Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;
but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed
mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong,
troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and
shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were,
that distinguished them.

Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle
air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the
girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion--most seen
here at the Equator--denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving
alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm
and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the
ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the
morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's
forehead of heaven.

Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how
oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen
little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around
their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on
the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.

Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and
watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more
and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely
aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment,
the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome
sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long
cruel--forbidding--now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck,
and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however
wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to
bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea;
nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side;
and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that
stole out of th