The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because
without going to the compass at the helm, the Captain,
while below, can inform himself of the course of the
ship.
Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder,
sleeping in this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest
thy purpose.
The Albatross
South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts,
a good cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed
ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she
slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head,
I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a
tyro in the far ocean fisheries— a whaler
at sea, and long absent from home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached
like the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down
her sides, this spectral appearance was traced with
long channels of reddened rust, while all her spars
and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees
furred over with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails
were set. A wild sight it was to see her long-bearded
look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed
clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched
the raiment that had survived nearly four years of
cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the
mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea;
and though, when the ship slowly glided close under
our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each
other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads
of one ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking
fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not
one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck
hail was being heard from below.
“Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?”
But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid
bulwarks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to
his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand into the
sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove
to make himself heard without it. Meantime his
ship was still increasing the distance between us.
While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod
were evincing their observance of this ominous incident
at the first mere mention of the White Whale’s
name to another ship, Ahab for a moment paused; it
almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat
to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind
forbade. But taking advantage of his windward
position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing
by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer
and shortly bound home, he loudly hailed—“Ahoy
there! This is the Pequod, bound round the world!
Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific
ocean! and this time three years, if I am not at home,
tell them to address them to-”
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed,
and instantly, then, in accordance with their singular
ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for some
days before had been placidly swimming by our side,
darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and
ranged themselves fore and aft with the stranger’s
flanks. Though in the course of his continual
voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed a similar
sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles
capriciously carry meanings.
