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- ETYMOLOGY.
- (Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)
- The pale Usher--threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him
- now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer
- handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all
- the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it
- somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
- "While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what
- name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, through
- ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification of
- the word, you deliver that which is not true." --HACKLUYT
- "WHALE.... Sw. and Dan. HVAL. This animal is named from roundness or
- rolling; for in Dan. HVALT is arched or vaulted." --WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY
- "WHALE.... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. WALLEN; A.S.
- WALW-IAN, to roll, to wallow." --RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY
- KETOS, GREEK.
- CETUS, LATIN.
- WHOEL, ANGLO-SAXON.
- HVALT, DANISH.
- WAL, DUTCH.
- HWAL, SWEDISH.
- WHALE, ICELANDIC.
- WHALE, ENGLISH.
- BALEINE, FRENCH.
- BALLENA, SPANISH.
- PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, FEGEE.
- PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, ERROMANGOAN.
- EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
- It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a
- poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans
- and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to
- whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or
- profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the
- higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these
- extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the
- ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these
- extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing
- bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied,
- and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our
- own.
- So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou
- belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world
- will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong;
- but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too;
- and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes
- and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness--Give it up,
- Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world,
- by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless! Would that I could
- clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your
- tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends
- who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and
- making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against
- your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together--there, ye
- shall strike unsplinterable glasses!
- EXTRACTS.
- "And God created great whales." --GENESIS.
- "Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to
- be hoary." --JOB.
- "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah." --JONAH.
- "There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play
- therein." --PSALMS.
- "In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
- shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked
- serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." --ISAIAH
- "And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster's
- mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that
- foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his
- paunch." --HOLLAND'S PLUTARCH'S MORALS.
- "The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among
- which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much in
- length as four acres or arpens of land." --HOLLAND'S PLINY.
- "Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a
- great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the
- former, one was of a most monstrous size.... This came towards us,
- open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before
- him into a foam." --TOOKE'S LUCIAN. "THE TRUE HISTORY."
- "He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,
- which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought
- some to the king.... The best whales were catched in his own country, of
- which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was
- one of six who had killed sixty in two days." --OTHER OR OTHER'S VERBAL
- NARRATIVE TAKEN DOWN FROM HIS MOUTH BY KING ALFRED, A.D. 890.
- "And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that
- enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's) mouth, are
- immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in
- great security, and there sleeps." --MONTAIGNE. --APOLOGY FOR RAIMOND
- SEBOND.
- "Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if is not Leviathan described
- by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job." --RABELAIS.
- "This whale's liver was two cartloads." --STOWE'S ANNALS.
- "The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan."
- --LORD BACON'S VERSION OF THE PSALMS.
- "Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
- nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible
- quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale." --IBID. "HISTORY OF
- LIFE AND DEATH."
- "The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise."
- --KING HENRY.
- "Very like a whale." --HAMLET.
- "Which to secure, no skill of leach's art
- Mote him availle, but to returne againe
- To his wound's worker, that with lowly dart,
- Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
- Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro' the maine."
- --THE FAERIE QUEEN.
- "Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful
- calm trouble the ocean till it boil." --SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. PREFACE TO
- GONDIBERT.
- "What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
- Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit."
- --SIR T. BROWNE. OF SPERMA CETI AND THE SPERMA CETI WHALE. VIDE HIS V.
- E.
- "Like Spencer's Talus with his modern flail
- He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
- ...
- Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears,
- And on his back a grove of pikes appears."
- --WALLER'S BATTLE OF THE SUMMER ISLANDS.
- "By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or
- State--(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man." --OPENING
- SENTENCE OF HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN.
- "Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat
- in the mouth of a whale." --PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
- "That sea beast
- Leviathan, which God of all his works
- Created hugest that swim the ocean stream." --PARADISE LOST.
- ---"There Leviathan,
- Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
- Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
- And seems a moving land; and at his gills
- Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea." --IBID.
- "The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil
- swimming in them." --FULLLER'S PROFANE AND HOLY STATE.
- "So close behind some promontory lie
- The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
- And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
- Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way."
- --DRYDEN'S ANNUS MIRABILIS.
- "While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his
- head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it
- will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water." --THOMAS EDGE'S TEN
- VOYAGES TO SPITZBERGEN, IN PURCHAS.
- "In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
- wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which
- nature has placed on their shoulders." --SIR T. HERBERT'S VOYAGES INTO
- ASIA AND AFRICA. HARRIS COLL.
- "Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to
- proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship
- upon them." --SCHOUTEN'S SIXTH CIRCUMNAVIGATION.
- "We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
- Jonas-in-the-Whale.... Some say the whale can't open his mouth, but that
- is a fable.... They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they
- can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains....
- I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of
- herrings in his belly.... One of our harpooneers told me that he caught
- once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over." --A VOYAGE TO
- GREENLAND, A.D. 1671 HARRIS COLL.
- "Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one
- eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was
- informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of
- baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren."
- --SIBBALD'S FIFE AND KINROSS.
- "Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
- Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was
- killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness." --RICHARD
- STRAFFORD'S LETTER FROM THE BERMUDAS. PHIL. TRANS. A.D. 1668.
- "Whales in the sea God's voice obey." --N. E. PRIMER.
- "We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those
- southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the
- northward of us." --CAPTAIN COWLEY'S VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, A.D. 1729.
- "... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an
- insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain." --ULLOA'S
- SOUTH AMERICA.
- "To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
- We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
- Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
- Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale."
- --RAPE OF THE LOCK.
- "If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those
- that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear
- contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest
- animal in creation." --GOLDSMITH, NAT. HIST.
- "If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
- speak like great wales." --GOLDSMITH TO JOHNSON.
- "In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was
- found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then
- towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the
- whale, in order to avoid being seen by us." --COOK'S VOYAGES.
- "The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so
- great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to
- mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,
- and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to
- terrify and prevent their too near approach." --UNO VON TROIL'S LETTERS
- ON BANKS'S AND SOLANDER'S VOYAGE TO ICELAND IN 1772.
- "The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce
- animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen."
- --THOMAS JEFFERSON'S WHALE MEMORIAL TO THE FRENCH MINISTER IN 1778.
- "And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?" --EDMUND BURKE'S
- REFERENCE IN PARLIAMENT TO THE NANTUCKET WHALE-FISHERY.
- "Spain--a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe." --EDMUND BURKE.
- (SOMEWHERE.)
- "A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on
- the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates
- and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon.
- And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the
- property of the king." --BLACKSTONE.
- "Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
- Rodmond unerring o'er his head suspends
- The barbed steel, and every turn attends."
- --FALCONER'S SHIPWRECK.
- "Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,
- And rockets blew self driven,
- To hang their momentary fire
- Around the vault of heaven.
- "So fire with water to compare,
- The ocean serves on high,
- Up-spouted by a whale in air,
- To express unwieldy joy." --COWPER, ON THE QUEEN'S
- VISIT TO LONDON.
- "Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at
- a stroke, with immense velocity." --JOHN HUNTER'S ACCOUNT OF THE
- DISSECTION OF A WHALE. (A SMALL SIZED ONE.)
- "The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
- water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage
- through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood
- gushing from the whale's heart." --PALEY'S THEOLOGY.
- "The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet." --BARON CUVIER.
- "In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take
- any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them."
- --COLNETT'S VOYAGE FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXTENDING THE SPERMACETI WHALE
- FISHERY.
- "In the free element beneath me swam,
- Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
- Fishes of every colour, form, and kind;
- Which language cannot paint, and mariner
- Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
- To insect millions peopling every wave:
- Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
- Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
- And trackless region, though on every side
- Assaulted by voracious enemies,
- Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw,
- With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs."
- --MONTGOMERY'S WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.
- "Io! Paean! Io! sing.
- To the finny people's king.
- Not a mightier whale than this
- In the vast Atlantic is;
- Not a fatter fish than he,
- Flounders round the Polar Sea."
- --CHARLES LAMB'S TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE.
- "In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the
- whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:
- there--pointing to the sea--is a green pasture where our children's
- grand-children will go for bread." --OBED MACY'S HISTORY OF NANTUCKET.
- "I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form
- of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw bones." --HAWTHORNE'S
- TWICE TOLD TALES.
- "She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed
- by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago." --IBID.
- "No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom; "I saw his sprout; he threw
- up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at.
- He's a raal oil-butt, that fellow!" --COOPER'S PILOT.
- "The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette
- that whales had been introduced on the stage there." --ECKERMANN'S
- CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE.
- "My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?" I answered, "we have been stove
- by a whale." --"NARRATIVE OF THE SHIPWRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX OF
- NANTUCKET, WHICH WAS ATTACKED AND FINALLY DESTROYED BY A LARGE SPERM
- WHALE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN." BY OWEN CHACE OF NANTUCKET, FIRST MATE OF
- SAID VESSEL. NEW YORK, 1821.
