CHAPTER 23
The Lee Shore
Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall,newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictivebows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at herhelm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulnessupon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years'dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for stillanother tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memoriesyield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless graveof Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as withthe storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land.The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful;in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper,warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities.But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy;she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though itbut graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing,fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward;seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sakeforlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortallyintolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepideffort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea;while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her onthe treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless,indefinite as God--so better is it to perish in that howling infinite,than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain?Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod!Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing--straight up,leaps thy apotheosis!