lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old?
Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is
better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By
the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass,
man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on
board!--lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick.
That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see
in that eye!"

"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why
should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us
fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are
Starbuck's--wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow
youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,
longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!--this instant let me alter
the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl
on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some such
mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."

"They have, they have. I have seen them--some summer days in the
morning. About this time--yes, it is his noon nap now--the boy
vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of
cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back
to dance him again."

"'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning,
should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's
sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my
Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy's face
from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!"

But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and
cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.

"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor
commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep
pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not
so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this
arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy
in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power;
how then can this one small heart beat; this