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That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick.
As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea.
As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed "Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!" "What was it, Sir?" said Flask. "The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it."
And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan, Moby Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming, like the worshipped white-elephant in the coronation procession of the Siamese! So with stun-sail piled on stun-sail, we sailed along, driving these leviathans before us; when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego was heard, loudly directing attention to something in our wake.
I remember, for example, early in my acquaintance with him, an acquaintance due solely to the fact that I accepted his MS. on its merits and without knowing the least who he was talking to him about Herman Melville's Moby Dick the story of the mysterious White Whale which haunts the vast water spaces of the South Pacific a story about which I note with interest that of late certain American and English writers have become quite mystical, or, as the Elizabethans would have put it, "fond."
And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a preliminary cruise, Ahab, all other whaling waters swept seemed to have chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encountered Moby Dick; and now that all his successive meetings with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against; now it was that there lurked a something in the old man's eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see.
But almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat's crew being assigned to that boat.
To get a better perspective of Conrad's essential modernity I should like to propose a more cogent comparison, and a more illuminating contrast, with a man whose achievements were in Conrad's own province, who challenges and rewards comparison, Herman Melville. It may be that others have set "Moby Dick" beside the works of Conrad.
It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made.
The sea, earth, and sky, and the creatures moving therein again will become symbols, and the pursuit of Moby Dick be renewed. But now, for a while, science has pushed back the unknown to the horizon and given us a little space of light in the darkness of the universe. There the ego is for a time the greatest mystery.
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