124 The Needle
CHAPTER 124
THE NEEDLE.
Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod’s gurgling track, pushed her on like giants’ palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a cruciblecrucible: melting pot. of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time the tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to eye the bright sun’s rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun’s rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating wake.
“Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!“a tandem, I drive the sea!”: Ahab imagines the Pequod as “the sea-chariot of the sun,” analogous to the sun’s sky chariot driven by Apollo in Greek myth. He elaborates that the waves ("billows") are the sea-chariot's horses hitched “in tandem,” one behind the other.”
But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
“East-sou-east, sir,” said the frightened steersman.
“Thou liest!” smiting him with his clenched fist. “Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?”
Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very blinding palpableness must have been the cause.
Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses—that’s all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it.”
“Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said the pale mate, gloomily.
Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as developed in the mariner’s needle, is, as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled at, that such things should bemarvelled at, that such things should be: In the New Testament and Apocrypha, "marveled at" is a repeated locution, while the latter phrase echoes “such things must needs be” (Mark 13.7).. In instances where the lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more fatal; all its loadstone virtueloadstone virtue: magnetism naturally occurring in “lodestone,” a magnetic iron ore. being annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife’s knitting needle. But in either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affectedif the binnacle compasses be affected: The binnacle is a casing for a ship's compass or compasses, fitted with magnets to counteract local magnetic influences such as from iron in the ship, or, in this case, lightning from the storm. The Pequod’s binnacle has two compasses here, but only one in Ch. 99. See also "binnacle lamp" in Ch. 30 and "binnacle compasses" in Ch. 48., the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship; even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.
Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship’s course to be changed accordingly. The yards were braced hard upREVISION NARRATIVE: The yards were braced hard up // The American text reads simply “The yards were hard up”; Melville certainly added “braced” for the British edition. The corrected version indicates that the yards have been pulled (“braced”) in such a way as to point the ship as straight into the wind as possible. In nautical dictionaries of the day, “hard up” used by itself is applied only to the rudder (which has no braces), and “braced hard up” is the appropriate terminology for yards. MEL’s general policy is not to mix versions and to emend texts that would otherwise confuse readers. Since the correction is Melville’s, MEL adopts the British reading, as does the NN edition. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin.; and once more the Pequod thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair one had only been jugglingjuggling: deceiving. her.
Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and Flask—who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings—likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab’s.
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.
“Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun’s pilot! yesterday I wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked meREVISION NARRATIVE: the compasses would fain have wrecked me // The American reading is “feign,” which was corrected to “fain” in the British edition by either Melville or an editor. The two words are homonyms. The verb “feign” means to deceive or indulge in fiction; the adverb “fain” means gladly or eagerly. Melville’s sentence structure clearly calls for an adverb, either “feignedly” (meaning deceivingly) or “fain.” Previously, in Ch. 118, Ahab destroyed his quadrant, and he continues to navigate by dead reckoning; now, as if in retaliation, the electrical storm has inverted the polarity of his compass needles. The fact that Ahab was at first deceived by the inverted compasses would argue that something like “feignedly” may have been Melville’s intended word. However, claiming that he “is lord over the level loadstone” (the magnetized needle), Ahab reacts to the deception with renewed defiance: the world would eagerly destroy him, but now he will just as eagerly strike back. Thus, the word “fain” is also appropriate. However, since “feigned” appears only once in Moby-Dick, and “feignedly” never; and given that “would fain” appears over a dozen times, Melville’s intended word is most likely “fain.” Moreover, the British edition’s change to “fain,” whether by Melville or an editor, corrects both the misspelling and the sentence’s grammar that are likely to confuse readers. MEL follows the British text and emends to “fain.” To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin.. So, so. But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck—a lance without the pole; a top-maultop-maul: heavy hammer., and the smallest of the sail-maker’s needles. Quick!”
Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.
“Men,” said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his ownAhab can make one of his own: Melville adapted this magnetizing procedure from William Scoresby's An Account of the Arctic Regions. See Mansfield and Vincent (823–24)., that will point as true as any.”
Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow. But Starbuck looked away.
With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then going through some small strange motions with it—whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain—he called for linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of the compass-cards. At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,—“Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and that compass swears it!”
One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk away.
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pridefatal pride: Although Ahab makes of the needle a rough substitute compass, his maneuvers are mostly for show, as was his defying the corposants in "The Candles” (Ch. 119). His “fatal pride” is revealed when he says, and apparently believes, that he is not just successful at persuading a credulous crew but is really “lord of the level lodestone.”.