Moby Dick

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rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more fatal;
all its loadstone virtue 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 affected,
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 hard up; and once more the Pequod
thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair
one had only been juggling her.

Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said nothing,