第五十一章 灵泉
第五十一章 灵泉
日子一天天、一周周过去，象牙色的“裴廓德号”张着轻帆，缓缓扫过四片不同的捕鲸场：亚速尔群岛外海、佛得角外海、拉普拉塔河（即此名）河口外海，以及卡罗尔渔场——那是圣赫勒拿岛以南一片未立标、汪洋中的水域。
正是在滑过后面这片水域时，有一个宁静的月夜，所有的波浪如银卷般滚过，它们轻柔弥漫的涌动，营造出一种银色的寂静，而非孤寂；就在这般静夜，船首白沫前方远处，忽见一道银色水柱。月光映照下，它宛若来自天界；仿佛某位羽饰璀璨的神祇自海中升起。费达拉最先望见这水柱。每逢这样的月夜，他惯于攀上主桅顶，如白昼般精准地立在那里瞭望。然而，虽夜间常见鲸群，百名捕鲸手中却无一人愿为它们放下小艇。你可想见，水手们见这老东方人于如此反常时辰高踞桅顶，头巾与明月同悬一天，是何心情。但当他连续数夜默立其间、不发一声；当这般沉寂之后，他那非人间的嗓音忽然宣告那银色月华水柱时，每个倚卧的水手都惊跳起身，仿佛有翼精灵落于索具、向凡人船员呼喊。“她喷啦！”纵是审判之号吹响，他们也未必颤得更厉害；却仍无恐惧，唯有欣悦。因虽时辰极不寻常，那呼喊却如此摄魂，如此狂喜催人，船上几乎每颗心都本能地盼着放下小艇。
阿哈布在甲板上斜跨急步，下令张起上桅帆与顶帆，并展开每一面翼帆。船上最精悍者须掌舵。随后，每根桅顶皆派人守望，这叠帆之船顺风滚行。船尾微风灌满诸多帆腹，生出奇异上涌抬举之势，令那轻浮悬荡的甲板如踏空气；而船仍疾驰，似有两股相抗之力在身内挣扎——一欲直登天界，一欲偏航赴某水平之的。你若那夜望阿哈布之面，必以为他体内亦有二物相争。他活腿在甲板踏出轻快回响，死腿每落一下却如棺木叩声。这老人行走于生与死之间。然虽船行如飞，每道目光如箭射出，那银柱却此夜未再现身。每个水手都赌咒见过一次，却无第二次。
这午夜水柱几近被忘，数日后，看哪！同一静时，又复宣告：众人再睹；然扬帆追去，它又如从未存在般消失。如此夜复一夜戏弄我们，终无人理会，只觉诧异。它神秘地喷入清朗月华或星辉（视天况而定）；整日、两日或三日不复见；且似每度重现，皆愈趋我们前哨，这孤柱似永在诱我们前行。
且因族中古老迷信，兼“裴廓德号”诸多事物笼罩的异样，不乏水手誓称：无论何时何地望见，纵时日遥隔、经纬远殊，那不可近之喷柱必出同一鲸；那鲸即莫比·迪克。一时，对此飘忽幽现亦生特异惧意，似它奸狡招手引我们不断前行，俾那巨兽终在极远极蛮之海回身将我们撕碎。
这暂现的忧惧，虽渺茫却可怖，反衬天气之宁，更显诡力——其下虽蔚蓝温婉，有人却觉藏恶魔之魅，因我们航行日复一日，过海疲懒孤柔，似万物厌我复仇之任，于瓮形船首前自空其生。
然终当转向东行，好望角之风四围嚎起，我们起落于彼处长乱苦海；象牙长牙的“裴廓德号”猛向狂风低头，狂中刺破暗浪，直至沫片如银屑雨飞过舷墙；于是这死寂的空生尽散，却换更惨之景。
近船首，怪形在水里左右疾窜；密聚尾后，飞着不可解的海鸦。每晨，栖于支索，见成排此鸟；虽我们呼喝，久不肯离麻绳，似认我船为漂荡无人之骸，注定为荒，故宜彼无家者栖。黑海涌了又涌，不息地涌，似其浩潮即一良心；大世界魂为正长之罪与苦而 anguish 悔恨。
好望角，汝名如此？不如古称风暴角；因久为前此伴我们的诡静所诱，我们竟投此虐海，其中罪者化为此鸟此鱼，似判永游无港，或拍黑空无涯。然安详、雪白、不变；仍向天注羽泉；仍自前招我们行，那孤柱时而复见。
当此诸元黑茫，阿哈布虽暂总掌湿危之甲板，显最阴郁之默；较昔更少语其副。此类暴时，上下既固，唯被动待暴之局。于是船长船员皆成实务命定者。故以象牙腿插入旧孔，一手紧抓桅索，阿哈布立望死风处数时，偶阵霰雪几冻其睫相黏。同时，船员为船首碎浪逼退，立舷边腰处一排；为御跃浪，各滑入系栏之索圈，如宽带中荡。言稀无声，静船如蜡绘水手所充，日复日撕过魔浪之狂喜。夜亦同此人对洋啸之默；仍默立荡索；仍无言阿哈布迎blast。纵倦极求息，亦不就吊床。斯塔巴克永忘老人之状：一夜下舱看晴雨表，见他闭目直坐旋钉椅中；方离之暴的雨半融霰，仍缓滴未脱帽衣。旁桌展一卷前言之潮流图。灯自紧握手荡。身虽直，首仰令闭目对天花梁下摆针之告示器*
*舱中罗经称告示器，因船长在下不赴舵旁，亦可知船向。
可怖老者！斯塔巴克悚想，此暴中眠，犹固瞩尔志。
Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off
the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of
the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery
locality, southerly from St. Helena.
It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;
and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery
silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen
far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it
looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from
the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight
nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a
look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And yet,
though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a
hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what
emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at
such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But
when, after spending his uniform interval there for several successive
nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence,
his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet,
every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit
had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. “There she
blows!” Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered
more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was
a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously
exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a
lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The
best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head
manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange,
upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows
of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air
beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic
influences were struggling in her—one to mount direct to heaven, the
other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched
Ahab’s face that night, you would have thought that in him also two
different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively
echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a
coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship
so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager
glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every
sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.
This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days
after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it
was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it
disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after
night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted
into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be;
disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and
somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still
further and further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever
alluring us on.
Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance
with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested
the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that
whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however
far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by
one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there
reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as
if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the
monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest
and most savage seas.
These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a
wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in
which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a
devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so
wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful
errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.
But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began
howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas
that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the
blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of
silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this
desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more
dismal than before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither
before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And
every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and
spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp,
as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a
thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for
their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved
the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great
mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering
it had bred.
Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoso, as called
of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had
attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where
guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed
condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat
that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and
unvarying; still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky; still
beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet would at times be
descried.
During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for
the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous
deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever
addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything
above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but
passively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become
practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into its
accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for
hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an
occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very
eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part of
the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,
stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to
guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened
belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by
painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift
madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness
of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence
the men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the
blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not
seek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old
man’s aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the
barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his
floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from
which he had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the
unremoved hat and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of
those charts of tides and currents which have previously been spoken
of. His lantern swung from his tightly clenched hand. Though the body
was erect, the head was thrown back so that the closed eyes were
pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in
the ceiling.*
*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to
the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself
of the course of the ship.
Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this
gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.
