Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification1 of his purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker2 in the transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating himself before it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At intervals3, he would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein were set down the seasons and places in which, on various former voyages of various ships, sperm5 whales had been captured or seen.
While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.
But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude6 of his cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced7, and others were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab was threading a maze8 of currents and eddies9, with a view to the more certain accomplishment10 of that monomaniac thought of his soul.
Now, to any one not fully11 acquainted with the ways of the leviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary12 creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby13 calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food; and, also calling to mind the regular, ascertained14 seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes16; could arrive at reasonable surmises17, almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey18.
So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the sperm whale's resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that, could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world; were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated19, then the migrations20 of the sperm whale would be found to correspond in invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows. On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory21 charts of the sperm whale.*
*Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant22 Maury, of the National Observatory23, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it appears that precisely24 such a chart is in course of completion; and portions of it are presented in the circular. "This chart divides the ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude15 by five degrees of longitude25; perpendicularly26 through each of which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each of which districts are three lines; one to show the number of days that have been spent in each month in every district, and the two others to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have been seen."
Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct--say, rather, secret intelligence from the Deity--mostly swim in veins28, as they are called; continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with one tithe29 of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor's parallel, and though the line of advance be strictly30 confined to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary vein27 in which at these times he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width (more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship's mast-heads, when circumspectly31 gliding32 along this magic zone. The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth and along that path, migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for.
And hence not only at substantiated33 times, upon well known separate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly without prospect34 of a meeting.
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle35 his delirious36 but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality, perhaps. Though the gregarious37 sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds38 which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar39 and unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries40 and hermits41 among the matured, aged42 sperm whales. So that though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on what is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet it did not follow that were the Pequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, she would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some other feeding-grounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged abode43. And where Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion44 has only been made to whatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects45 were his, ere a particular set time or place were attained46, when all possibilities would become probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next thing to a certainty. That particular set time and place were conjoined in the one technical phrase--the Season-on-the-Line. For there and then, for several consecutive47 years, Moby Dick had been periodically descried48, lingering in those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted interval4 in any one sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place; there the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic49 spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive50 to his vengeance51. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes; nor in the sleeplessness52 of his vow53 could he so tranquillize his unquiet heart as to postpone54 all intervening quest.
Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her commander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape55 Horn, and then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the premature56 hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion57 of things. Because, an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval which, instead of impatiently enduring ashore58, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf59, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons60, Pampas, Nor-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious61 zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake.
But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly62 and coolly, seems it not but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless63 ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of individual recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged64 thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not but be unmistakable. And have I not tallied65 the whale, Ahab would mutter to himself, as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries--tallied him, and shall he escape? His broad fins66 are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep's ear! And here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race; till a weariness and faintness of pondering came over him! and in the open air of the deck he would seek to recover his strength. Ah, God! what trances of torments67 does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched68 hands; and wakes with his own bloody69 nails in his palms.
Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing70 of his life-spot became insufferable anguish71; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm72 seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned73 him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity74. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast75 hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching76 contiguity77 of the frantic78 thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme79 purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy80 of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay81, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality82 to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented83 spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.
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1
ratification
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| n.批准，认可 | |
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locker
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| n.更衣箱，储物柜，冷藏室，上锁的人 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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sperm
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| n.精子，精液 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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eddies
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| （水、烟等的）漩涡，涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
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accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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latitudes
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| 纬度 | |
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surmises
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| v.臆测，推断( surmise的第三人称单数 )；揣测；猜想 | |
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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collated
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| v.校对( collate的过去式和过去分词 )；整理；核对；整理（文件或书等） | |
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migrations
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| n.迁移，移居( migration的名词复数 ) | |
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migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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observatory
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| n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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longitude
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| n.经线，经度 | |
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perpendicularly
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| adv. 垂直地, 笔直地, 纵向地 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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tithe
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| n.十分之一税；v.课什一税，缴什一税 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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circumspectly
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| adv.慎重地，留心地 | |
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gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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substantiated
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| v.用事实支持（某主张、说法等），证明，证实( substantiate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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entangle
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| vt.缠住，套住；卷入，连累 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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gregarious
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| adj.群居的，喜好群居的 | |
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herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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solitaries
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| n.独居者，隐士( solitary的名词复数 ) | |
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hermits
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| （尤指早期基督教的）隐居修道士，隐士，遁世者( hermit的名词复数 ) | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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consecutive
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| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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descried
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| adj.被注意到的，被发现的，被看到的 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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sleeplessness
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| n.失眠，警觉 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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postpone
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| v.延期，推迟 | |
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cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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monsoons
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| n.（南亚、尤指印度洋的）季风( monsoon的名词复数 )；（与季风相伴的）雨季；（南亚地区的）雨季 | |
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devious
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| adj.不坦率的，狡猾的；迂回的，曲折的 | |
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discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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thronged
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tallied
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| v.计算，清点( tally的过去式和过去分词 )；加标签（或标记）于；（使）符合；（使）吻合 | |
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fins
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| [医]散热片；鱼鳍；飞边；鸭掌 | |
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torments
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| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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scorching
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| adj. 灼热的 | |
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contiguity
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| n.邻近，接壤 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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inveteracy
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| n.根深蒂固，积习 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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