Ahab’s harpoon, the one forged at Perth’s fire, remained firmly lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat’s bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flame of pale, forked fire.  As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent’s tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm—­“God, God is against thee, old man; forbear! ’t is an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”

Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the braces—­though not a sail was left aloft.  For the moment all the aghast mate’s thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry.  But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope’s end.  Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:—­

“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound.  And that ye may know to what tune this heart beats:  look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear!” And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame.

As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay.

CHAPTER 120

The Deck Toward the End of the First Night Watch

Ahab standing by the helm.  Starbuck approaching him.

We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir.  The band is working loose and the lee lift is half-stranded.  Shall I strike it, sir?”

“Strike nothing; lash it.  If I had sky-sail poles, I’d sway them up now.”

“Sir!—­in God’s name!—­sir?”

“Well.”

“The anchors are working, sir.  Shall I get them inboard?”

“Strike nothing, and stir nothing but lash everything.  The wind rises, but it has not got up to my table-lands yet.  Quick, and see to it.—­ By masts and keels! he takes me for the hunchbacked skipper of some coasting smack.  Send down my main-top-sail yard!  Ho, gluepots!  Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud.  Shall I strike that?  Oh, none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time.  What a hooroosh aloft there!  I would e’en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic is a noisy malady.  Oh, take medicine, take medicine!”