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CHAPTER 111 . The Pacific . When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South Sea ; were it not for other things , I could have greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks , for now the long supplication of my youth was answered ; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue . There is , one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea , whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath ; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St . John . And meet it is , that over these sea - pastures , wide - rolling watery prairies and Potters ’ Fields of all four continents , the waves should rise and fall , and ebb and flow unceasingly ; for here , millions of mixed shades and shadows , drowned dreams , somnambulisms , reveries ; all that we call lives and souls , lie dreaming , dreaming , still ; tossing like slumberers in their beds ; the ever - rolling waves but made so by their restlessness . To any meditative Magian rover , this serene Pacific , once beheld , must ever after be the sea of his adoption . It rolls the midmost waters of the world , the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms . The same waves wash the moles of the new - built Californian towns , but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men , and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands , older than Abraham ; while all between float milky - ways of coral isles , and low - lying , endless , unknown Archipelagoes , and impenetrable Japans . Thus this mysterious , divine Pacific zones the world’s whole bulk about ; makes all coasts one bay to it ; seems the tide - beating heart of earth . Lifted by those eternal swells , you needs must own the seductive god , bowing your head to Pan . But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab’s brain , as standing like an iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging , with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles ( in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking ) , and with the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea ; that sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming . Launched at length upon these almost final waters , and gliding towards the Japanese cruising - ground , the old man’s purpose intensified itself . His firm lips met like the lips of a vice ; the Delta of his forehead’s veins swelled like overladen brooks ; in his very sleep , his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull , “ Stern all ! the White Whale spouts thick blood ! ”
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