keel of Ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while
still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his
scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its
dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.


THIRD DAY.

The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the
solitary night-man at the fore-masthead was relieved by crowds of the
daylight lookouts, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.

"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.

"In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all.
Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely
day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the
angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a
fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food for thought,
had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels,
feels; _that's_ tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity.
God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a
coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains
beat too much for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was
very calm--frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which
the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is
growing now; this moment growing, and the heat must breed it; but no,
it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between
the earthly clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild
winds blow; they whip about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash