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He heard, and madly at the motion pleased, His polish’d bow with hasty rashness seized. ’Twas form’d of horn, and smooth’d with artful toil: A mountain goat resign’d the shining spoil. Who pierced long since beneath his arrows bled; The stately quarry on the cliffs lay dead, And sixteen palms his brow’s large honours spread: The workmen join’d, and shaped the bended horns, And beaten gold each taper point adorns. This, by the Greeks unseen, the warrior bends, Screen’d by the shields of his surrounding friends: There meditates the mark; and couching low, Fits the sharp arrow to the well-strung bow. One from a hundred feather’d deaths he chose, Fated to wound, and cause of future woes; Then offers vows with hecatombs to crown Apollo’s altars in his native town.

But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad; how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly the whole management of the ship’s affairs to these two. And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth—”

This said, he stalk’d with ample strides along, To Crete’s brave monarch and his martial throng; High at their head he saw the chief appear, And bold Meriones excite the rear. At this the king his generous joy express’d, And clasp’d the warrior to his armed breast. “Divine Idomeneus! what thanks we owe To worth like thine! what praise shall we bestow? To thee the foremost honours are decreed, First in the fight and every graceful deed. For this, in banquets, when the generous bowls Restore our blood, and raise the warriors’ souls, Though all the rest with stated rules we bound, Unmix’d, unmeasured, are thy goblets crown’d. Be still thyself, in arms a mighty name; Maintain thy honours, and enlarge thy fame.” To whom the Cretan thus his speech address’d: “Secure of me, O king! exhort the rest. Fix’d to thy side, in every toil I share, Thy firm associate in the day of war. But let the signal be this moment given; To mix in fight is all I ask of Heaven. The field shall prove how perjuries succeed, And chains or death avenge the impious deed.”

But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad; how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly the whole management of the ship’s affairs to these two. And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth—”

She spoke, and Helen’s secret soul was moved; She scorn’d the champion, but the man she loved. Fair Venus’ neck, her eyes that sparkled fire, And breast, reveal’d the queen of soft desire.[123] Struck with her presence, straight the lively red Forsook her cheek; and trembling, thus she said: “Then is it still thy pleasure to deceive? And woman’s frailty always to believe! Say, to new nations must I cross the main, Or carry wars to some soft Asian plain? For whom must Helen break her second vow? What other Paris is thy darling now? Left to Atrides, (victor in the strife,) An odious conquest and a captive wife, Hence let me sail; and if thy Paris bear My absence ill, let Venus ease his care. A handmaid goddess at his side to wait, Renounce the glories of thy heavenly state, Be fix’d for ever to the Trojan shore, His spouse, or slave; and mount the skies no more. For me, to lawless love no longer led, I scorn the coward, and detest his bed; Else should I merit everlasting shame, And keen reproach, from every Phrygian dame: Ill suits it now the joys of love to know, Too deep my anguish, and too wild my woe.”

He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,—“But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,—top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O Father!—chiefly known to me by Thy rod—mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?”