By heaven, man, we are turned
round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the
handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this
unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase
and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to
doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a
mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as
if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay
somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are
sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may,
we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid
greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut
swaths--Starbuck!"
But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen
away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at
two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was
motionlessly leaning over the same rail.
CHAPTER 133
The Chase--First Day.
That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man--as his wont at
intervals--stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and
went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely,
snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing
nigh to some barbarous isle.
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