- "A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
- The wind was piping free;
- Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
- And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
- As it floundered in the sea."
- --ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.
- "The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture
- of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six
- English miles....
- "Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,
- cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles."
- --SCORESBY.
- "Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the
- infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head,
- and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes
- at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him with vast
- swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.... It is a matter of great
- astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so interesting,
- and, in a commercial point of view, so important an animal (as the Sperm
- Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited
- so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent
- observers, that of late years, must have possessed the most abundant
- and the most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes."
- --THOMAS BEALE'S HISTORY OF THE SPERM WHALE, 1839.
- "The Cachalot" (Sperm Whale) "is not only better armed than the True
- Whale" (Greenland or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weapon
- at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a
- disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once so
- artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the
- most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe."
- --FREDERICK DEBELL BENNETT'S WHALING VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, 1840.
- October 13. "There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head.
- "Where away?" demanded the captain.
- "Three points off the lee bow, sir."
- "Raise up your wheel. Steady!" "Steady, sir."
- "Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?"
- "Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she
- breaches!"
- "Sing out! sing out every time!"
- "Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there--there--THAR she
- blows--bowes--bo-o-os!"
- "How far off?"
- "Two miles and a half."
- "Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands."
- --J. ROSS BROWNE'S ETCHINGS OF A WHALING CRUIZE. 1846.
- "The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid
- transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of
- Nantucket." --"NARRATIVE OF THE GLOBE," BY LAY AND HUSSEY SURVIVORS.
- A.D. 1828.
- Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the
- assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length
- rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping
- into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable." --MISSIONARY
- JOURNAL OF TYERMAN AND BENNETT.
- "Nantucket itself," said Mr. Webster, "is a very striking and peculiar
- portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or nine
- thousand persons living here in the sea, adding largely every year
- to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry."
- --REPORT OF DANIEL WEBSTER'S SPEECH IN THE U. S. SENATE, ON THE
- APPLICATION FOR THE ERECTION OF A BREAKWATER AT NANTUCKET. 1828.
- "The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment."
- --"THE WHALE AND HIS CAPTORS, OR THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES AND THE
- WHALE'S BIOGRAPHY, GATHERED ON THE HOMEWARD CRUISE OF THE COMMODORE
- PREBLE." BY REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER.
- "If you make the least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel, "I will send
- you to hell." --LIFE OF SAMUEL COMSTOCK (THE MUTINEER), BY HIS BROTHER,
- WILLIAM COMSTOCK. ANOTHER VERSION OF THE WHALE-SHIP GLOBE NARRATIVE.
- "The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order,
- if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they
- failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale."
- --MCCULLOCH'S COMMERCIAL DICTIONARY.
- "These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward
- again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen seem
- to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North-West
- Passage." --FROM "SOMETHING" UNPUBLISHED.
- "It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being struck
- by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look-outs at
- the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them, has a
- totally different air from those engaged in regular voyage." --CURRENTS
- AND WHALING. U.S. EX. EX.
- "Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect
- having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form
- arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps
- have been told that these were the ribs of whales." --TALES OF A WHALE
- VOYAGER TO THE ARCTIC OCEAN.
- "It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,
- that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages
- enrolled among the crew." --NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT OF THE TAKING AND RETAKING
- OF THE WHALE-SHIP HOBOMACK.
- "It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels
- (American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they
- departed." --CRUISE IN A WHALE BOAT.
- "Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up
- perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale." --MIRIAM COFFIN OR THE
- WHALE FISHERMAN.
- "The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would
- manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied
- to the root of his tail." --A CHAPTER ON WHALING IN RIBS AND TRUCKS.
- "On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and
- female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone's
- throw of the shore" (Terra Del Fuego), "over which the beech tree
- extended its branches." --DARWIN'S VOYAGE OF A NATURALIST.
- "'Stern all!' exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the
- distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat,
- threatening it with instant destruction;--'Stern all, for your lives!'"
- --WHARTON THE WHALE KILLER.
- "So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold
- harpooneer is striking the whale!" --NANTUCKET SONG.
- "Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
- In his ocean home will be
- A giant in might, where might is right,
- And King of the boundless sea."
- --WHALE SONG.
- CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
- Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having
- little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on
- shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of
- the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating
- the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
- whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find
- myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up
- the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get
- such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to
- prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically
- knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea
- as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a
- philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly
- take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew
- it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very
- nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
- There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
- wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with
- her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme
- downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
- cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.
- Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
- Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
- Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What
- do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand
- thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some
- leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some
- looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the
- rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these
- are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to
- counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are
- the green fields gone? What do they here?
- But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
- seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the
- extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder
- warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water
- as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of
- them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets
- and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.
- Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all
- those ships attract them thither?
- Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take
- almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a
- dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic
- in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
- reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
- infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.
- Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this
- experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical
- professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for
- ever.
- But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
- quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of
- the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees,
- each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and
- here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder
- cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a
- mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their
- hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though
- this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's
- head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the
- magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores
- on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the
- one charm wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there! Were
- Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to
- see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two
- handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly
- needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why
- is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at
- some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a
- passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first
- told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the
- old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate
- deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.
- And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because
- he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain,
- plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see
- in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of
- life; and this is the key to it all.
- Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin
- to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs,
- I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger.
- For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is
- but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get
- sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of nights--do not enjoy
- themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I never go as a passenger;
- nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a
- Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction
- of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all
- honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind
- whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself,
- without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
- And as for going as cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory
- in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet, somehow,
- I never fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously
- buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
- will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled
- fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old
- Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the
- mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.
- No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
- plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
- True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
- spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort
- of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour,
- particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the
- Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all,
- if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been
- lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand
- in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
- schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and
- the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in
- time.
- What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
- and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
- I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
- Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
- respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't
- a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
- order me about--however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
- satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
- one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical
- or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
- passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and
- be content.
- Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
- paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
- penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must
- pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying
- and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
- infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING
- PAID,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man
- receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly
- believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account
- can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves
- to perdition!
- Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
- exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
- head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is,
- if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
- Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
- the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not
- so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
- other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it.
- But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
- merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling
- voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the
- constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me
- in some unaccountable way--he can better answer than any one else. And,
- doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
- programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as
- a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances.
- I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
- "GRAND CONTESTED ELECTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES.
- "WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.
- "BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
- Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the
- Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others
- were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and
- easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces--though
- I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
- circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives
- which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
- me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the
- delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill
- and discriminating judgment.
- Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
- whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my
- curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island
- bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all
- the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped
- to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not
- have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting
- itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on
- barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a
- horror, and could still be social with it--would they let me--since it
- is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place
- one lodges in.
- By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
- great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
- conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
- my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them
- all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
- CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
- I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm,
- and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of
- old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in
- December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet
- for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place
- would offer, till the following Monday.
- As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at
- this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well
- be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was
- made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a
- fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous
- old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has
- of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though
- in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket
- was her great original--the Tyre of this Carthage;--the place where the
- first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket
- did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to
- give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that
- first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
- cobblestones--so goes the story--to throw at the whales, in order to
- discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?
- Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me
- in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a
- matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a
- very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold
- and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had
- sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,--So,
- wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of
- a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the
- north with the darkness towards the south--wherever in your wisdom you
- may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire
- the price, and don't be too particular.
- With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of "The
- Crossed Harpoons"--but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further
- on, from the bright red windows of the "Sword-Fish Inn," there came such
- fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from
- before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches
- thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,--rather weary for me, when I struck
- my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless
- service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too
- expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the
- broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses
- within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear? get away
- from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I
- went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for
- there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.
- Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand,
- and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At
- this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of
- the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light
- proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly
- open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the
- public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over an
- ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost
- choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But "The
- Crossed Harpoons," and "The Sword-Fish?"--this, then must needs be the
- sign of "The Trap." However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice
- within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door.
- It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black
- faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel
- of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the
- preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and
- wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out,
- Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'
- Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks,
- and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging
- sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing
- a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath--"The
- Spouter Inn:--Peter Coffin."
- Coffin?--Spouter?--Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought
- I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this
- Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and
- the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little
- wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from
- the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a
- poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very
- spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.
- It was a queer sort of place--a gable-ended old house, one side palsied
- as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner,
- where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever
- it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a
- mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob
- quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that tempestuous wind called
- Euroclydon," says an old writer--of whose works I possess the only copy
- extant--"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at
- it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether
- thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both
- sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough,
- thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind--old black-letter, thou
- reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is
- the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies
- though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late
- to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone
- is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus
- there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and
- shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears
- with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not
- keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his
- red silken wrapper--(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What
- a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them
- talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give
- me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
- But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up
- to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra
- than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the
- line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in
- order to keep out this frost?
- Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the
- door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be
- moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a
- Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a
- temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.
- But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is
- plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet,
- and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.
- CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
- Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,
- low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
- the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large
- oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the
- unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent
- study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of
- the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
- purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first
- you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New
- England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint
- of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
- especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the
- entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however
- wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.
- But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous,
- black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three
- blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy,
- soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted.
- Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable
- sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily
- took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting
- meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you
- through.--It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.--It's the unnatural
- combat of the four primal elements.--It's a blasted heath.--It's a
- Hyperborean winter scene.--It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream
- of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous
- something in the picture's midst. THAT once found out, and all the rest
- were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic
- fish? even the great leviathan himself?
- In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
- partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom
- I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a
- great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three
- dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to
- spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself
- upon the three mast-heads.
- The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
- array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with
- glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of
- human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round
- like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You
- shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage
- could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying
- implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons
- all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long
- lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen
- whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon--so like a
- corkscrew now--was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale,
- years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered
- nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a
- man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the
- hump.
- Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way--cut
- through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
- fireplaces all round--you enter the public room. A still duskier place
- is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled
- planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft's
- cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored
- old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like
- table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities
- gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks. Projecting from the
- further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den--the bar--a rude
- attempt at a right whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the
- vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive
- beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters,
- bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another
- cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little
- withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors
- deliriums and death.
- Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though
- true cylinders without--within, the villanous green goggling glasses
- deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians
- rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to
- THIS mark, and your charge is but a penny; to THIS a penny more; and so
- on to the full glass--the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for
- a shilling.
- Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about
- a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of SKRIMSHANDER. I
- sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a
- room, received for answer that his house was full--not a bed unoccupied.
- "But avast," he added, tapping his forehead, "you haint no objections
- to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin'
- a-whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing."
- I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should
- ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and
- that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the
- harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander
- further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with
- the half of any decent man's blanket.
- "I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?--you want supper?
- Supper'll be ready directly."
- I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the
- Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with
- his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space
- between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but
- he didn't make much headway, I thought.
- At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an
- adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland--no fire at all--the landlord
- said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each
- in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and
- hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But
- the fare was of the most substantial kind--not only meat and potatoes,
- but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in
- a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful
- manner.
- "My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare to a dead
- sartainty."
- "Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?"
- "Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneer
- is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't--he eats
- nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare."
- "The devil he does," says I. "Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?"
- "He'll be here afore long," was the answer.
- I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this "dark
- complexioned" harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so
- turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into
- bed before I did.
- Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not
- what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening
- as a looker on.
- Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord
- cried, "That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing
- this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now
- we'll have the latest news from the Feegees."
- A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open,
- and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy
- watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all
- bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an
- eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat,
- and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they
- made a straight wake for the whale's mouth--the bar--when the wrinkled
- little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all
- round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah
- mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a
- sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how
- long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the
- weather side of an ice-island.
- The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even
- with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering
- about most obstreperously.
- I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though
- he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own
- sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise
- as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods
- had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a
- sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will
- here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet
- in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have
- seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt,
- making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep
- shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give
- him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner,
- and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall
- mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry
- of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away
- unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the
- sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and
- being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised
- a cry of "Bulkington! Bulkington! where's Bulkington?" and darted out of
- the house in pursuit of him.
- It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost
- supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself
- upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance
- of the seamen.
- No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal
- rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but
- people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to
- sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange
- town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely
- multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should
- sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep
- two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they
- all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and
- cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
- The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the
- thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a
- harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of
- the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.
- Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be
- home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at
- midnight--how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?
- "Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.--I shan't sleep
- with him. I'll try the bench here."
- "Just as you please; I'm sorry I can't spare ye a tablecloth for a
- mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"--feeling of the knots and
- notches. "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane
- there in the bar--wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying
- he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting
- the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning
- like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the
- plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was
- near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit--the
- bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing
- in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the
- shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in
- the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a
- brown study.
- I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too
- short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too
- narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher
- than the planed one--so there was no yoking them. I then placed the
- first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall,
- leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I
- soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under
- the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all, especially
- as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window,
- and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate
- vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night.
- The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal
- a march on him--bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be
- wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon
- second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next
- morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be
- standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down!
- Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending
- a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I began to think
- that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against
- this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be dropping
- in before long. I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may
- become jolly good bedfellows after all--there's no telling.
- But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes,
- and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.
- "Landlord!" said I, "what sort of a chap is he--does he always keep such
- late hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.
- The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to
- be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he
- answered, "generally he's an early bird--airley to bed and airley to
- rise--yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out
- a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late,
- unless, may be, he can't sell his head."
- "Can't sell his head?--What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you
- are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to say,
- landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday
- night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?"
- "That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't
- sell it here, the market's overstocked."
- "With what?" shouted I.
- "With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?"
- "I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better
- stop spinning that yarn to me--I'm not green."
- "May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, "but I
- rayther guess you'll be done BROWN if that ere harpooneer hears you a
- slanderin' his head."
- "I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at this
- unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.
- "It's broke a'ready," said he.
- "Broke," said I--"BROKE, do you mean?"
- "Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess."
- "Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a
- snow-storm--"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one
- another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a
- bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half
- belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I
- have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
- exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
- towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow--a sort of connexion,
- landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest
- degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this
- harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the
- night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay
- that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good
- evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping
- with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean, landlord, YOU, sir, by trying
- to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to
- a criminal prosecution."
- "Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty long
- sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy,
- this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from
- the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads
- (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one
- he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not
- do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to
- churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was
- goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the
- airth like a string of inions."
- This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed
- that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me--but at
- the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a
- Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal
- business as selling the heads of dead idolators?
- "Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man."
- "He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder. "But come, it's getting dreadful
- late, you had better be turning flukes--it's a nice bed; Sal and me
- slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There's plenty of room
- for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big bed that. Why,
- afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the
- foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and
- somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm.
- Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I'll give ye a
- glim in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards
- me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a
- clock in the corner, he exclaimed "I vum it's Sunday--you won't see that
- harpooneer to-night; he's come to anchor somewhere--come along then; DO
- come; WON'T ye come?"
- I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was
- ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough,
- with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers
- to sleep abreast.
- "There," said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest
- that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; "there, make
- yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye." I turned round from
- eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.
- Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the
- most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced
- round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see
- no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four
- walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of
- things not properly belonging to the room, there was a hammock lashed
- up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a large seaman's bag,
- containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk.
- Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf
- over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.
- But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the
- light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive
- at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to
- nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little
- tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an
- Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat,
- as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible
- that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the
- streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try
- it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and
- thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer
- had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass
- stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore
- myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck.
- I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
- head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on
- the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in
- the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought
- a little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now,
- half undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about
- the harpooneer's not coming home at all that night, it being so very
- late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and
- then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the
- care of heaven.
- Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,
- there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep
- for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty
- nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy
- footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room
- from under the door.
- Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal
- head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word
- till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New
- Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without
- looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the
- floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords
- of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was all
- eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while
- employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished, however, he
- turned round--when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of
- a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large
- blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible
- bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is,
- just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face
- so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be
- sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were
- stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this;
- but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of
- a white man--a whaleman too--who, falling among the cannibals, had been
- tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his
- distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it,
- thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any
- sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that
- part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the
- squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of
- tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man
- into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas;
- and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the
- skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning,
- this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty
- having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled
- out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing
- these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New
- Zealand head--a ghastly thing enough--and crammed it down into the bag.
- He now took off his hat--a new beaver hat--when I came nigh singing out
- with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head--none to speak of at
- least--nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His
- bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull.
- Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted
- out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.
- Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but
- it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of
- this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.
- Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and
- confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him
- as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at
- the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not
- game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer
- concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.
- Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed
- his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered
- with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same
- dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just
- escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very
- legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up
- the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some
- abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South
- Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it.
- A peddler of heads too--perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might
- take a fancy to mine--heavens! look at that tomahawk!
- But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about
- something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that
- he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or
- dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the
- pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with
- a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days' old Congo
- baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that
- this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But
- seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal
- like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden
- idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the
- empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this
- little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The
- chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I
- thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel
- for his Congo idol.
