{"id":"01KJNXJVA8CR0WPRRKNBJ7ZWD9","cid":"bafkreicpza3jvixo5vrnx2amom4cnnndbeaswwekahyuf2szlz4xdab7we","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1120984,"char_start":1113126,"chunk_index":157,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1965,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"to reign there, though it was hooped round by all the roar of the\r\nelements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as\r\nthey stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an\r\nhonest, upright man; but out of Starbuck’s heart, at that instant when\r\nhe saw the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so\r\nblent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he\r\nhardly knew it for itself.\r\n\r\n“He would have shot me once,” he murmured, “yes, there’s the very\r\nmusket that he pointed at me;—that one with the studded stock; let me\r\ntouch it—lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly\r\nlances, strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded? I must see. Aye,\r\naye; and powder in the pan;—that’s not good. Best spill it?—wait. I’ll\r\ncure myself of this. I’ll hold the musket boldly while I think.—I come\r\nto report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and\r\ndoom,—_that’s_ fair for Moby Dick. It’s a fair wind that’s only fair\r\nfor that accursed fish.—The very tube he pointed at me!—the very one;\r\n_this_ one—I hold it here; he would have killed me with the very thing\r\nI handle now.—Aye and he would fain kill all his crew. Does he not say\r\nhe will not strike his spars to any gale? Has he not dashed his\r\nheavenly quadrant? and in these same perilous seas, gropes he not his\r\nway by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding log? and in this very\r\nTyphoon, did he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods? But\r\nshall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s\r\ncompany down to doom with him?—Yes, it would make him the wilful\r\nmurderer of thirty men and more, if this ship come to any deadly harm;\r\nand come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship will, if Ahab have\r\nhis way. If, then, he were this instant—put aside, that crime would not\r\nbe his. Ha! is he muttering in his sleep? Yes, just there,—in there,\r\nhe’s sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake again. I\r\ncan’t withstand thee, then, old man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance;\r\nnot entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest. Flat\r\nobedience to thy own flat commands, this is all thou breathest. Aye,\r\nand say’st the men have vow’d thy vow; say’st all of us are Ahabs.\r\nGreat God forbid!—But is there no other way? no lawful way?—Make him a\r\nprisoner to be taken home? What! hope to wrest this old man’s living\r\npower from his own living hands? Only a fool would try it. Say he were\r\npinioned even; knotted all over with ropes and hawsers; chained down to\r\nring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would be more hideous than a caged\r\ntiger, then. I could not endure the sight; could not possibly fly his\r\nhowlings; all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason would leave me\r\non the long intolerable voyage. What, then, remains? The land is\r\nhundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone\r\nhere upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between me\r\nand law.—Aye, aye, ’tis so.—Is heaven a murderer when its lightning\r\nstrikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin\r\ntogether?—And would I be a murderer, then, if”—and slowly, stealthily,\r\nand half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket’s end against\r\nthe door.\r\n\r\n“On this level, Ahab’s hammock swings within; his head this way. A\r\ntouch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.—Oh\r\nMary! Mary!—boy! boy! boy!—But if I wake thee not to death, old man,\r\nwho can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck’s body this day week may\r\nsink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall\r\nI?—The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails\r\nare reefed and set; she heads her course.”\r\n\r\n“Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!”\r\n\r\nSuch were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man’s\r\ntormented sleep, as if Starbuck’s voice had caused the long dumb dream\r\nto speak.\r\n\r\nThe yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard’s arm against the panel;\r\nStarbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he\r\nplaced the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.\r\n\r\n“He’s too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell\r\nhim. I must see to the deck here. Thou know’st what to say.”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 124. The Needle.\r\n\r\nNext morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of\r\nmighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod’s gurgling track, pushed her on\r\nlike giants’ palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded\r\nso, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world\r\nboomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the\r\ninvisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place;\r\nwhere his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned\r\nBabylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a\r\ncrucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.\r\n\r\nLong maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time\r\nthe tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to\r\neye the bright sun’s rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly\r\nsettled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun’s rearward\r\nplace, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating\r\nwake.\r\n\r\n“Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot\r\nof the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to\r\nye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!”\r\n\r\nBut suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards\r\nthe helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.\r\n\r\n“East-sou-east, sir,” said the frightened steersman.\r\n\r\n“Thou liest!” smiting him with his clenched fist. “Heading East at this\r\nhour in the morning, and the sun astern?”\r\n\r\nUpon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then\r\nobserved by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very\r\nblinding palpableness must have been the cause.\r\n\r\nThrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse\r\nof the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost\r\nseemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two\r\ncompasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.\r\n\r\nBut ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the\r\nold man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it! It has happened\r\nbefore. Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses—that’s\r\nall. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it.”\r\n\r\n“Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said the pale mate,\r\ngloomily.\r\n\r\nHere, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than\r\none case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as\r\ndeveloped in the mariner’s needle, is, as all know, essentially one\r\nwith the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much\r\nmarvelled at, that such things should be. Instances where the lightning\r\nhas actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars\r\nand rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more\r\nfatal; all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before\r\nmagnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife’s knitting needle.\r\nBut in either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the\r\noriginal virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be\r\naffected, the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship;\r\neven were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.\r\n\r\nDeliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed\r\ncompasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took\r\nthe precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were\r\nexactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship’s course to be\r\nchanged accordingly."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3DZQ5YTC2NQ9Q7VBWR","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM529XJRPQXV0DC58V32N","peer_label":"moby dick","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKVYKWFDKYWNFAY5N9KE5","peer_label":"starbuck","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMT9W49WQGB4D2542C1V6","peer_label":"starbucks child","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXP6WSZ4S5VM1NZNV0XM4E","peer_label":"mr stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNC9P0XZ0NQHPG4MENPEH","peer_label":"heavenly quadrant","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"navigational_instrument","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFP5X2VJPG2YX58112ES","peer_label":"lightning-rods","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"safety_equipment","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXP2WRTBK2HQ8GYNQZBTDP","peer_label":"the needle chapter 124","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"document_chapter","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXPZ1GD40M1RSRP76Y3MHQ","peer_label":"compasses","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"navigational_instrument","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFS8DQ9Q8T1CEQ5TH39N","peer_label":"dead reckoning","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"navigational_method","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXP6WA74ZMSND4JH3AXJA3","peer_label":"typhoon","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"storm","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ2EKZCANTCK2PXBRSGQJ","peer_label":"sun","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"celestial_body","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ500WMNBFBCM33NBYPPV","peer_label":"magnetic energy","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"scientific_concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ4ZTB55TMR021PZSV03M","peer_label":"lightning","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"natural_phenomenon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNC9HN9C5E1NNEVZHTB2G","peer_label":"musket","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"weapon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ99ND677S73J0VRHRYKE","peer_label":"electricity","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"scientific_concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFEAPXP1GG703Z4ZZK8M","peer_label":"mary","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ0MRT52J8YHZ5DK833TJ","peer_label":"steersman","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ357NGVZDY98RQXKAJZW","peer_label":"thunder","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"natural_phenomenon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:17.082Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.176Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:08:18.878Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}