{"id":"01KJNXJV9K246T090RMMZWP15H","cid":"bafkreigyzj5mp32tvbiugu676yuvu2mzo23mjimcb5si4pivmzr5ukltea","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1106660,"char_start":1098775,"chunk_index":155,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1972,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"It was Stubb. “What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry; it was not\r\nthe same in the song.”\r\n\r\n“No, no, it wasn’t; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I\r\nhope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces?—have\r\nthey no bowels for a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck—but it’s too dark\r\nto look. Hear me, then: I take that mast-head flame we saw for a sign\r\nof good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be\r\nchock a’ block with sperm-oil, d’ye see; and so, all that sperm will\r\nwork up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three masts will\r\nyet be as three spermaceti candles—that’s the good promise we saw.”\r\n\r\nAt that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb’s face slowly beginning\r\nto glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: “See! see!” and once\r\nmore the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled\r\nsupernaturalness in their pallor.\r\n\r\n“The corpusants have mercy on us all,” cried Stubb, again.\r\n\r\nAt the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame,\r\nthe Parsee was kneeling in Ahab’s front, but with his head bowed away\r\nfrom him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging rigging, where\r\nthey had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen,\r\narrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous, like a\r\nknot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. In various\r\nenchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running\r\nskeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all\r\ntheir eyes upcast.\r\n\r\n“Aye, aye, men!” cried Ahab. “Look up at it; mark it well; the white\r\nflame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast\r\nlinks there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against\r\nit; blood against fire! So.”\r\n\r\nThen turning—the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot\r\nupon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm,\r\nhe stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.\r\n\r\n“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian\r\nonce did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that\r\nto this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I\r\nnow know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor\r\nreverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and\r\nall are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless,\r\nplaceless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will\r\ndispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of\r\nthe personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a\r\npoint at best; whencesoe’er I came; wheresoe’er I go; yet while I\r\nearthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal\r\nrights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of\r\nlove, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere\r\nsupernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted\r\nworlds, there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou\r\nclear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of\r\nfire, I breathe it back to thee.”\r\n\r\n[_Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap\r\nlengthwise to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest, closes\r\nhis eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them._]\r\n\r\n“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung\r\nfrom me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can\r\nthen grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the\r\nhomage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The\r\nlightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my\r\nwhole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning\r\nground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though\r\nthou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of\r\nlight, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not?\r\nThere burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my\r\ngenealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know\r\nnot. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but\r\nthine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself\r\nunbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself\r\nunbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou\r\nomnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear\r\nspirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness\r\nmechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly\r\nsee it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast\r\nthy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with\r\nhaughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap\r\nwith thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly\r\nI worship thee!”\r\n\r\n“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!”\r\n\r\nAhab’s harpoon, the one forged at Perth’s fire, remained firmly lashed\r\nin its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat’s\r\nbow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather\r\nsheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a\r\nlevelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there\r\nlike a serpent’s tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm—“God, God is\r\nagainst thee, old man; forbear! ’tis an ill voyage! ill begun, ill\r\ncontinued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a\r\nfair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”\r\n\r\nOverhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the\r\nbraces—though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast\r\nmate’s thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But\r\ndashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the\r\nburning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to\r\ntransfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope’s end.\r\nPetrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart\r\nthat he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:—\r\n\r\n“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and\r\nheart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye\r\nmay know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out\r\nthe last fear!” And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the\r\nflame.\r\n\r\nAs in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of\r\nsome lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it\r\nso much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for\r\nthunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did\r\nrun from him in a terror of dismay.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.\r\n\r\n_Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him._\r\n\r\n“We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working\r\nloose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?”\r\n\r\n“Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I’d sway them up\r\nnow.”\r\n\r\n“Sir!—in God’s name!—sir?”\r\n\r\n“Well.”\r\n\r\n“The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?”\r\n\r\n“Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises,\r\nbut it has not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.—By\r\nmasts and keels! he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some\r\ncoasting smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest\r\ntrucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now\r\nsails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none but cowards\r\nsend down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a hooroosh aloft\r\nthere! I would e’en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic\r\nis a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 121."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.155Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.155Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}