In general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies tothe solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. Sothat though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for example,on what is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or VolcanoBay on the Japanese Coast; yet it did not follow that were thePequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequentcorresponding season, she would infallibly encounter him there. So,too, with some other feeding-grounds, where he had at times revealedhimself. But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places andocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged abode. Andwhere Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have hitherto beenspoken of, allusion has only been made to whatever way-side,antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a particular set time orplace were attained, when all possibilities would becomeprobabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the nextthing to a certainty. That particular set time and place wereconjoined in the one technical phrase- the Season-on-the-Line. Forthere and then, for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had beenperiodically descried, lingering in those waters for awhile, as thesun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted interval in anyone sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of the deadlyencounters with the white whale had taken place; there the waveswere storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where themonomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his vengeance. But inthe cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with whichAhab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he wouldnot permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning factabove mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes; nor inthe sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his unquietheart as to postpone all intervening quest.
Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning ofthe Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable hercommander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn,and then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in theequatorial Pacific in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must waitfor the next ensuing season. Yet the premature hour of the Pequod'ssailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected by Ahab, with a viewto this very complexion of things. Because, an interval of threehundred and sixty-five days and nights was before him; an intervalwhich, instead of impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in amiscellaneous hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending hisvacation in seas far remote from his periodical feeding-grounds,should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in theBengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race.
So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor-Westers, Harmattans, Traders; any windbut the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the deviouszig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake.
But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems itnot but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, onesolitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable ofindividual recognition from his hunter, even as a white-beardedMufti in the thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For thepeculiar snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump,could not but be unmistakable. And have I not tallied the whale,Ahab would mutter to himself, as after poring over his charts tilllong after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries- talliedhim, and shall he escape? His broad fins are bored, and scallopedout like a lost sheep's are! And here, his mad mind would run on ina breathless race; till a weariness and faintness of pondering cameover him! and in the open air of the deck he would seek to recover hisstrength. Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure whois consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps withclenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.
Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerablyvivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughtsthrough the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, andwhirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain, tillthe very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; andwhen, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in himheaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening inhim, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursedfiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himselfyawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; andwith glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as thoughescaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead ofbeing the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or frightat his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity.
For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfasthunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, wasnot the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. Thelatter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep,being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, whichat other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, itspontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of thefrantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral.
But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, thereforeit must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughtsand fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheerinveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into akind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, couldgrimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it wasconjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfatheredbirth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes,when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but avacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light,to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore ablankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have createda creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him aPrometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture thevery creature he creates.
