“If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab’s purpose keels up in him.  I tell thee no; it cannot be.”

“Oh good master, master, master!

“Weep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is mad.  Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and still know that I am there.  And now I quit thee.  Thy hand!—­Met!  True art thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre.  So:  God for ever bless thee; and if it come to that,—­ God for ever save thee, let what will befall.”

(Ahab goes; Pip steps one step forward.)

“Here he this instant stood, I stand in his air,—­but I’m alone.  Now were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he’s missing.  Pip!  Pip!  Ding, dong, ding!  Who’s seen Pip?  He must be up here; let’s try the door.  What? neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar; and yet there’s no opening it.  It must be the spell; he told me to stay here:  Aye, and told me this screwed chair was mine.  Here, then, I’ll seat me, against the transom, in the ship’s full middle, all her keel and her three masts before me.  Here, our old sailors say, in their black seventy-fours great admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it over rows of captains and lieutenants.  Ha! what’s this? epaulets! epaulets! the epaulets all come crowding.  Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs!  What an odd feeling, now, when a black boy’s host to white men with gold lace upon their coats!—­Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip?—­ a little negro lad, five feet high, hang-dog look, and cowardly!  Jumped from a whale-boat once;—­seen him?  No!  Well then, fill up again, captains, and let’s drink shame upon all cowards!  I name no names.  Shame upon them!  Put one foot upon the table.  Shame upon all cowards.—­Hist! above there, I hear ivory—­ Oh, master! master!  I am indeed down-hearted when you walk over me.  But here I’ll stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they bulge through; and oysters come to join me.”

CHAPTER 130

The Hat

And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a preliminary cruise, Ahab,—­all other whaling waters swept—­ seemed to have chased his foe into an oceanfold, to slay him the more securely there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encountered Moby Dick;—­ and now that all his successive meetings with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against; now it was that there lurked a something in the old man’s eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see.  As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months’ night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Ahab’s purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew.  It domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf.