“Hold hard!”

Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the tugging log was gone.

“I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts the log-line.  But Ahab can mend all.  Haul in here, Tahitian; reel up, Manxman.  And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and mend thou the line.  See to it.”

“There he goes now; to him nothing’s happened; but to me, the skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world.  Haul in, haul in, Tahitian!  These lines run whole, and whirling out:  come in broken, and dragging slow.  Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?”

“Pip? whom call ye Pip?  Pip jumped from the whaleboat.  Pip’s missing.  Let’s see now if ye haven’t fished him up here, fisherman.  It drags hard; I guess he’s holding on.  Jerk him, Tahiti!  Jerk him off we haul in no cowards here.  Ho! there’s his arm just breaking water.  A hatchet! a hatchet! cut it off—­we haul in no cowards here.  Captain Ahab! sir, sir! here’s Pip, trying to get on board again.”

“Peace, thou crazy loon,” cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm.  “Away from the quarter-deck!”

“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,” muttered Ahab, advancing.  “Hands off from that holiness!  Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?

“Astern there, sir, astern!  Lo! lo!”

“And who art thou, boy?  I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of thy eyes.  Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through!  Who art thou, boy?”

“Bell-boy, sir; ship’s-crier; ding, dong, ding!  Pip!  Pip!  Pip!  One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high—­looks cowardly—­ quickest known by that!  Ding, dong, ding!  Who’s seen Pip the coward?”

“There can be no hearts above the snow-line.  Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here.  Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines.  Here, boy; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s home henceforth, while Ahab lives.  Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings.  Come, let’s down.”

“What’s this? here’s velvet shark-skin,” intently gazing at Ahab’s hand, and feeling it.  “Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne’er been lost!  This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by.  Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go.”

“Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here.  Come, then, to my cabin.  Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.  Come!  I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor’s!”