.. < chapter cxvi 2  THE DYING WHALE >

     Not seldom in this life, when, on the
right side, fortune's favorites sail close by us, we, though all adroop
before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging
sails fill out.  So seemed it with the Pequod.  For next day after
encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were seen and four were slain; and one
of them by Ahab.  It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of

     the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky,
sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such
plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it
almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the
Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to
sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.  Soothed again, but only soothed to
deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned off from the whale, sat intently
watching his final wanings from the now tranquil boat.  For that 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-favoring eyes
should see these too-favoring 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!
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