- I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but
- ill at ease meantime--to see what was next to follow. First he takes
- about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places
- them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on
- top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into
- a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire,
- and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be
- scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit;
- then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of
- it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such
- dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange
- antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the
- devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some
- pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the
- most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol
- up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as
- carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.
- All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and
- seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
- operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time,
- now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which
- I had so long been bound.
- But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.
- Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an
- instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle,
- he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light
- was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth,
- sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving
- a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.
- Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him
- against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might
- be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his
- guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my
- meaning.
- "Who-e debel you?"--he at last said--"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e."
- And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the
- dark.
- "Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch!
- Coffin! Angels! save me!"
- "Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the
- cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the
- hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire.
- But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light
- in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
- "Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn't
- harm a hair of your head."
- "Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that that
- infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"
- "I thought ye know'd it;--didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads
- around town?--but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look
- here--you sabbee me, I sabbee--you this man sleepe you--you sabbee?"
- "Me sabbee plenty"--grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and
- sitting up in bed.
- "You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and
- throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil
- but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment.
- For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking
- cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to
- myself--the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason
- to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober
- cannibal than a drunken Christian.
- "Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or
- whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will
- turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me.
- It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured."
- This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely
- motioned me to get into bed--rolling over to one side as much as to
- say--"I won't touch a leg of ye."
- "Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."
- I turned in, and never slept better in my life.
- CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
- Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown
- over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost
- thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of
- odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his
- tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure,
- no two parts of which were of one precise shade--owing I suppose to
- his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt
- sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times--this same arm of his, I
- say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt.
- Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could
- hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and
- it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that
- Queequeg was hugging me.
- My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a
- child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me;
- whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle.
- The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other--I
- think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little
- sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other,
- was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,--my
- mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to
- bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June,
- the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But
- there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the
- third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time,
- and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.
- I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse
- before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the
- small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the
- sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the
- streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse
- and worse--at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my
- stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself
- at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good
- slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to lie
- abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most
- conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For
- several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I
- have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At
- last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly
- waking from it--half steeped in dreams--I opened my eyes, and the before
- sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock
- running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was
- to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung
- over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form
- or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my
- bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with
- the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking
- that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be
- broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me;
- but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for
- days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding
- attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle
- myself with it.
- Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the
- supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to
- those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan
- arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night's events soberly
- recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to
- the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm--unlock his
- bridegroom clasp--yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly,
- as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse
- him--"Queequeg!"--but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over,
- my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a
- slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk
- sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A
- pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the
- broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! "Queequeg!--in the name of
- goodness, Queequeg, wake!" At length, by dint of much wriggling, and
- loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his
- hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in
- extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself
- all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed,
- stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he
- did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim
- consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over
- him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings
- now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at
- last, his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow,
- and he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon
- the floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that,
- if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to dress
- afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg,
- under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the
- truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what
- you will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this
- particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much
- civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness;
- staring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for
- the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless,
- a man like Queequeg you don't see every day, he and his ways were well
- worth unusual regarding.
- He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one,
- by the by, and then--still minus his trowsers--he hunted up his boots.
- What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next
- movement was to crush himself--boots in hand, and hat on--under the bed;
- when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was
- hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever
- heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his
- boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition
- stage--neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized
- to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His
- education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not
- been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled
- himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage,
- he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At
- last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his
- eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not
- being much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide
- ones--probably not made to order either--rather pinched and tormented
- him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.
- Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the
- street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view
- into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that
- Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;
- I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat,
- and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He
- complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the
- morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to
- my amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his
- chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a
- piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water
- and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept
- his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner,
- slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little
- on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall,
- begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks
- I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance.
- Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know of
- what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp
- the long straight edges are always kept.
- The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of
- the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his
- harpoon like a marshal's baton.
- CHAPTER 5. Breakfast.
- I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the
- grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him,
- though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my
- bedfellow.
- However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a
- good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own
- proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be
- backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in
- that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him,
- be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
- The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the
- night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were
- nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and
- sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers,
- and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an
- unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.
- You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This
- young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and
- would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days
- landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades
- lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the
- complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached
- withal; HE doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show
- a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the
- Andes' western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates,
- zone by zone.
- "Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went
- to breakfast.
- They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease
- in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard,
- the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all
- men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the
- mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or
- the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart
- of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances--this kind of
- travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social
- polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had
- anywhere.
- These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that
- after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some
- good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every
- man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked
- embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the
- slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas--entire
- strangers to them--and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here
- they sat at a social breakfast table--all of the same calling, all of
- kindred tastes--looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they
- had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains.
- A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!
- But as for Queequeg--why, Queequeg sat there among them--at the head of
- the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot
- say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially
- justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it
- there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent
- jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But
- THAT was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in
- most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.
- We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he eschewed
- coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks,
- done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the
- rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting
- there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I
- sallied out for a stroll.
- CHAPTER 6. The Street.
- If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish
- an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a
- civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first
- daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.
- In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will
- frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign
- parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners
- will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not
- unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live
- Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water
- Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors;
- but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners;
- savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It
- makes a stranger stare.
- But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians,
- and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft
- which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still
- more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town
- scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain
- and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames;
- fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch
- the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they
- came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old. Look
- there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and
- swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here
- comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak.
- No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one--I mean a
- downright bumpkin dandy--a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his
- two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a
- country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished
- reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the
- comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his
- sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his
- canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps
- in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and
- all, down the throat of the tempest.
- But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and
- bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer
- place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this
- day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador.
- As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they
- look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live
- in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but not like
- Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with
- milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in
- spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like
- houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came
- they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country?
- Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty
- mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses
- and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
- One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom
- of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?
- In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
- daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece.
- You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say,
- they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly
- burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.
- In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples--long
- avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and
- bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their
- tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art;
- which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces
- of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation's final
- day.
- And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But
- roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks
- is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that
- bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young
- girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off
- shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of
- the Puritanic sands.
- CHAPTER 7. The Chapel.
- In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are
- the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who
- fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.
- Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
- special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving
- sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called
- bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I
- found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and
- widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks
- of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from
- the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The
- chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and
- women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders,
- masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran
- something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:--
- SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was
- lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November
- 1st, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.
- SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN,
- WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats'
- crews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the
- Off-shore Ground in the PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is
- here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.
- SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows
- of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, AUGUST
- 3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.
- Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself
- near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near
- me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze
- of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only
- person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only
- one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid
- inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen
- whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not;
- but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly
- did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings
- of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were
- assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak
- tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.
- Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among
- flowers can say--here, HERE lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation
- that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those
- black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those
- immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in
- the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to
- the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might
- those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.
- In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;
- why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no
- tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is
- that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix
- so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if
- he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the
- Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what
- eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies
- antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we
- still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are
- dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all
- the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a
- whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.
- But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these
- dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
- It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
- Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky
- light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen
- who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But
- somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine
- chance for promotion, it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an
- immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling--a
- speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what
- then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.
- Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true
- substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too
- much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that
- thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my
- better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not
- me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and
- stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.
- CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.
- I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
- robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon
- admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation,
- sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it
- was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he
- was a very great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his
- youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry.
- At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a
- healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second
- flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone
- certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom--the spring verdure
- peeping forth even beneath February's snow. No one having previously
- heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without
- the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical
- peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life
- he had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and
- certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down
- with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to
- drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed.
- However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung up
- in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a decent suit,
- he quietly approached the pulpit.
- Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a
- regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor,
- seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect,
- it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the
- pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like
- those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling
- captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted
- man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and
- stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering what
- manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for
- an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the
- ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards,
- and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand
- over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.
- The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with
- swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood,
- so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the
- pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship,
- these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not
- prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn
- round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder
- step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him
- impregnable in his little Quebec.
- I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.
- Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity,
- that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks
- of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this
- thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be,
- then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual
- withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions?
- Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful
- man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold--a lofty
- Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within the walls.
- But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
- borrowed from the chaplain's former sea-farings. Between the marble
- cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back
- was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating
- against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy
- breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there
- floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel's
- face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the
- ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into
- the Victory's plank where Nelson fell. "Ah, noble ship," the angel
- seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy
- helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling
- off--serenest azure is at hand."
- Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that
- had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in
- the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a
- projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed
- beak.
- What could be more full of meaning?--for the pulpit is ever this earth's
- foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the
- world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first
- descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is
- the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds.
- Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete;
- and the pulpit is its prow.
- CHAPTER 9. The Sermon.
- Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered
- the scattered people to condense. "Starboard gangway, there! side away
- to larboard--larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!"
