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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 one small brain think thoughts ; unless God does that beating , does that thinking , does that living , and not I . By heaven , man , we are turned round and round in this world , like yonder windlass , and Fate is the handspike . And all the time , lo ! that smiling sky , and this unsounded sea ! Look ! see yon Albicore ! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying - fish ? Where do murderers go , man ! Who’s to doom , when the judge himself is dragged to the bar ? But it is a mild , mild wind , and a mild looking sky ; and the air smells now , as if it blew from a far - away meadow ; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes , Starbuck , and the mowers are sleeping among the new - mown hay . Sleeping ? Aye , toil we how we may , we all sleep at last on the field . Sleep ? Aye , and rust amid greenness ; as last year’s scythes flung down , and left in the half - cut swaths — Starbuck ! ” But blanched to a corpse’s hue with despair , the Mate had stolen away . Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side ; but started at two reflected , fixed eyes in the water there . Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail . CHAPTER 133 . The Chase — First Day . That night , in the mid - watch , when the old man — as his wont at intervals — stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned , and went to his pivot - hole , he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely , snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship’s dog will , in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle . He declared that a whale must be near . Soon that peculiar odor , sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale , was palpable to all the watch ; nor was any mariner surprised when , after inspecting the compass , and then the dog - vane , and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible , Ahab rapidly ordered the ship’s course to be slightly altered , and the sail to be shortened .
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