Ahab's Adventure's In Wonderland; or The Rabbit

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in this resplendent wonderland the traveler encounters the direst of all storms. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.

As Ahab returned with the Gryphon to learn who was to be put on trial, the cerulean sky did not betoken any hint of tumult. But just as he was reunited with Starbuck, Franklin, and myself, a Tempest struck directly upon us. An unexpected darkness came on, the sky roared and split with the thunder, and blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled banners of her majesty's court fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the storm had left for its after sport.

Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing under the tallest tree; at every flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional disaster might have befallen; while Franklin was directing the Queen's men to lash down everything that wasn't rooted to the ground already, for the sky was littered with all manner of objects. But all their pains seemed naught.

'Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck,' said Franklin, regarding the mess, 'but the storm will have its way. Franklin, for one, can't fight it. You see, Mr. Starbuck, a cloud has such a great long start before it leaps, all round the world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as for me, all the start I have to meet it, is just across the lawn here. But never mind; it's all in fun: so the old song says;'--(sings.)

Oh! jolly is the gale,

And a joker is the rabbit,

A' flourishin' his tail,--

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the weather, oh!

The scud all a flyin',

That's his flip only foamin';

When he stirs in the spicin',--

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the weather, oh!

Thunder splits the tips,

But he only smacks his lips,

A tastin' of this flip,--

Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the weather, oh!

'Avast Franklin,' 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. And when that's done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a wind-up.'

'Madman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.'

'What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else, never mind how foolish?'

'Here!' cried Starbuck, seizing Franklin by the shoulder, and pointing his hand towards a weather vane mounted on the top of the garden wall, 'markest thou not that the gale comes from the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for Moby Dick? the very course he swung to this day?'

'I don't half understand ye: what's in the wind?'

At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, following the flashes, a voice was heard nearby; and almost at the same instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.