seemed pole-like asunder.  If by day they chanced to speak one word; by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal interchange.  At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the main-mast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.

And yet, somehow, did Ahab—­in his own proper self, as daily, hourly, and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,—­ Ahab seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave.  Still again both seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean shade siding the solid rib.  For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and keel was solid Ahab.

At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard from aft,—­“Man the mast-heads!”—­and all through the day, till after sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking of the helmsman’s bell, was heard—­“What d’ye see?—­ sharp! sharp! sharp!”

But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew’s fidelity; at least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought.  But if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from verbally expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them.

“I will have the first sight of the whale myself,”—­ he said.  “Aye!  Ahab must have the doubloon! and with his own hands he rigged a nest of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved block, to secure to the mainmast head, he received the two ends of the downwardreeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared a pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail.  This done, with that end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then settling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,—­“Take the rope, sir—­I give it into thy hands, Starbuck.”  Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope at last; and afterwards stood near it.  And thus, with one hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for miles and miles,—­ahead astern, this side, and that,—­within the wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height.