{"id":"01KJNXJQXGCDS076HV313ZCSSK","cid":"bafkreihby5k5crtperdvlvi757n6q72v42hklghkiq5wpltcg5zelo3rja","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":420960,"char_start":412959,"chunk_index":58,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":2001,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in\r\none hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian\r\nCape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one\r\nanother; and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on\r\nthe homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania\r\nseized him, seems all but certain from the fact that, at intervals\r\nduring the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a\r\nleg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was\r\nmoreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to\r\nlace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a\r\nstrait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when\r\nrunning into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun’sails\r\nspread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances,\r\nthe old man’s delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn\r\nswells, and he came forth from his dark den into the blessed light and\r\nair; even then, when he bore that firm, collected front, however pale,\r\nand issued his calm orders once again; and his mates thanked God the\r\ndireful madness was now gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self,\r\nraved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing.\r\nWhen you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some\r\nstill subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly\r\ncontracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows\r\nnarrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his\r\nnarrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab’s broad madness had been\r\nleft behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural\r\nintellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living\r\ninstrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy\r\nstormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its\r\nconcentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost\r\nhis strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold\r\nmore potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one\r\nreasonable object.\r\n\r\nThis is much; yet Ahab’s larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted.\r\nBut vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding\r\nfar down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where\r\nwe here stand—however grand and wonderful, now quit it;—and take your\r\nway, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes;\r\nwhere far beneath the fantastic towers of man’s upper earth, his root\r\nof grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique\r\nburied beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken\r\nthrone, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he\r\npatient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of\r\nages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that\r\nproud, sad king! A family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young\r\nexiled royalties; and from your grim sire only will the old\r\nState-secret come.\r\n\r\nNow, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means\r\nare sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to kill, or\r\nchange, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind he did long\r\ndissemble; in some sort, did still. But that thing of his dissembling\r\nwas only subject to his perceptibility, not to his will determinate.\r\nNevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling, that when\r\nwith ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer thought him\r\notherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the\r\nterrible casualty which had overtaken him.\r\n\r\nThe report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly\r\nascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added moodiness which\r\nalways afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the Pequod on the\r\npresent voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely,\r\nthat far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on\r\naccount of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent\r\nisle were inclined to harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons\r\nhe was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full\r\nof rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and\r\nscorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable\r\nidea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart\r\nhis iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes.\r\nOr, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that,\r\nyet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on\r\nhis underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is,\r\nthat with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in\r\nhim, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one\r\nonly and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one\r\nof his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking\r\nin him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have\r\nwrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on\r\nprofitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the\r\nmint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural\r\nrevenge.\r\n\r\nHere, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses\r\na Job’s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made\r\nup of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals—morally enfeebled\r\nalso, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in\r\nStarbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in\r\nStubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so\r\nofficered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality\r\nto help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so\r\naboundingly responded to the old man’s ire—by what evil magic their\r\nsouls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the\r\nWhite Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to\r\nbe—what the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious\r\nunderstandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have\r\nseemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,—all this to\r\nexplain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go. The subterranean\r\nminer that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by\r\nthe ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not feel the\r\nirresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand\r\nstill? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the\r\nplace; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see\r\nnaught in that brute but the deadliest ill.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale.\r\n\r\nWhat the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he\r\nwas to me, as yet remains unsaid.\r\n\r\nAside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which\r\ncould not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there\r\nwas another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him,\r\nwhich at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest;\r\nand yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost\r\ndespair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of\r\nthe whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to\r\nexplain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I\r\nmust, else all these chapters might be naught.\r\n\r\nThough in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty,\r\nas if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles,\r\njaponicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way\r\nrecognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric,\r\ngrand old kings of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants”\r\nabove all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the\r\nmodern 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