Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequodnow went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which at sea,almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal Augustof the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing,redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up--flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemedhaughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride,the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days andsuch seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weatherdid not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world.Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mildhours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear icemost forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies,more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life,the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenestleave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck.It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so muchto live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visitswere more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks."It feels like going down into one's tomb,"--he would mutterto himself--"for an old captain like me to be descending thisnarrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth."
So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the nightwere set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below;and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailorsflung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt itto its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when thissort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silentsteersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old manwould emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way.Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these,he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to hiswearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel,such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step,that their dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks.But once, the mood was on him too deep for common regardings;and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship fromtaffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below,and with a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that ifCaptain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay;but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting somethingindistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertioninto it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.
"Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldstwad me that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot.Below to thy nightly grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds,to use ye to the filling one at last.--Down, dog, and kennel!"
Starting at the unforeseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenlyscornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly,"I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than halflike it, sir."
"Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away,as if to avoid some passionate temptation.
"No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamelybe called a dog, sir."
"Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass,and begone, or I'll clear the world of thee!"
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearingterrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
"I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,"muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle."It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't wellknow whether to go back and strike him, or--what's that?--down here on my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was the thoughtcoming up in me; but it would be the first time I ever did pray.It's queer; very queer; and he's queer too; aye, take him foreand aft, he's about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with.How he flashed at me!--his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad!Anyway there's something's on his mind, as sure as theremust be something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in hisbed now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four;and he don't sleep then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the steward,tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man's hammockclothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot,and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sortof frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it?A hot old man! I guess he's got what some folks ashorecall a conscience; it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say--worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I don't know what it is,but the Lord keep me from catching it. He's full of riddles;I wonder what he goes into the after hold for, every night,as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what's that for, I shouldlike to know? Who's made appointments with him in the hold?Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old game--Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow'swhile to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep.And now that I think of it, that's about the first thingbabies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me,but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that'sagainst my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment;and sleep when you can, is my twelfth--So here goes again.But how's that? didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me tentimes a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that!He might as well have kicked me, and done with it.Maybe he did kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken allaback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone.What the devil's the matter with me? I don't stand right on my legs.Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out.By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though--How? how? how?--but the only way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again;and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinksover by daylight."