay him yet!
"Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,"
cried Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man--
In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness.
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