By compulsion...the will is nill.
***
By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it. My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries; --aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserable office, --to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to lift again.
[ A burst of revelry from the forecastle.] Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white whale is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life. Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills me through! Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, --as wild, untutored things are forced to feed --Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!
***
"Alas, then, she is drown'd?"--Laertes
Second Clown 3 I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave 4 straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it 5 Christian burial. Second Clown 8 Why, 'tis found so. First Clown 9 It must be "se offendendo"; it cannot be else. 10 For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, 11 it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it 12 is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned 13 herself wittingly. Second Clown 14 Nay, but hear you, goodman delver— First Clown 15 Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here 16 stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, 17 and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he 18 goes—mark you that; but if the water come to him 19 and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he 20 that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. Second Clown 21 But is this law? First Clown 22 Ay, marry, is't; crowner's quest law. Second Clown 23 Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not been 24 a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' 25 Christian burial. First Clown 26 Why, there thou say'st: and the more pity that great 27 folk should have countenance in this world to drown 28 or hang themselves, more than their even-Christian. 29 Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentleman 30 but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they 31 hold up Adam's profession.
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