Hither,
and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled
birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro
in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans,
sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous
thinkings of the masculine sea.
But though thus
contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without;
those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished
them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed
giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to
groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous
motion—most seen here at the Equator—denoted the fond,
throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her
bosom away.
Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted
with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals,
that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the
clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair
girl's forehead of heaven.
Oh, immortal infancy, and
innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round
us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's
close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha,
laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting
with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out
crater of his brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the
scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched how his shadow in the water
sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce
the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last
seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad,
happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the
step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw
affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob
over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet
find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat
Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such
wealth as that one wee drop.