in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien
to it. He lived in the world, as the last of
the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri.
And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild
Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of
a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own
paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s
soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there
fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!
The Mast-Head
It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due
rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head
came round.
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned
almost simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving
her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand
miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising
ground. And if, after a three, four, or five
years’ voyage she is drawing nigh home with
anything empty in her—say, an empty vial
even— then, her mast-heads are kept manned
to the last! and not till her skysail-poles sail in
among the spires of the port, does she altogether
relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.
Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore
or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one,
let us in some measure expatiate here. I take
it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the
old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find
none prior to them. For though their progenitors,
the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower,
have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all
Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was
put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may
be said to have gone by the board, in the dread gale
of God’s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these
Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And
that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers,
is an assertion based upon the general belief among
archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded
for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly
supported by the peculiar stairlike formation of all
four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious
long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers
were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new
stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing
out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight.
In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old
times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert
and spent the whole latter portion of his life on
its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with
a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of
a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be
driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail,
or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to the
last, literally died at his post. Of modern standers-of-mast-heads
we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and
bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out
