Moby Dick - By Herman Melville
~ The Spirit Spout ~
The Men catch sight late at night of the whale that they had been so hard at searching for. The account is an especially mystical experience.
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Days, weeks passed.
And under an easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept across four several cruising grounds; that off the Azores; off the cape of Verdes; on the Plate(so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from St.Helena.
It was awhile gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlite night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew.
“There she blows!” Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure.
For though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail to be spread.The best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind.
The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made them buoyant, hovering deck to feel like ai beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her -- one to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawningly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab’s face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively the echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was seen no more that night. Every sailor swore that they saw it once, but not a second time.
“There she blows!” Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure.
For though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail to be spread.The best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind.
The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made them buoyant, hovering deck to feel like ai beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her -- one to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawningly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab’s face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively the echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was seen no more that night. Every sailor swore that they saw it once, but not a second time.
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