CHAPTER 116
The Dying Whale
Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favoritessail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhatof the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out.So seemed it with the Pequod. For next day after encounteringthe gay Bachelor, whales were seen and four were slain;and one of them by Ahab.
It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimsonfight were done; and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky,sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness andsuch plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air,that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleysof the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor,had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.
Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sternedoff from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings fromthe now tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in allsperm whales dying--the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring--that strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahabconveyed a wondrousness unknown before.
"He turns and turns him to it,--how slowly, but how steadfastly,his homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions.He too worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!--Oh that these too-favoring eyes should see these too-favoring sights.Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe;in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocksfurnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have stillrolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine uponthe Niger's unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith,but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and itheads some other way.
"Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast buildedthy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas;thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in thewide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm.Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then goneround again, without a lesson to me.
"Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring,rainbowed jet!--that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain!In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yonall-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again.Yet dost thou darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith.All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyedby breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.
"Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wildfowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea;though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!"