“And what was that saying about thyself?”

“Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy pilot.”

“And when thou art so gone before—­if that ever befall—­then ere
I can follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?—­
Was it not so?  Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! 
I have here two pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it.”

“Take another pledge, old man,” said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up like fire-flies in the gloom—­“Hemp only can kill thee.”

“The gallows, ye mean.—­I am immortal then, on land and on sea,” cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;—­“Immortal on land and on sea!”

Both were silent again, as one man.  The grey dawn came on, and the slumbering crew arose from the boat’s bottom, and ere noon the dead whale was brought to the ship.

CHAPTER 118

The Quadrant

The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Ahab, coming from his cabin cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed on the nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point the ship’s prow for the equator.  In good time the order came.  It was hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his latitude.

Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of effulgences.  That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy ocean’s immeasurable burning-glass.  The sky looks lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God’s throne.  Well that Ahab’s quadrant was furnished with colored glasses, through which to take sight of that solar fire.  So, swinging his seated form to the roll of the ship, and with his astrological-looking instrument placed to his eye, he remained in that posture for some moments to catch the precise instant when the sun should gain its precise meridian.  Meantime while his whole attention was absorbed, the Parsee was kneeling beneath him on the ship’s deck, and with face thrown up like Ahab’s, was eyeing the same sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness.  At length the desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant.  Then falling into a moment’s revery, he again looked up towards the sun and murmured to himself:  “Thou seamark! thou high and mighty Pilot! thou tellest me truly where I am—­but canst thou cast the least hint where I shall be?  Or canst thou tell where some other thing besides me is this moment living?  Where is Moby Dick?  This instant thou must be eyeing him.  These eyes of mine look into the very eye that is even now beholding him; aye, and into the eye that is even now equally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither side of thee, thou sun!”