on a lonely foot.  ’Tis Ahab—­his body’s part; but Ahab’s soul’s a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs.  I feel strained, half-stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so.  But ere I break, ye’ll hear me crack; and till ye hear that, know that Ahab’s hawser tows his purpose yet.  Believe ye, men, in the things called omens?  Then laugh aloud, and cry encore!  For ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for evermore.  So with Moby Dick—­two days he’s floated—­to-morrow will be the third.  Aye, men, he’ll rise once more,—­but only to spout his last!  D’ye feel brave men, brave?”

“As fearless fire,” cried Stubb.

“And as mechanical,” muttered Ahab.  Then as the men went forward, he muttered on:—­“The things called omens!  And yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat.  Oh! how valiantly I seek to drive out of others’ hearts what’s clinched so fast in mine!—­The Parsee—­the Parsee!—­gone, gone? and he was to go before:—­but still was to be seen again ere I could perish—­How’s that?—­There’s a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges:—­like a hawk’s beak it pecks my brain. I’ll, I’ll solve it, though!”

When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.

So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow.  Meantime, of the broken keel of Ahab’s wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.

THIRD DAY.

The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the solitary night-man at the fore-masthead was relieved by crowds of the daylight lookouts, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.

“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.

“In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that’s all.  Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going.  What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world.  Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that’s tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity.  God only has that right and privilege.  Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too