It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instantrise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in dartingat the monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden,passionate, corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke thattore him, he probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, butnothing more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home,and for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish laystretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary,howling Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and gashedsoul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad. Thatit was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter, thatthe final monomania seized him, seems all but certain from the factthat, at intervals during the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and,though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in hisEgyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that hismates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, ravingin his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings ofthe gales. And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship,with mild stun'sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and,to all appearances, the old man's delirium seemed left behind him withthe Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his dark den into theblessed light and air; even then, when he bore that firm, collectedfront, however pale, and issued his calm orders once again; and hismates thanked God the direful madness was now gone; even then, Ahab,in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunningand most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have butbecome transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacysubsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson,when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably throughthe Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not onejot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broadmadness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. Thatbefore living agent, now became the living instrument. If such afurious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his generalsanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon uponits own mad mark; so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab,to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more potency thanever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object.
This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remainsunhinted. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth isprofound. Winding far down from within the very heart of this spikedHotel de Cluny where we here stand- however grand and wonderful, nowquit it;- and take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vastRoman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers ofman's upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essencesits in bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities, andthroned on torsoes! So with a broken throne, the great gods mockthat captive king; so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding onhis frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down there, yeprouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad king! A familylikeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and fromyour grim sire only will the old State-secret come.
Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely; all mymeans are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power tokill, or change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind hedid long dissemble; in some sort, did still. But that thing of hisdissembling was only subject to his perceptibility, not to his willdeterminate. Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling,that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketerthought him otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to thequick, with the terrible casualty which had overtaken him.
The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewisepopularly ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the addedmoodiness which always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in thePequod on the present voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it sovery unlikely, that far from distrusting his fitness for anotherwhaling voyage, on account of such dark symptoms, the calculatingpeople of that prudent isle were inclined to harbor the conceit,that for those very reasons he was all the better qualified and set onedge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt ofwhales. Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed,unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one, could he befound, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lanceagainst the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reasonthought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an onewould seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlingsto the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with themad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab hadpurposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only andall-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of hisold acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in himthen, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenchedthe ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on profitablecruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. Hewas intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge.
Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing withcurses Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too,chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals-morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtueor right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invunerable jollity ofindifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrityin Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked andpacked by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniacrevenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the oldman's ire- by what evil magic their souls were possessed, that attimes his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much theirinsufferable foe as his; how all this came to be- what the White Whalewas to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in somedim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demonof the seas of life,- all this to explain, would be to dive deeperthan Ishmael can go. The subterranean miner that works in us all,how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffledsound of his pick? Who does not feel the irresistible arm drag? Whatskiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand still? For one, I gave myselfup to the abandonment of the time and the place; but while yet alla-rush to encounter the whale, could see naught in that brute butthe deadliest ill.
