次日清晨，尚未平息的海浪翻涌着绵长徐缓的巨波，在"裴廓德号"汩汩的航迹里挣扎，如同巨人的手掌将其向前推送。强劲而不偏不倚的狂风如此充沛，天宇仿佛成了鼓满的巨帆；整个世界都在风中呼啸。笼罩在晨曦的薄明里，无形的太阳只能通过其所在之处铺展开的强光来辨认；刺刀般的光束成排推进。如同加冕的巴比伦王与王后般的辉耀，统治着万物。大海成了熔金之坩埚，沸腾着跃动出光与热。
长久保持着迷般的沉默，亚哈独自伫立；每当摇摆的船首斜桅低垂着前倾时，他便转身注视前方产生的耀眼阳光；当船尾深深沉下时，他又转向身后，看见太阳后方所在，以及同样的黄色光芒如何与他笔直的航迹交融。
"哈哈，我的船！此刻你大可被视为太阳的海上战车。嚯嚯！我船首前方所有的民族，我为你们带来了太阳！套上更远处的巨浪；嗬！双驾马车，我驾驭着大海！"
但突然被某种相反的想法勒住缰绳，他匆忙走向舵柄，沙哑地询问船的航向。
"东偏东南，先生，"受惊的舵手说。
"你撒谎！"他用紧握的拳头击打他。"清晨这个时候朝东航行，太阳却在船尾？"
听到这话，所有人都困惑了；因为亚哈刚刚观察到的现象莫名地逃过了其他人的注意；但正是其令人目眩的明显性造成了这种结果。
亚哈将头探入罗经柜一半，瞥了一眼罗盘；他抬起的手臂缓缓落下；一瞬间他几乎踉跄起来。斯塔布克站在他身后望去，啊！两个罗盘都指向东方，而"裴廓德号"却绝对无误地在向西行。
但在这最初的狂乱警报传遍船员之前，老人僵硬地笑着喊道："我明白了！这事以前发生过。斯塔布克先生，昨晚的雷暴改变了我们的罗盘——仅此而已。你以前听说过这种事，我想。"
"是的；但从未发生在我身上，先生。"苍白的二副阴郁地说。
这里必须说明，像这样的事故在不止一次的情况下发生在遭遇猛烈风暴的船只上。众所周知，航海罗盘针中展现的磁力，本质上与天上可见的电是同一回事；因此这类事情发生并不足为奇。在闪电确实击中船只，击倒一些桅杆和索具的情况下，对罗盘针的影响有时更为致命；其所有磁力被消灭，以至于之前带磁的钢针变得比老太婆的缝衣针还没用。但无论哪种情况，罗盘针自身永远无法恢复被这样损毁或失去的原有磁力；如果罗经柜罗盘受到影响，船上可能存在的所有其他罗盘也会遭遇同样的命运；即使是最下面插入龙骨中的那个也不例外。
老人故意站在罗经柜前，注视着被翻转的罗盘，现在用他伸出的手的指尖精确测量太阳的方位，确认罗盘针完全颠倒后，他大声发出改变航向的命令。帆桁被紧紧拉起；"裴廓德号"再次将她无畏的船首插入逆风，因为那原本以为的顺风只是在戏弄她。
与此同时，无论内心有何秘密想法，斯塔布克一言不发，只是静静发出所有必要命令；而斯塔布和弗拉斯克——他们似乎在某种程度上与他的感受相同——也同样毫无怨言地默许了。至于水手们，尽管有些人低声嘀咕，他们对亚哈的恐惧胜过对命运的恐惧。但一如既往，异教徒鱼叉手们几乎完全不为所动；或者即便有所触动，也只是某种磁力从刚毅的亚哈射入他们志趣相投的心中。
老人一度在甲板上踱步，沉浸在起伏的遐想中。但偶然被他的象牙鞋跟绊了一下，他看到了前一天他摔到甲板上的四分仪被压碎的铜制瞄准管。
"你这可怜的、骄傲的观天者和太阳的引航员！昨天我毁了你，今天罗盘又险些毁了我。罢了，罢了。但亚哈仍然能主宰水平的磁石。斯塔布克先生——一根没有杆子的鱼镖；一把顶锤，还有最小的缝衣针。快！"
也许，促使他即将要做之事的冲动背后，还有一些审慎的动机，其目的可能是通过他绝妙的技巧，在罗盘反转这样奇妙的事情上，重振船员的精神。此外，老人很清楚，用翻转的罗盘针导航，虽然笨拙可行，但迷信的水手们不会不战栗、不看作恶兆就轻易放过。
"伙计们，"当大副把他索要的东西递给他时，他稳稳定定转向船员们说，"我的伙计们，雷暴改变了老亚哈的罗盘针；但用这块钢，亚哈可以自己造一根，它将和任何罗盘针一样指向正确。"
说这话时，水手们交换着奴性惊讶的羞愧目光；他们用着迷的眼睛等待着可能随之而来的任何魔法。但斯塔布克移开了视线。
亚哈用顶锤一击敲掉了鱼镖的钢头，然后把长长的铁杆递给大副，吩咐他将其垂直握住，不要触及甲板。然后，他用顶锤反复敲击铁杆的上端后，将钝头的钢针竖着放在铁杆顶端，较轻地锤击它几次，大副仍然像之前一样握着铁杆。接着，他对它进行了一些小小的奇怪动作——不确定这些动作对于给钢针磁化是否必要，还是仅仅为了增加船员们的敬畏——他叫来亚麻线；走到罗经柜前，抽出里面的两根反转罗盘针，水平地将缝衣针从中段悬挂起来，放在罗盘刻度盘中的一个之上。起初，钢针来回转动，两端抖颤振动；但最终它稳定在适当位置，此时一直专注观察这一结果的亚哈坦率地从罗经柜后退一步，伸直手臂指向它，喊道——"你们自己看吧，看亚哈是否不是水平磁石的主宰！太阳在东方，而这罗盘发誓它也在东方！"
他们一个接一个地往里窥视，因为只有他们自己的眼睛才能说服他们如此的愚昧，然后一个接一个地悄悄溜走。
在他那充满轻蔑与胜利的炽热眼神里，你此刻看到了亚哈全部的致命骄傲。
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
crucible 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!”
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 be. 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 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, 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 me. So, so. But
Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck—a lance without
a pole; a top-maul, 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 own,
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 pride.
