Starbuck

“ Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!—crack my heart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. ”

“ Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego's mast-head hammer remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his own forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just as soon as he.
"The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say—ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! ”

“ In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop's stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the mate,—who held one of the tackle-ropes on deck—and bade him pause.
"Starbuck!"
"Sir?"
"For the third time my soul's ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck."
"Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so."
"Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck!"
"Truth, sir: saddest truth."
"Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the flood;—and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested comb, Starbuck. ”

“ Thunder splits the ships,
But he only smacks his lips,
A tastin’ of this flip,—
Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!
“Avast. Stubb,” cried Starbuck, “let the Typhoon sing, and strike his harp here in our rigging ; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy peace.”
“But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, there’s no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my throat. ”

“ Starbuck, exclaimed: "There is one God that is Lord over the earth,
and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod.—On deck!"
For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, Sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man." ”

“ But surely, the harvest of a century should be greater than a one year’s crop in some new and oppressed colony? And the Duval fortune, made from a nation’s hair-oil and cosmetics, and multiplied, when welded to the mace [399] of capital, in a hundred corporations, has but grown in proportion.
But Starbuck is but telling them that these inert millions represent a greater tyranny than my lord duke of York’s; and that the experiment of a republic has been tried for just a hundred years and failed. Starbuck is very bitter to-night and inclined to look upon things from their darkest side. ”

“ If she falls in love with him, she will love him like a Starbuck—with all her soul. An' if he don't love [163] her, she'll be silent like a Starbuck. One day when we was a goin' down the creek in canoe you saw a fish come up an' strike at the paddle. Margaret, that was a Starbuck among fish."
There came a loud cry of "halloa," and Jasper went to the window.
"Helloa yo'se'f."
"My wagon's stalled down here," a man shouted, "and I'd like for you to fetch your steers and give me a lift up the hill." ”

“ James Starbuck has not been heard of since; not yet, at least. John Haviland and Gracie have been married, and Mamie still lives with them. They live in a smaller house than Mrs. Gower’s, to be sure, but they manage to be happy; and their sons will be strong-souled, large-hearted, to meet the Jem Starbucks that are to come; and Gracie’s daughters will be like to her, and bear from her the vestal fire, each one to her own household; not advertised, perhaps, to thousands, but yet a kindly warmth to the few that stand within its circle of light. ”

“ Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck taking the stern.
“Oars! Oars!” he intensely whispered, seizing the helm—“gripe your oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off, you Queequeg—the whale there!—prick him!—hit him! Stand up—stand up, and stay so! Spring, men—pull, men; never mind their backs—scrape them!—scrape away!”
The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, leaving a narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate endeavor we at last shot into a temporary opening ”

“ Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea. ”

“ Starbuck came to the wharves, heaped up with coal mountains, built over with iron prisons for the gas; he looked about him, cautiously, for he was physically a coward and afraid of footpads, of the lawless gangs of roughs that infest the wharves. He had struck across the city too directly, instead of walking up Fifth Avenue, as he should have done, where he felt safe. He started once or twice in alarm, and his heart took to palpitating again, as he saw a dark figure among the wharves; but it would be only a policeman or a watchman, and he breathed more freely ”

“ Starbuck, whut you all de time come er talkin' datter way fur? Ain't dar nuthin' in dis life ter talk erbout 'cept politics? Doan you know you got er soul ter save? Doan you know dat de Lawd frown on slander? I doan care fur myse'f but I hate ter see er good man fling erway his chances o' de salvation. An' suthin' gwine happen ter you ef you keeps on 'sposin' yo'se'f."
Starbuck good naturedly drove him out, clucking at him as if he were a horse. Lou slowly folded the paper which she had been gazing at during all this time and said: "Oh, you must let me keep this." ”

“ CHAPTER VI
"We have openings in the repair bays or for servants among the inner circle of Shining Ones who work hand in hand with our masters," the old woman told Starbuck and Diane after they had been taken from the rocket ship in New York and shunted underground where the subways had been converted into living quarters for humans without being given a chance to see the city. "Which will it be?"
"We're not cut out to be menials," Starbuck said coldly, "but the repair bays don't appeal to me, either. You say servants to the leaders themselves?" ”

