The Musket — Moby-Dick

The typhoon still shakes the Pequod. Each shock throws the helmsman off the jaw-bone tiller. Compass needles spin wildly on the cards. After midnight the storm eases. Starbuck works forward and Stubb works aft. They cut away torn jib and topsail rags that flap like albatross feathers. Fresh sails go up. A storm-trysail is set. The ship steers east-south-east again. Then the foul wind turns fair. Men square the yards and sing, "Ho! the fair wind! oh-ye-ho, cheerly men!" Joy fills the deck after so much fear.

Starbuck must tell Ahab about the wind change. He pauses at the bolted cabin door. Lamp shadows swing on loaded muskets in the rack. He remembers Ahab nearly shot him with the studded stock. He lifts that same gun. It is loaded. Powder sits in the pan. He thinks the fair wind only helps the hunt for Moby Dick and doom. Should one crazed captain drag thirty men to death? Pinioning Ahab would be worse than killing him. Law is oceans away. He wonders if heaven itself would punish a would-be murderer. He presses the muzzle to the door and whispers Mary and the boy.

Then he reports like a sailor on duty: wind down, sails reefed, course set. In sleep Ahab cries, "Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!" Starbuck shakes. He puts the musket back. He tells Stubb to wake the captain because Ahab sleeps too sound. Starbuck stays on deck. The moment to act passes.