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
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