An old, old sight, and yet somehow so
young; aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from
the sand-hills of Nantucket! The same!--the same!--the same to Noah
as to me. There's a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely
leewardings! They must lead somewhere--to something else than common
land, more palmy than the palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that
way; look to windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But
good bye, good bye, old mast-head! What's this?--green? aye, tiny
mosses in these warped cracks. No such green weather stains on
Ahab's head! There's the difference now between man's old age and
matter's. But aye, old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our
hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, minus a leg, that's all.
By heaven this dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way.
I can't compare with it; and I've known some ships made of dead trees
outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital
fathers. What's that he said? he should still go before me, my
pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at the
bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all
night I've been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to.
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