THE HAT.
And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a
preliminary cruise, Ahab,—all other whaling waters swept—seemed to have
chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely there;
now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and longitude
where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a vessel had
been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encountered
Moby Dick;—and now that all his successive meetings with various ships
contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which
the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against;
now it was that there lurked a something in the old man’s eyes, which
it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting
polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months’ night
sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Ahab’s purpose now
fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It
domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings,
fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a
single spear or leaf.
In this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced or natural,
vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more
strove to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed
ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped
mortar of Ahab’s iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the
deck, ever conscious that the old man’s despot eye was on them.
But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours; when
he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have seen that
even as Ahab’s eyes so awed the crew’s, the inscrutable Parsee’s glance
awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it.
Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah
now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious
at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal
substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen
being’s body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by
night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go
below. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan
but wondrous eyes did plainly say—We two watchmen never rest.
Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon the
deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot-hole,
or exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits,—the
main-mast and the mizen; or else they saw him standing in the
cabin-scuttle,—his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step;
his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he
stood, however the days and nights were added on, that he had not swung
in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never
tell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed
at times; or whether he was still intently scanning them; no matter,
though he stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and
the unheeded night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved
coat and hat. The clothes that the night had wet, the next day’s
sunshine dried upon him; and so, day after day, and night after night;
he went no more beneath the planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin
that thing he sent for.
He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,—breakfast and
dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly
grew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still
grow idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure. But
though his whole life was now become one watch on deck; and though the
Parsee’s mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet these
two never seemed to speak—one man to the other—unless at long intervals
some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a
potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the
awe-struck crew, they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced
to speak one word; by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned
the slightest verbal interchange. At times, for longest hours, without
a single hail, they stood far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his
scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each
other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the
Parsee his abandoned substance.
And yet, somehow, did Ahab—in his own proper self, as daily, hourly,
and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,—Ahab
seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again both
seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean
shade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and
keel was solid Ahab.
At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard
from aft—“Man the mast-heads!”—and all through the day, till after
sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking
of the helmsman’s bell, was heard—“What d’ye see?—sharp! sharp!”
But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the
children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac
old man seemed distrustful of his crew’s fidelity; at least, of nearly
all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether
Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But
if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from
verbally expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them.
“I will have the first sight of the whale myself,”—he said. “Aye! Ahab
must have the doubloon!” and with his own hands he rigged a nest of
basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved
block, to secure to the main-mast head, he received the two ends of
the downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared a
pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This done,
with that end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked
round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance
long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and
then settling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,—“Take
the rope, sir—I give it into thy hands, Starbuck.” Then arranging
his person in the basket, he gave the word for them to hoist him to
his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope at last; and
afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one hand clinging round the
royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for miles and miles,—ahead,
astern, this side, and that,—within the wide expanded circle commanded
at so great a height.
When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in
the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea
is hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under
these circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in
strict charge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because
in such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different
relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen
of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being
every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a
natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted
sailor should by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall
all swooping to the sea. So Ahab’s proceedings in this matter were
not unusual; the only strange thing about them seemed to be, that
Starbuck, almost the one only man who had ever ventured to oppose him
with anything in the slightest degree approaching to decision—one of
those too, whose faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt
somewhat;—it was strange, that this was the very man he should select
for his watchman; freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise
distrusted person’s hands.
Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there
ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often
fly incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in
these latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round
his head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a
thousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and
went eddying again round his head.
But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed
not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked
it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least
heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every
sight.
“Your hat, your hat, sir!” suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who
being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though
somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing
them.
But already the sable wing was before the old man’s eyes; the long
hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with
his prize.
An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his cap to replace
it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would
be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen
accounted good. Ahab’s hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on
and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared;
while from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was
dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.