Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze
blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the
two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted
cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone
Atlantic.
The Lee Shore
Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of,
a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford
at the inn.
When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod
thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious
waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington!
I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon
the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four
years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly
push off again for still another tempestuous term.
The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest
things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield
no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless
grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it
fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that
miserably drives along the leeward land. The
port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful;
in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper,
warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our
mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the
land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must
fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it
but graze the keel, would make her shudder through
and through. With all her might she crowds all
sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst
the very winds that fain would blow her homeward;
seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again;
for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril;
her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem
to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all
deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort
of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea;
while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire
to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth,
shoreless, indefinite as God—so better
is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be
ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were
safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven
crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all
this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O
Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod!
Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight
up, leaps thy apotheosis!
The Advocate
As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this
business of whaling; and as this business of whaling
has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as
a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore,
I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the
injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.
