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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.