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Ahab Tames the Hurricane
Mon Jan 10, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
For many years, folks from shamin to charlatan, have longed to control the weather.
Even scientists have given it a go, with limited success. But one man was able to quell
an entire hurricane—one of the biggest storms on earth. Well, at least on paper. Hi, I’m
Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook.
In the American classic novel "Moby Dick," Herman Melville pits his mono-maniacal
Captain Ahab against not only his First Mate, Starbuck, and the Great White Whale, but
against Nature itself.
In Chapter 119, for those of you following along at home, Melville writes: "Warmest
climes but nurse the cruelest fangs." And thus it is when the Pequod is pummeled by a
Pacific typhoon.
Towards the evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and bare-poled
was left to fight a typhoon. When darkness came on, the sky and sea roared and split
with the thunder, and blazed with the lightning that showed the disabled mast fluttering
here and there with the rags which the first fury of the tempest has left for its after
sport.
The crew is thinking they are doomed (which, of course, they are), and St. Elmo’s fire
glows on the bare trinity of spires and the newly forged harpoon. Then, Ahab steps to
the main mast.
Ahab: I own thy speechless, placeless power, said I not so? The lightning flashes
through my skull, mine eyeballs ache and ache. But thou are but my fiery father.
Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Leap! Leap up and
lick they sky! I leap with thee! I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly
I worship thee.
Ahab grabs the spear, and "with one breath," blows out the fire.
The Weather Notebook is supported by Subaru of America. Find more of our stormy
shows online at www.weathernotebook.org.
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