strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales
dying--the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring--that strange
spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a
wondrousness unknown before.

"He turns and turns him to it,--how slowly, but how steadfastly, his
homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too
worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!--Oh
that these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights.
Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe;
in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks
furnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still
rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the
Niger's unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith; but
see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it heads
some other way.

"Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded
thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas;
thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the
wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor
has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round
again, without a lesson to me.

"Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed
jet!--that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh
whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that
only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker
half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable
imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living
things, exhaled as air, but water now.

"Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild
fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though
hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!"

CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.

The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to
windward; one, less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These
last three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one
could not be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay
by its side all night; and that boat was Ahab's.

The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale's spout-hole; and
the lantern hanging from its top,