“Dead to leeward, sir.”

“Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest of the spare boats and rig them—­Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the boat’s crews.”

“Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir.”

“Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now!  Accursed fate! that the unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!”

“Sir?”

“My body, man, not thee.  Give me something for a cane—­there, that shivered lance will do.  Muster the men.  Surely I have not seen him yet.  By heaven it cannot be!—­missing?—­quick! call them all.”

The old man’s hinted thought was true.  Upon mustering the company, the Parsee was not there.

“The Parsee!” cried Stubb—­“he must have been caught in——­”

“The black vomit wrench thee!—­run all of ye above, alow, cabin, forecastle—­find him—­not gone—­not gone!”

But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was nowhere to be found.

“Aye, sir,” said Stubb—­“caught among the tangles of your line—­I thought I saw him dragging under.”

“My line! my line?  Gone?—­gone?  What means that little word?—­What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry.  The harpoon, too!—­toss over the litter there,—­d’ye see it?—­the forged iron, men, the white whale’s—­no, no, no,—­blistered fool! this hand did dart it!—­’tis in the fish!—­Aloft there!  Keep him nailed—­Quick!—­all hands to the rigging of the boats—­collect the oars—­harpooners! the irons, the irons! hoist the royals higher—­a pull on all the sheets! helm there! steady, steady for your life!  I’ll ten-times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I’ll slay him yet!”

“Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck; “never, never will thou capture him, old man—­In Jesus’ name no more of this, that’s worse than devil’s madness.  Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone—­all good angles mobbing thee with warnings:—­what more wouldst thou have?—­Shall we keep chasing this murdeous fish till he swamps the last man?  Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea?  Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world?  Oh, oh,—­Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!”

“Starbuck, of late I’ve felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we both saw—­thou know’st what, in one another’s eyes.  But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand—­a lipless, unfeatured blank.  Ahab is for ever Ahab, man.  This whole act’s immutably decreed.  ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled.  Fool!  I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.  Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—­Stand round me, men.  Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up