- There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a
- still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and
- every eye on the preacher.
- He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large
- brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered
- a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the
- bottom of the sea.
- This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of
- a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog--in such tones he
- commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards
- the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy--
- "The ribs and terrors in the whale,
- Arched over me a dismal gloom,
- While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by,
- And lift me deepening down to doom.
- "I saw the opening maw of hell,
- With endless pains and sorrows there;
- Which none but they that feel can tell--
- Oh, I was plunging to despair.
- "In black distress, I called my God,
- When I could scarce believe him mine,
- He bowed his ear to my complaints--
- No more the whale did me confine.
- "With speed he flew to my relief,
- As on a radiant dolphin borne;
- Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
- The face of my Deliverer God.
- "My song for ever shall record
- That terrible, that joyful hour;
- I give the glory to my God,
- His all the mercy and the power."
- Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the
- howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned
- over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon
- the proper page, said: "Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the
- first chapter of Jonah--'And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up
- Jonah.'"
- "Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters--four yarns--is one
- of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what
- depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a pregnant
- lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the
- fish's belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods
- surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters;
- sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But WHAT is this
- lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded
- lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot
- of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because it
- is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the
- swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and
- joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of
- Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God--never
- mind now what that command was, or how conveyed--which he found a hard
- command. But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to
- do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to
- persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in
- this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.
- "With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at
- God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men will
- carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains
- of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship
- that's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded
- meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no other city
- than the modern Cadiz. That's the opinion of learned men. And where is
- Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa,
- as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the
- Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa,
- shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the
- Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the
- westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye
- not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God?
- Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with
- slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the
- shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered,
- self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those
- days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested
- ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a
- hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,--no friends accompany him to the wharf
- with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the
- Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on
- board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment
- desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye.
- Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence;
- in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure
- the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious
- way, one whispers to the other--"Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe,
- do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry lad, I guess he's the
- adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing
- murderers from Sodom." Another runs to read the bill that's stuck
- against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering
- five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide, and
- containing a description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah
- to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah,
- prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and
- summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a
- coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong
- suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him
- not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends
- into the cabin.
- "'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
- out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?' Oh! how that harmless
- question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again.
- But he rallies. 'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon
- sail ye, sir?' Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah,
- though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that
- hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. 'We sail with the
- next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing
- him. 'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any honest man that goes a
- passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another stab. But he swiftly calls away
- the Captain from that scent. 'I'll sail with ye,'--he says,--'the
- passage money how much is that?--I'll pay now.' For it is particularly
- written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this
- history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail. And
- taken with the context, this is full of meaning.
- "Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime
- in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this
- world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without
- a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
- So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere he
- judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented
- to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same
- time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when
- Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the
- Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any
- way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his passage. 'Point out my
- state-room, Sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep.'
- 'Thou lookest like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thy room.' Jonah
- enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing
- him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and
- mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed
- to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws
- himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost
- resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in
- that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah
- feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale
- shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.
- "Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
- oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf
- with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all,
- though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with
- reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it
- but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp
- alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes
- roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no
- refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more
- and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.
- 'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it
- burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'
- "Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still
- reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the
- Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as
- one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish,
- praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid
- the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the
- man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught
- to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy
- of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.
- "And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and
- from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening,
- glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded
- smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not
- bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to
- break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her;
- when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind
- is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with
- trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah
- sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not
- the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the
- mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after
- him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship--a
- berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But the
- frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear, 'What
- meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!' Startled from his lethargy by that
- direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck,
- grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is
- sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after
- wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring
- fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat.
- And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep
- gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing
- bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the
- tormented deep.
- "Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing
- attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark
- him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last,
- fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven,
- they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was
- upon them. The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they
- mob him with their questions. 'What is thine occupation? Whence comest
- thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior
- of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where
- from; whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions,
- but likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the
- unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is
- upon him.
- "'I am a Hebrew,' he cries--and then--'I fear the Lord the God of Heaven
- who hath made the sea and the dry land!' Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well
- mightest thou fear the Lord God THEN! Straightway, he now goes on to
- make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more
- appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating
- God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his
- deserts,--when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him
- forth into the sea, for he knew that for HIS sake this great tempest
- was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to
- save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder;
- then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not
- unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.
- "And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea;
- when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea
- is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth
- water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless
- commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into
- the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory
- teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto
- the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a
- weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for
- direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He
- leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that
- spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy
- temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not
- clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to
- God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of
- him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before
- you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model
- for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like
- Jonah."
- While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,
- slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who,
- when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.
- His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the
- warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his
- swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple
- hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.
- There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves
- of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed
- eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.
- But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly,
- with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these
- words:
- "Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press
- upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that
- Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me,
- for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down
- from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and
- listen as you listen, while some one of you reads ME that other and more
- awful lesson which Jonah teaches to ME, as a pilot of the living God.
- How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and
- bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a
- wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled
- from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking
- ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we
- have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to
- living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 'into the
- midst of the seas,' where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand
- fathoms down, and 'the weeds were wrapped about his head,' and all the
- watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of
- any plummet--'out of the belly of hell'--when the whale grounded upon
- the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting
- prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the
- shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching
- up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and
- earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;' when the word of the
- Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten--his ears, like
- two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean--Jonah
- did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the
- Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!
- "This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
- the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from
- Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God
- has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than
- to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe
- to him who, in this world, courts not dishonour! Woe to him who would
- not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him
- who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is
- himself a castaway!"
- He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his
- face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with
- a heavenly enthusiasm,--"But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of
- every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight,
- than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than
- the kelson is low? Delight is to him--a far, far upward, and inward
- delight--who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever
- stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong
- arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has
- gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the
- truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out
- from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,--top-gallant
- delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his
- God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the
- waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake
- from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness
- will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final
- breath--O Father!--chiefly known to me by Thy rod--mortal or immortal,
- here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or
- mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man
- that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
- He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with
- his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed,
- and he was left alone in the place.
- CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.
- Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there
- quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time.
- He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove
- hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little
- negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife
- gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his
- heathenish way.
- But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going
- to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap
- began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth
- page--as I fancied--stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and
- giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He
- would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number
- one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was
- only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his
- astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.
- With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and
- hideously marred about the face--at least to my taste--his countenance
- yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot
- hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw
- the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes,
- fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a
- thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing
- about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim.
- He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor.
- Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn
- out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it
- otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was
- his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous,
- but it reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular
- busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope
- from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two
- long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington
- cannibalistically developed.
- Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be
- looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence,
- never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared
- wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book.
- Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night
- previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found
- thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference
- of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not
- know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm
- self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed
- also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the
- other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have
- no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck
- me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something
- almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from
- home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is--which was the only way he could
- get there--thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in
- the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving
- the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to
- himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he
- had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be
- true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or
- so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself
- out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he
- must have "broken his digester."
- As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that
- mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then
- only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering
- round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain;
- the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of
- strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart
- and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing
- savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a
- nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits.
- Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself
- mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have
- repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I'll
- try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but
- hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs
- and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little
- noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last
- night's hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be
- bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps
- a little complimented.
- We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to
- him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures
- that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went
- to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen
- in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and, producing
- his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat
- exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly
- passing between us.
- If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's
- breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left
- us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as
- I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against
- mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were
- married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends;
- he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this
- sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing
- to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would
- not apply.
- After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room
- together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his
- enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out
- some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and
- mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them
- towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he
- silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers' pockets. I let them stay.
- He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed
- the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed
- anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I
- deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or
- otherwise.
- I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
- Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in
- worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do
- you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and
- earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an
- insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?--to do
- the will of God--THAT is worship. And what is the will of God?--to do to
- my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me--THAT is the
- will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that
- this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular
- Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him
- in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped
- prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with
- Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that
- done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences
- and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.
- How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential
- disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very
- bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie
- and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts'
- honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg--a cosy, loving pair.
- CHAPTER 11. Nightgown.
- We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and
- Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs
- over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free
- and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what
- little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like
- getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.
- Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position
- began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves
- sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the
- head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two
- noses bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. We felt
- very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors;
- indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the
- room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some
- small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world
- that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If
- you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so
- a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if,
- like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown
- of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general
- consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this
- reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which
- is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this
- sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and
- your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the
- one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.
- We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all at
- once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether
- by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always
- keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness
- of being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright
- except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element
- of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part. Upon
- opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and self-created
- darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated
- twelve-o'clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable revulsion. Nor did
- I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to
- strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt
- a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said,
- that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the
- bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when
- love once comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to
- have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full
- of such serene household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for
- the landlord's policy of insurance. I was only alive to the condensed
- confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real
- friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed
- the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a
- blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit
- lamp.
- Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far
- distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island; and,
- eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly
- complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his
- words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar with
- his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story such as
- it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.
- CHAPTER 12. Biographical.
- Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and
- South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
- When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in
- a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green
- sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire
- to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His
- father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the
- maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable
- warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins--royal stuff; though
- sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his
- untutored youth.
- A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought a
- passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of
- seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence
- could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled
- off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when
- she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low
- tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the
- water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its
- prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the
- ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with
- one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up
- the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled
- a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
- In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a
- cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and
- Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild
- desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told
- him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage--this sea
- Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin. They put him down among
- the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter content to
- toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming
- ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his
- untutored countrymen. For at bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a
- profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to
- make his people still happier than they were; and more than that,
- still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon
- convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked;
- infinitely more so, than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in
- old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on
- to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also,
- poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in
- all meridians; I'll die a pagan.
- And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,
- wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer
- ways about him, though now some time from home.
- By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having
- a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he
- being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet;
- and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had
- unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan
- Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,--as soon as
- he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to
- sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a
- harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.
- I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future
- movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon
- this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my
- intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port for
- an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to accompany
- me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch,
- the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap;
- with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds.
- To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection I now felt
- for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not
- fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant
- of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as
- known to merchant seamen.
- His story being ended with his pipe's last dying puff, Queequeg embraced
- me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the light, we
- rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon were
- sleeping.
- CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.
- Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber,
- for a block, I settled my own and comrade's bill; using, however, my
- comrade's money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed
- amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between
- me and Queequeg--especially as Peter Coffin's cock and bull stories
- about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person
- whom I now companied with.
- We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own
- poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and hammock, away we went
- down to "the Moss," the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the
- wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg
- so much--for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their
- streets,--but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we
- heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg
- now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked
- him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and
- whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in
- substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet
- he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of
- assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate
- with the hearts of whales. In short, like many inland reapers
- and mowers, who go into the farmers' meadows armed with their own
- scythes--though in no wise obliged to furnish them--even so, Queequeg,
- for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.
- Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about
- the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners
- of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his
- heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the
- thing--though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in
- which to manage the barrow--Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it
- fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. "Why,"
- said I, "Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would
- think. Didn't the people laugh?"
- Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of
- Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water
- of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and
- this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided
- mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once
- touched at Rokovoko, and its commander--from all accounts, a very
- stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain--this
- commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg's sister, a
- pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding
- guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo cottage, this Captain
- marches in, and being assigned the post of honour, placed himself over
- against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the
- King, Queequeg's father. Grace being said,--for those people have their
- grace as well as we--though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such
- times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the
- ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts--Grace, I say,
- being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony
- of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers
- into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself
- placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking
- himself--being Captain of a ship--as having plain precedence over a
- mere island King, especially in the King's own house--the Captain coolly
- proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl;--taking it I suppose for a
- huge finger-glass. "Now," said Queequeg, "what you tink now?--Didn't our
- people laugh?"
- At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner.
- Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New
- Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all
- glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on
- casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering
- whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others
- came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and
- forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the
- start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a
- second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever
- and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all
- earthly effort.
- Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little
- Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings.
- How I snuffed that Tartar air!--how I spurned that turnpike earth!--that
- common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and
- hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will
- permit no records.
- At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me.
- His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth.
- On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the
- blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways
- leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the
- two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of
- this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that
- for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a
- lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so
- companionable; as though a white man were anything more dignified than a
- whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who,
- by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of
- all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him
- behind his back. I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was come. Dropping
- his harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost
- miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the air;
- then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with
- bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him,
- lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff.
- "Capting! Capting!" yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer;
- "Capting, Capting, here's the devil."
- "Hallo, _you_ sir," cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking
- up to Queequeg, "what in thunder do you mean by that? Don't you know you
- might have killed that chap?"
- "What him say?" said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.
- "He say," said I, "that you came near kill-e that man there," pointing
- to the still shivering greenhorn.
- "Kill-e," cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly
- expression of disdain, "ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e
- so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!"
- "Look you," roared the Captain, "I'll kill-e YOU, you cannibal, if you
- try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye."
- But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to
- mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted
- the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to
- side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor
- fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all
- hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it,
- seemed madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost
- in one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of
- snapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of
- being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing the
- boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the
- midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and
- crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one
- end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it
- round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar
- was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the
- wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg,
- stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of
- a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog,
- throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by turns revealing
- his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I looked at the grand
- and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved. The greenhorn had gone
- down. Shooting himself perpendicularly from the water, Queequeg, now
- took an instant's glance around him, and seeming to see just how matters
- were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes more, and he rose again,
- one arm still striking out, and with the other dragging a lifeless form.
- The boat soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands
- voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that
- hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took
- his last long dive.
- Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he at
- all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He only
- asked for water--fresh water--something to wipe the brine off; that
- done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the
- bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying
- to himself--"It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We
- cannibals must help these Christians."
- CHAPTER 14. Nantucket.
- Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a
- fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.
- Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of
- the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely
- than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it--a mere hillock, and elbow of
- sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than
- you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some
- gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they
- don't grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have
- to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that
- pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true
- cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses,
- to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an
- oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand
- shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up,
- belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island
- of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will
- sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these
- extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.
- Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was
- settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle
- swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant
- Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne
- out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same
- direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they
- discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,--the
- poor little Indian's skeleton.
- What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take
- to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in
- the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more
- experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last,
- launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world;
- put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in
- at Behring's Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared
- everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the
- flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea
- Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that
- his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and
- malicious assaults!
- And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from
- their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like
- so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and
- Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add
- Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm
- all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds
- of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he
- owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of
- way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but
- floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea
- as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of
- the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the
- bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on
- the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and
- fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. THERE is his home; THERE
- lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it
- overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie
- cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as
- chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so
- that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more
- strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull,
- that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows;
- so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails,
- and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of
- walruses and whales.
- CHAPTER 15. Chowder.
- It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly
- to anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no
- business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord of
- the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the
- Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept
- hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that Cousin
- Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he
- plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck at
- the Try Pots. But the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow
- warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to the
- larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a
- corner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first
- man we met where the place was: these crooked directions of his very
- much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg
- insisted that the yellow warehouse--our first point of departure--must
- be left on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to
- say it was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little
- in the dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant
- to inquire the way, we at last came to something which there was no
- mistaking.
- Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses' ears,
- swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an
- old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other
- side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows.
- Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I
- could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort of
- crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, TWO
- of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. It's ominous, thinks I. A
- Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones
- staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair
- of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints
- touching Tophet?
- I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman
- with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn,
- under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured
- eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen
- shirt.
- "Get along with ye," said she to the man, "or I'll be combing ye!"
- "Come on, Queequeg," said I, "all right. There's Mrs. Hussey."
- And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving
- Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs. Upon
- making known our desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing
- further scolding for the present, ushered us into a little room, and
- seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently concluded
- repast, turned round to us and said--"Clam or Cod?"
- "What's that about Cods, ma'am?" said I, with much politeness.
- "Clam or Cod?" she repeated.
- "A clam for supper? a cold clam; is THAT what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?"
- says I, "but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter
- time, ain't it, Mrs. Hussey?"
- But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple
- Shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing
- but the word "clam," Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to
- the kitchen, and bawling out "clam for two," disappeared.
- "Queequeg," said I, "do you think that we can make out a supper for us
- both on one clam?"
- However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the
- apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder
- came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends!
- hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than
- hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into
- little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned
- with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty
- voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food
- before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched
- it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking
- me of Mrs. Hussey's clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try
- a little experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word
- "cod" with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the
- savoury steam came forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good
- time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us.
- We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks I
- to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head?
- What's that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? "But look,
- Queequeg, ain't that a live eel in your bowl? Where's your harpoon?"
- Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved
- its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for
- breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you
- began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The area
- before the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a polished
- necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account books
- bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the milk,
- too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening
- to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen's boats, I saw
- Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the
- sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head, looking very slip-shod,
- I assure ye.
- Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey
- concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to precede
- me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded his
- harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. "Why not?" said I;
- "every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon--but why not?" "Because
- it's dangerous," says she. "Ever since young Stiggs coming from that
- unfort'nt v'y'ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half, with
- only three barrels of _ile_, was found dead in my first floor back, with
- his harpoon in his side; ever since then I allow no boarders to take
- sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg" (for
- she had learned his name), "I will just take this here iron, and keep
- it for you till morning. But the chowder; clam or cod to-morrow for
- breakfast, men?"