“ “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. ”

“ Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!"
Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck's face as he leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads ”

“ He had imparted the secret to Starbuck, another half-breed, son of a Yankee missionary and Hawaiian wife, who had evidently conceived this plan of seeking Buena Vista with an accomplice, and secretly removing such gold as was still accessible. The accomplice—afterwards identified by Harry as the wandering tramp—failed to discover the secret entrance from the garden, and Starbuck was consequently obliged to attempt it from the hotel—for which purpose he had introduced himself as a boarder—by opening the disused well secretly at night. ”

“ An hour further along in the afternoon, Starbuck's new car, pausing momentarily at the construction camp to give its occupants a chance to witness the rapid fulfilment of Williams's prediction in the swiftly pouring streams of concrete, advertised its shining presence to the engineer, who came up for a word with Smith while Starbuck had his head under the hood of the new-paint-burning motor.
"Somebody's been trying to get you over the wire, John; some woman," he said, in tones as low as the thunderings of the rock-crushers would sanction. ”

“ Starbuck; he's coming on to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see that big tin can there alongside of him?—that's his boiling water. Oh! he's all right, is the Yarman."
"Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can. ”

“ Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year’s scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swaths—Starbuck!” ”

“ Gower’s life. Old Starbuck, as you know, made his money, not only by the refinement of oil, but also by selling his oil when refined—a fact society could hardly overlook.
Si Starbuck was generally thought the weakest, as he was the youngest, of the four sons of old Captain Starbuck, who commanded for many years the brig Loan, and then the ship Fair Helen, both clearing from Old Town in the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Thaddeus, Obed, and Seth were all older brothers, who lived and grew to be captains in their day. Si was a lazy fellow in his youth, and unadventurous ”

“ So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. ”

“ We don't kill our business competitors nowadays."
"Don't we?" snorted Starbuck. "That will be all right, too. We'll suppose, just for the sake of argument, that my respected and respectable daddy-in-law, or whatever other silk-hatted old money-bags happens to be paying Crawford Stanton's salary and commission, wouldn't send out an order to have you killed off. Maybe Stanton, himself, wouldn't stand for it if you'd put it that barefaced. ”

“ She loved the truth and believed that bravery was not only akin to godliness, but the right hand of godliness.
In Starbuck's household, or at least attached to his log-house establishment, there were two other persons, an old black mammy who had nursed Jasper, and a trifling negro named Kintchin.
One day in summer there came two notable visitors, Mrs. Mayfield, and her nephew Tom Elliott, both from Nashville, sister and son of a United States Judge. When they came to Jasper's house, they decided to go no further.
"Tom," said the woman, "this is the place we are looking for." ”

“ And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” ”

“ Frank Miller, starting out in the business world as a farm hand when a young lad in his teens, is now one of the prosperous citizens of Starbuck, where he has extensive realty holdings. He is also the owner of much valuable property and is otherwise connected with the business interests of southeastern Washington in a most active and extensive way. He was born in Germany, June 24, 1858, and is a son of John and Louisa Miller, who were also natives of that country, whence they came to America in 1867. ”

“ Old Jasper's meditations were disturbed by Kintchin who thrust his head through the window and inquired: "Doan want me to take dat co'n ober ter Spencer's 'fo' dinner, does you?"
"No, any time this evenin' will do."
The negro came into the house and as he entered Starbuck said to him: "And while you are resting you mout grind the axes."
"Yas, suh; grind de axes while I's er restin'. Look yere, Mr. Starbuck, ain't you got some work fur me ter do while I's er eatin'?" ”

“ Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Gabe," and then thinking of something important Starbuck hastened to cry out: "Say, Gabe, you might fetch me a can of cove oysters and about a straw hat full o' crackers." The last request was shouted through the window, on the sill of which there was a tin cup and near by, in a corner, was a jug. ”

“ But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. ”