All 3 Uses of
beckon
in
Moby Dick
- …and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire.
Chpt 43-45beckoned = called (to come)
- For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.
Chpt 49-51beckoning = calling (to follow)
- But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet would at times be descried.
Chpt 49-51 *
Definition:
-
(beckon) to call -- typically to ask or tell someone to come nearer by using a hand gesture or a nod of the head