- "Both," says I; "and let's have a couple of smoked herring by way of
- variety."
- CHAPTER 16. The Ship.
- In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise and
- no small concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, that he had been
- diligently consulting Yojo--the name of his black little god--and Yojo
- had told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it
- everyway, that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in
- harbor, and in concert selecting our craft; instead of this, I say, Yojo
- earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest wholly
- with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us; and, in order to
- do so, had already pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself, I,
- Ishmael, should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though it
- had turned out by chance; and in that vessel I must immediately ship
- myself, for the present irrespective of Queequeg.
- I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed great
- confidence in the excellence of Yojo's judgment and surprising forecast
- of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good
- sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all
- cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.
- Now, this plan of Queequeg's, or rather Yojo's, touching the selection
- of our craft; I did not like that plan at all. I had not a little relied
- upon Queequeg's sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry
- us and our fortunes securely. But as all my remonstrances produced
- no effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce; and accordingly
- prepared to set about this business with a determined rushing sort
- of energy and vigor, that should quickly settle that trifling little
- affair. Next morning early, leaving Queequeg shut up with Yojo in our
- little bedroom--for it seemed that it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan,
- or day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that
- day; HOW it was I never could find out, for, though I applied myself
- to it several times, I never could master his liturgies and XXXIX
- Articles--leaving Queequeg, then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo
- warming himself at his sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among
- the shipping. After much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries,
- I learnt that there were three ships up for three-years' voyages--The
- Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and the Pequod. DEVIL-DAM, I do not know the
- origin of; TIT-BIT is obvious; PEQUOD, you will no doubt remember, was
- the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians; now extinct
- as the ancient Medes. I peered and pryed about the Devil-dam; from her,
- hopped over to the Tit-bit; and finally, going on board the Pequod,
- looked around her for a moment, and then decided that this was the very
- ship for us.
- You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I
- know;--square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-box
- galliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a
- rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old
- school, rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed look
- about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and calms
- of all four oceans, her old hull's complexion was darkened like a French
- grenadier's, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her venerable
- bows looked bearded. Her masts--cut somewhere on the coast of Japan,
- where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale--her masts stood
- stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her
- ancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped
- flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Becket bled. But to all these
- her old antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertaining
- to the wild business that for more than half a century she had followed.
- Old Captain Peleg, many years her chief-mate, before he commanded
- another vessel of his own, and now a retired seaman, and one of the
- principal owners of the Pequod,--this old Peleg, during the term of his
- chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and inlaid
- it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and device, unmatched
- by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake's carved buckler or bedstead. She
- was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with
- pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of
- a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All
- round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous
- jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for
- pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not
- through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of
- sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported
- there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved
- from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who
- steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds
- back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a
- most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
- Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having authority,
- in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at first I saw
- nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or
- rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast. It seemed only
- a temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical shape, some ten
- feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber black bone taken
- from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the right-whale.
- Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of these slabs laced
- together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at the apex united in
- a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the
- top-knot on some old Pottowottamie Sachem's head. A triangular opening
- faced towards the bows of the ship, so that the insider commanded a
- complete view forward.
- And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who
- by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and
- the ship's work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of
- command. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all
- over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a
- stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was
- constructed.
- There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of
- the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen,
- and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style;
- only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest
- wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from
- his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to
- windward;--for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed
- together. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.
- "Is this the Captain of the Pequod?" said I, advancing to the door of
- the tent.
- "Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of him?"
- he demanded.
- "I was thinking of shipping."
- "Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer--ever been in a
- stove boat?"
- "No, Sir, I never have."
- "Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say--eh?
- "Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I've been several
- voyages in the merchant service, and I think that--"
- "Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that
- leg?--I'll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of
- the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now
- ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships.
- But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?--it looks
- a little suspicious, don't it, eh?--Hast not been a pirate, hast
- thou?--Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?--Dost not think of
- murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?"
- I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask
- of these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated
- Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather
- distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the
- Vineyard.
- "But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of
- shipping ye."
- "Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world."
- "Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?"
- "Who is Captain Ahab, sir?"
- "Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship."
- "I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself."
- "Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg--that's who ye are speaking to,
- young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted
- out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We
- are part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest
- to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of
- finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap
- eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one
- leg."
- "What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?"
- "Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured,
- chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a
- boat!--ah, ah!"
- I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at
- the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I
- could, "What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know
- there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed
- I might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident."
- "Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see; thou
- dost not talk shark a bit. SURE, ye've been to sea before now; sure of
- that?"
- "Sir," said I, "I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in the
- merchant--"
- "Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant
- service--don't aggravate me--I won't have it. But let us understand each
- other. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet feel
- inclined for it?"
- "I do, sir."
- "Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale's
- throat, and then jump after it? Answer, quick!"
- "I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to be
- got rid of, that is; which I don't take to be the fact."
- "Good again. Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find
- out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in order to
- see the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well then, just
- step forward there, and take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back
- to me and tell me what ye see there."
- For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not
- knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But
- concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg started
- me on the errand.
- Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived that the
- ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely
- pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but
- exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I
- could see.
- "Well, what's the report?" said Peleg when I came back; "what did ye
- see?"
- "Not much," I replied--"nothing but water; considerable horizon though,
- and there's a squall coming up, I think."
- "Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to go
- round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can't ye see the world where
- you stand?"
- I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would; and the
- Pequod was as good a ship as any--I thought the best--and all this I now
- repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed his willingness
- to ship me.
- "And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off," he added--"come
- along with ye." And so saying, he led the way below deck into the cabin.
- Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and
- surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who along with
- Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other
- shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd
- of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each
- owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail
- or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling
- vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks
- bringing in good interest.
- Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a
- Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to
- this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the
- peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified
- by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same
- Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They
- are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.
- So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with Scripture
- names--a singularly common fashion on the island--and in childhood
- naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the Quaker
- idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless adventure
- of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these unoutgrown
- peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not unworthy a
- Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when these things
- unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain
- and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion
- of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and beneath
- constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think
- untraditionally and independently; receiving all nature's sweet or
- savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding
- breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental
- advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language--that man makes
- one in a whole nation's census--a mighty pageant creature, formed for
- noble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically
- regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems
- a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For all
- men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure
- of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease. But,
- as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with quite another; and
- still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only results again from another
- phase of the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.
- Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman.
- But unlike Captain Peleg--who cared not a rush for what are called
- serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the
- veriest of all trifles--Captain Bildad had not only been originally
- educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all
- his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island
- creatures, round the Horn--all that had not moved this native born
- Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his
- vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of
- common consistency about worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from
- conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself
- had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe
- to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns
- upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his
- days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do
- not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably
- he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's
- religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another. This
- world pays dividends. Rising from a little cabin-boy in short clothes
- of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat;
- from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a
- ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous
- career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of
- sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his
- well-earned income.
- Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an
- incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard
- task-master. They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a
- curious story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew,
- upon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore
- exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was
- certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least. He never used to swear,
- though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an inordinate
- quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them. When Bildad was a
- chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made
- you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch something--a hammer
- or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other,
- never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished before him. His own
- person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his
- long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard,
- his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his
- broad-brimmed hat.
- Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I
- followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin. The space between the decks
- was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so,
- and never leaned, and this to save his coat tails. His broad-brim was
- placed beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his drab vesture was
- buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he seemed absorbed in
- reading from a ponderous volume.
- "Bildad," cried Captain Peleg, "at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have been
- studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my certain
- knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad?"
- As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate,
- Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up, and
- seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg.
- "He says he's our man, Bildad," said Peleg, "he wants to ship."
- "Dost thee?" said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me.
- "I dost," said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.
- "What do ye think of him, Bildad?" said Peleg.
- "He'll do," said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at
- his book in a mumbling tone quite audible.
- I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as Peleg,
- his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer. But I said
- nothing, only looking round me sharply. Peleg now threw open a chest,
- and drawing forth the ship's articles, placed pen and ink before him,
- and seated himself at a little table. I began to think it was high time
- to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for the
- voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no
- wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares of
- the profits called lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the
- degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's
- company. I was also aware that being a green hand at whaling, my own
- lay would not be very large; but considering that I was used to the sea,
- could steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that
- from all I had heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay--that
- is, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever
- that might eventually amount to. And though the 275th lay was what they
- call a rather LONG LAY, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had a
- lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out
- on it, not to speak of my three years' beef and board, for which I would
- not have to pay one stiver.
