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“ 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 ! ” CHAPTER 117 . The Whale Watch . The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart ; one , far to windward ; one , less distant , to leeward ; one ahead ; one astern . These last three were brought alongside ere nightfall ; but the windward one could not be reached till morning ; and the boat that had killed it lay by its side all night ; and that boat was Ahab’s . The waif - pole was thrust upright into the dead whale’s spout - hole ; and the lantern hanging from its top , cast a troubled flickering glare upon the black , glossy back , and far out upon the midnight waves , which gently chafed the whale’s broad flank , like soft surf upon a beach . Ahab and all his boat’s crew seemed asleep but the Parsee ; who crouching in the bow , sat watching the sharks , that spectrally played round the whale , and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails . A sound like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of Gomorrah , ran shuddering through the air . Started from his slumbers , Ahab , face to face , saw the Parsee ; and hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a flooded world . “ I have dreamed it again , ” said he . “ Of the hearses ? Have I not said , old man , that neither hearse nor coffin can be thine ? ” “ And who are hearsed that die on the sea ? ” “ But I said , old man , that ere thou couldst die on this voyage , two hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea ; the first not made by mortal hands ; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in America . ” “ Aye , aye ! a strange sight that , Parsee : — a hearse and its plumes floating over the ocean with the waves for the pall - bearers . Ha ! Such a sight we shall not soon see . ” “ Believe it or not , thou canst not die till it be seen , old man . ” “ And what was that saying about thyself ? ” “ Though it come to the last , I shall still go before thee thy pilot . ” “ And when thou art so gone before — if that ever befall — then ere I can follow , thou must still appear to me , to pilot me still ? — Was it not so ? Well , then , did I believe all ye say , oh my pilot ! I have here two pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it . ”
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