
world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific Ocean! and this
time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to -«
    At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in
accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for
some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what
seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with the stranger's
flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before
have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles
capriciously carry meanings.
    »Swim away from me, do ye?« murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There
seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless
sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced. But turning to the
steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish her
headway, he cried out in his old lion voice, »Up helm! Keep her off round the
world!«
    Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but
whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils
to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure,
were all the time before us.
    Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could forever
reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any
Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But
in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that
demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while
chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or
midway leave us whelmed.
 

                                  Chapter LIII

                                    The Gam

The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had spoken
was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had this not been the
case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded her - judging by his
subsequent conduct on similar occasions - if so it had been that, by the process
of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer to the question he put. For, as it
eventually turned out, he cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any
stranger captain, except he could contribute some of that information he so
absorbingly sought. But all this might remain inadequately estimated, were not
something said here of
