Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me, and leaves me
so deadly calm, yet expectant,--fixed at the top of a shudder!
Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons;
all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl; thou fadest
in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes
grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing;
but clouds sweep between--Is my journey's end coming?
My legs feel faint; like his who has footed it all day.
Feel thy heart,--beats it yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck!--
stave it off--move, move! speak aloud!--Mast-head there!
See ye my boy's hand on the hill?--Crazed; aloft there!--
keep thy keenest eye upon the boats:--mark well the whale!--
Ho! again!--drive off that hawk! see! he pecks--he tears the vane"--
pointing to the red flag flying at the main-truck--"Ha, he soars
away with it!--Where's the old man now? see'st thou that sight,
oh Ahab!--shudder, shudder!"
The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast-heads--
a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had sounded;
but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on his way
a little sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew maintaining
the profoundest silence, as the head-bent waves hammered and hammered
against the opposing bow.
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