There's a soft shower to leeward.
Such lovely leewardings! They must lead somewhere--
to something else than common land, more palmy than the palms.
Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward, then;
the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye,
old mast-head! What's this?--green? aye, tiny mosses in these
warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab's head!
There's the difference now between man's old age and matter's.
But aye, old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls,
though are we not, my ship? Aye, minus a leg, that's all.
By heaven this dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way.
I can't compare with it; and I've known some ships made of dead trees
outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers.
What's that he said? he should still go before me, my pilot;
and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at
the bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs?
and all night I've been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to.
Aye, aye, like many more thou told'st direful truth as
touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short.
Good bye, mast-head--keep a good eye upon the whale, the while I'm gone.
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