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CHAPTER 130 . The Hat . And now that at the proper time and place , after so long and wide a preliminary cruise , Ahab , — all other whaling waters swept — seemed to have chased his foe into an ocean - fold , to slay him the more securely there ; now , that he found himself hard by the very latitude and longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted ; now that a vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encountered Moby Dick ; — and now that all his successive meetings with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters , whether sinning or sinned against ; now it was that there lurked a something in the old man’s eyes , which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see . As the unsetting polar star , which through the livelong , arctic , six months ’ night sustains its piercing , steady , central gaze ; so Ahab’s purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew . It domineered above them so , that all their bodings , doubts , misgivings , fears , were fain to hide beneath their souls , and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf . In this foreshadowing interval too , all humor , forced or natural , vanished . Stubb no more strove to raise a smile ; Starbuck no more strove to check one . Alike , joy and sorrow , hope and fear , seemed ground to finest dust , and powdered , for the time , in the clamped mortar of Ahab’s iron soul . Like machines , they dumbly moved about the deck , ever conscious that the old man’s despot eye was on them . But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours ; when he thought no glance but one was on him ; then you would have seen that even as Ahab’s eyes so awed the crew’s , the inscrutable Parsee’s glance awed his ; or somehow , at least , in some wild way , at times affected it . Such an added , gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now ; such ceaseless shudderings shook him ; that the men looked dubious at him ; half uncertain , as it seemed , whether indeed he were a mortal substance , or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being’s body . And that shadow was always hovering there . For not by night , even , had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber , or go below . He would stand still for hours : but never sat or leaned ; his wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say — We two watchmen never rest .
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