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Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Chapter 123: CHAPTER 120
By Herman Melville
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About This Book

The narrative follows a reflective sailor who signs aboard a whaling vessel and recounts life at sea as the ship pursues a legendary white whale driven by an obsessed captain. Interweaving episodic storytelling, technical exposition on cetology and whaling, and philosophical digressions, the book examines obsession, fate, human hubris, and the natural world, portraying the whalemen's daily labor and the vast, indifferent ocean. The voyage builds toward a climactic confrontation that results in catastrophe, leaving the narrator as the sole survivor and transforming the expedition into a meditation on mortality and the limits of human knowledge.

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!"