Chapter 70 The Sphynx

        In which Captain Ahab delivers an astonishing soliloquy -- all the more so since Melville has presented him to us as a whaling captain who's been a-whaling for lo these forty years and not at home but a three year's spell. This is how Ahab's soliloquy ends: "O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind." Not bad for a Nantucketer who cut his teeth on a harpoon, what? But let's not forget what Captain Peleg told Ishmael: "Ahab's not of the ordinary; Ahab's been in colleges." Surely his matriculations were but brief ones, necessarily.

        Ahab addresses his remarks to the decapitated head of Stubb's whale. The "head matter" of a sperm whale is the spermaceti oil, the purest premium, most expensive whale oil obtainable -- capable of giving a clean, bright light in a whale oil lamp without refining. We learn that it is no mean feat to sever the enormous head of a sperm whale with a long spade while the monster is rolling and bobbing in the water. Stubb can do the job in ten minutes, and after that the head is hoisted against the ship's side, suspended there half-way out of the water, pulling the ship over with the strain on her tackles.

        It is noontime, and the seamen have gone below to their dinner: "Silence now reigned over the before tumultuous but now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea. Into this noiselessness came Ahab alone from his cabin and stood in the mainchains, leaning over the side, with eyes attentively fixed on this head. That black and hooded head, hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphinx's in the desert.

        "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "speak mighty head and tell us the secret thing that is in thee." [Anyone familiar with the poem "Ozymandias" by Shelley will immediately be reminded of the lines, 'Half-sunk a shattered visage lies . . . My name is Ozymandias, king of kings . . . Look upon my works ye mighty and despair . . . Round the decay of that colossal wreck . . . The lone and level sands stretch far away.' -- as does the calm sea surround the Pequod.] "Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest, where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot. Thou hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou sawst the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck. For hours he fell into the insatiable maw, and his murderers still sailed on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the ship that would have borne a righteous husband home to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham -- and not one syllable is thine to speak . . ."

        "SAIL HO!" cried a triumphant voice from the main mast-head.

        "That's cheering," cried Ahab, thunder-clouds swept from his brow. "Where away?"

        "Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to us."

        "Would now St. Paul come along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind."