’Twas not so hard a task. I thought to
find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged
circle fits into all their various wheels, and they
revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills
of powder, they all stand before me; and I their match.
Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must
needs be wasting! What I’ve dared, I’ve
willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do!
They think me mad— Starbuck does; but
I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That
wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself!
The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye!
I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will
dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet
and the fulfiller one. That’s more than
ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot
at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes
and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys
do to bullies—Take some one of your own
size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve
knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run
and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton
bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come,
Ahab’s compliments to ye; come and see if ye
can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me,
else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there.
Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid
with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.
Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts
of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly
I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s
an angle to the iron way!
CHAPTER 38
Dusk
By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.
My soul is more than matched; she’s over-manned;
and by a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity
should ground arms on such a field! But he drilled
deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me!
I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must
help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable
thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have
no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who’s
over him, he cries;—aye, he would be a
democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over
all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserable
office,— to obey, rebelling; and worse
yet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes
I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it.
Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide.
The hated whale has the round watery world to swim
in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe.
His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside.
I would up heart, were it not like lead. But
my whole clock’s run down; my heart the all-controlling
weight, I have no key to lift again.
