Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising ground the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small success for their pains.

At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.

These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears, while their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.

The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.

Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem to open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath upon them prove but tarnishing.

Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,- though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,- in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:- through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it. And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side into that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:-

"Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride's eyes!- Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe."

And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scale, leaped up in that same golden light:-

"I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that he has always been jolly!"

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目录(137章)

ETYMOLOGY

Chapter 1 - Loomings

Chapter 2 - The Carpet-Bag

Chapter 3 - The Spouter Inn

Chapter 4 - The Counterpane

Chapter 5 - Breakfast

Chapter 6 - The Street

Chapter 7 - The Chapel

Chapter 8 - The Pulpit

Chapter 9 - The Sermon

Chapter 10 - A Bosom Friend

Chapter 11 - Nightgown

Chapter 12 - Biographical

Chapter 13 - Wheelbarrow

Chapter 14 - Nantucket

Chapter 15 - Chowder

Chapter 16 - The Ship

Chapter 17 - The Ramadan

Chapter 18 - His Mark

Chapter 19 - The Prophet

Chapter 20 - All Astir

Chapter 21 - Going Aboard

Chapter 22 - Merry Christmas

Chapter 23 - The Lee Shore

Chapter 24 - The Advocate

Chapter 25 - Postscript

Chapter 26 - Knights and Squires

Chapter 27 - Knights and Squires

Chapter 28 - Ahab

Chapter 29 - Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb

Chapter 30 - The Pipe

Chapter 31 - Queen Mab

Chapter 32 - Cetology

Chapter 33 - The Specksynder

Chapter 34 - The Cabin-Table

Chapter 35 - The Mast-Head

Chapter 36 - The Quarter-Deck

Chapter 37 - Sunset

Chapter 38 - Dusk

Chapter 39 - First Night-Watch

Chapter 40 - Midnight, Forecastle

Chapter 41 - Moby Dick

Chapter 42 - The Whiteness of The Whale

Chapter 43 - Hark!

Chapter 44 - The Chart

Chapter 45 - The Affidavit

Chapter 46 - Surmises

Chapter 47 - The Mat-Maker

Chapter 48 - The First Lowering

Chapter 49 - The Hyena

Chapter 50 - Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah

Chapter 51 - The Spirit-Spout

Chapter 52 - The Albatross

Chapter 53 - The Gam

Chapter 54 - The Town-Ho's Story

Chapter 55 - Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

Chapter 56 - Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes

Chapter 57 - Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars

Chapter 58 - Brit

Chapter 59 - Squid

Chapter 60 - The Line

Chapter 61 - Stubb Kills a Whale

Chapter 62 - The Dart

Chapter 63 - The Crotch

Chapter 64 - Stubb's Supper

Chapter 65 - The Whale as a Dish

Chapter 66 - The Shark Massacre

Chapter 67 - Cutting In

Chapter 68 - The Blanket

Chapter 69 - The Funeral

Chapter 70 - The Sphynx

Chapter 71 - The Jeroboam's Story

Chapter 72 - The Monkey-Rope

Chapter 73 - Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale and Then Have a Talk Over Him

Chapter 74 - The Sperm Whale's Head - Contrasted View

Chapter 75 - The Right Whale's Head - Contrasted View

Chapter 76 - The Battering-Ram

Chapter 77 - The Great Heidelburgh Tun

Chapter 78 - Cistern and Buckets

Chapter 79 - The Prairie

Chapter 80 - The Nut

Chapter 81 - The Pequod Meets The Virgin

Chapter 82 - The Honor and Glory of Whaling

Chapter 83 - Jonah Historically Regarded

Chapter 84 - Pitchpoling

Chapter 85 - The Fountain

Chapter 86 - The Tail

Chapter 87 - The Grand Armada

Chapter 88 - Schools and Schoolmasters

Chapter 89 - Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish

Chapter 90 - Heads or Tails

Chapter 91 - The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud

Chapter 92 - Ambergris

Chapter 93 - The Castaway

Chapter 94 - A Squeeze of the Hand

Chapter 95 - The Cassock

Chapter 96 - The Try-Works

Chapter 97 - The Lamp

Chapter 98 - Stowing Down and Clearing Up

Chapter 99 - The Doubloon

Chapter 100 - Leg and Arm. The Pequod of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London

Chapter 101 - The Decanter

Chapter 102 - A Bower in the Arsacides

Chapter 103 - Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton

Chapter 104 - The Fossil Whale

Chapter 105 - Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? - Will He Perish?

Chapter 106 - Ahab's Leg

Chapter 107 - The Carpenter

Chapter 108 - Ahab and the Carpenter

Chapter 109 - Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin

Chapter 110 - Queequeg in His Coffin

Chapter 111 - The Pacific

Chapter 112 - The Blacksmith

Chapter 113 - The Forge

Chapter 114 - The Gilder

Chapter 115 - The Pequod Meets The Bachelor

Chapter 116 - The Dying Whale

Chapter 117 - The Whale Watch

Chapter 118 - The Quadrant

Chapter 119 - The Candles

Chapter 120 - The Deck Toward the End of the First Night Watch

Chapter 121 - Midnight - The Forecastle Bulwarks

Chapter 122 - Midnight Aloft.- Thunder and Lightning

Chapter 123 - The Musket

Chapter 124 - The Needle

Chapter 125 - The Log and Line

Chapter 126 - The Life-Buoy

Chapter 127 - The Deck

Chapter 128 - The Pequod Meets The Rachel

Chapter 129 - The Cabin

Chapter 130 - The Hat

Chapter 131 - The Pequod Meets The Delight

Chapter 132 - The Symphony

Chapter 133 - The Chase - First Day

Chapter 134 - The Chase - Second Day

Chapter 135 - The Chase - Third Day

Epilogue