sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all night I’ve been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to.  Aye, aye, like many more thou told’st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short.  Good bye, mast-head—­keep a good eye upon the whale, the while I’m gone.  We’ll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and tail.”

He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered through the cloven blue air to the deck.

In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop’s stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the mate,—­who held one of the tackle—­ropes on deck—­ and bade him pause.

“Starbuck!”

“Sir?”

“For the third time my soul’s ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck.”

“Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so.”

“Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck!”

“Truth, sir:  saddest truth.”

“Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the flood;—­and I feel now like a billow that’s all one crested comb, Starbuck.  I am old;—­shake hands with me, man.”

Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck’s tears the glue.

“Oh, my captain, my captain!—­noble heart—­go not—­go not!—­see, it’s a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!”

“Lower away!"-cried Ahab, tossing the mate’s arm from him.  “Stand by for the crew!”

In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.

“The sharks! the sharks!” cried a voice from the low cabin-window there; “O master, my master, come back!”

But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and the boat leaped on.

Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat with their bites.  It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching regiments in the east.  But these were the first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried; and whether it was that Ahab’s crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the sharks—­ a matter sometimes well known to affect them,—­however it was, they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others.