- It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely
- fortune--and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those
- that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the
- world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim
- sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the 275th lay
- would be about the fair thing, but would not have been surprised had I
- been offered the 200th, considering I was of a broad-shouldered make.
- But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about
- receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had heard
- something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad;
- how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore
- the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly the
- whole management of the ship's affairs to these two. And I did not know
- but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about
- shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod,
- quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his
- own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his
- jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was
- such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded
- us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, "LAY not up for
- yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth--"
- "Well, Captain Bildad," interrupted Peleg, "what d'ye say, what lay
- shall we give this young man?"
- "Thou knowest best," was the sepulchral reply, "the seven hundred and
- seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much, would it?--'where moth and rust do
- corrupt, but LAY--'"
- LAY, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and
- seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one,
- shall not LAY up many LAYS here below, where moth and rust do corrupt.
- It was an exceedingly LONG LAY that, indeed; and though from the
- magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet
- the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and
- seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make
- a TEENTH of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and
- seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven
- hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at the time.
- "Why, blast your eyes, Bildad," cried Peleg, "thou dost not want to
- swindle this young man! he must have more than that."
- "Seven hundred and seventy-seventh," again said Bildad, without lifting
- his eyes; and then went on mumbling--"for where your treasure is, there
- will your heart be also."
- "I am going to put him down for the three hundredth," said Peleg, "do ye
- hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say."
- Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said,
- "Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the
- duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship--widows and orphans,
- many of them--and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this
- young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those
- orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg."
- "Thou Bildad!" roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the
- cabin. "Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these
- matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be
- heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape
- Horn."
- "Captain Peleg," said Bildad steadily, "thy conscience may be drawing
- ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can't tell; but as thou art still
- an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be
- but a leaky one; and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the
- fiery pit, Captain Peleg."
- "Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye
- insult me. It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that
- he's bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and
- start my soul-bolts, but I'll--I'll--yes, I'll swallow a live goat with
- all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured
- son of a wooden gun--a straight wake with ye!"
- As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a marvellous
- oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.
- Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and
- responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up
- all idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily
- commanded, I stepped aside from the door to give egress to Bildad, who,
- I made no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish from before the awakened
- wrath of Peleg. But to my astonishment, he sat down again on the
- transom very quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest intention of
- withdrawing. He seemed quite used to impenitent Peleg and his ways. As
- for Peleg, after letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more
- left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, though he twitched a
- little as if still nervously agitated. "Whew!" he whistled at last--"the
- squall's gone off to leeward, I think. Bildad, thou used to be good at
- sharpening a lance, mend that pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs
- the grindstone. That's he; thank ye, Bildad. Now then, my young man,
- Ishmael's thy name, didn't ye say? Well then, down ye go here, Ishmael,
- for the three hundredth lay."
- "Captain Peleg," said I, "I have a friend with me who wants to ship
- too--shall I bring him down to-morrow?"
- "To be sure," said Peleg. "Fetch him along, and we'll look at him."
- "What lay does he want?" groaned Bildad, glancing up from the book in
- which he had again been burying himself.
- "Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad," said Peleg. "Has he ever
- whaled it any?" turning to me.
- "Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg."
- "Well, bring him along then."
- And, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I
- had done a good morning's work, and that the Pequod was the identical
- ship that Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape.
- But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the Captain
- with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though, indeed, in
- many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out, and receive all
- her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving
- to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged, and the
- shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the captain have
- a family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he does not trouble
- himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners till
- all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a look at
- him before irrevocably committing yourself into his hands. Turning back
- I accosted Captain Peleg, inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found.
- "And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It's all right enough; thou
- art shipped."
- "Yes, but I should like to see him."
- "But I don't think thou wilt be able to at present. I don't know exactly
- what's the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house; a sort
- of sick, and yet he don't look so. In fact, he ain't sick; but no, he
- isn't well either. Any how, young man, he won't always see me, so I
- don't suppose he will thee. He's a queer man, Captain Ahab--so some
- think--but a good one. Oh, thou'lt like him well enough; no fear, no
- fear. He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak
- much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be
- forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as
- 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed
- his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance!
- aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain't
- Captain Bildad; no, and he ain't Captain Peleg; HE'S AHAB, boy; and Ahab
- of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!"
- "And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did
- they not lick his blood?"
- "Come hither to me--hither, hither," said Peleg, with a significance in
- his eye that almost startled me. "Look ye, lad; never say that on board
- the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself.
- 'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died
- when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at
- Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps,
- other fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It's a
- lie. I know Captain Ahab well; I've sailed with him as mate years ago;
- I know what he is--a good man--not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but
- a swearing good man--something like me--only there's a good deal more of
- him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on
- the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it
- was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that
- about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost
- his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's been a kind of
- moody--desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass
- off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it's
- better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. So
- good-bye to thee--and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens to
- have a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife--not three voyages
- wedded--a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet girl that
- old man has a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless
- harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his
- humanities!"
- As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been
- incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain
- wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the time,
- I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don't know what,
- unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange
- awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was
- not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it; and it did
- not disincline me towards him; though I felt impatience at what seemed
- like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then. However,
- my thoughts were at length carried in other directions, so that for the
- present dark Ahab slipped my mind.
- CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.
- As Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all
- day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I
- cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations,
- never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue
- even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other
- creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism
- quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of
- a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate
- possessions yet owned and rented in his name.
- I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these
- things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals,
- pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these
- subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most
- absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;--but what of that? Queequeg
- thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content;
- and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let
- him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all--Presbyterians and Pagans
- alike--for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and
- sadly need mending.
- Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and
- rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door; but
- no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside. "Queequeg,"
- said I softly through the key-hole:--all silent. "I say, Queequeg! why
- don't you speak? It's I--Ishmael." But all remained still as before. I
- began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant time; I thought
- he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked through the key-hole; but
- the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the key-hole prospect
- was but a crooked and sinister one. I could only see part of the
- foot-board of the bed and a line of the wall, but nothing more. I
- was surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden shaft of
- Queequeg's harpoon, which the landlady the evening previous had taken
- from him, before our mounting to the chamber. That's strange, thought I;
- but at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he seldom or
- never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside here, and no
- possible mistake.
- "Queequeg!--Queequeg!"--all still. Something must have happened.
- Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly resisted.
- Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the first person
- I met--the chamber-maid. "La! la!" she cried, "I thought something must
- be the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast, and the door was
- locked; and not a mouse to be heard; and it's been just so silent ever
- since. But I thought, may be, you had both gone off and locked your
- baggage in for safe keeping. La! la, ma'am!--Mistress! murder! Mrs.
- Hussey! apoplexy!"--and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I
- following.
- Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a
- vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the occupation
- of attending to the castors, and scolding her little black boy meantime.
- "Wood-house!" cried I, "which way to it? Run for God's sake, and fetch
- something to pry open the door--the axe!--the axe! he's had a stroke;
- depend upon it!"--and so saying I was unmethodically rushing up stairs
- again empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot and
- vinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her countenance.
- "What's the matter with you, young man?"
- "Get the axe! For God's sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry
- it open!"
- "Look here," said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-cruet,
- so as to have one hand free; "look here; are you talking about prying
- open any of my doors?"--and with that she seized my arm. "What's the
- matter with you? What's the matter with you, shipmate?"
- In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand the
- whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to one side of her
- nose, she ruminated for an instant; then exclaimed--"No! I haven't seen
- it since I put it there." Running to a little closet under the landing
- of the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me that Queequeg's
- harpoon was missing. "He's killed himself," she cried. "It's unfort'nate
- Stiggs done over again--there goes another counterpane--God pity his poor
- mother!--it will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister?
- Where's that girl?--there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell
- him to paint me a sign, with--"no suicides permitted here, and no
- smoking in the parlor;"--might as well kill both birds at once. Kill?
- The Lord be merciful to his ghost! What's that noise there? You, young
- man, avast there!"
- And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force
- open the door.
- "I don't allow it; I won't have my premises spoiled. Go for the
- locksmith, there's one about a mile from here. But avast!" putting her
- hand in her side-pocket, "here's a key that'll fit, I guess; let's
- see." And with that, she turned it in the lock; but, alas! Queequeg's
- supplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within.
- "Have to burst it open," said I, and was running down the entry a
- little, for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing
- I should not break down her premises; but I tore from her, and with a
- sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark.
- With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming
- against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good
- heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected; right
- in the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on
- top of his head. He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat
- like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life.
- "Queequeg," said I, going up to him, "Queequeg, what's the matter with
- you?"
- "He hain't been a sittin' so all day, has he?" said the landlady.
- But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him; I almost felt
- like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost
- intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained;
- especially, as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of
- eight or ten hours, going too without his regular meals.
- "Mrs. Hussey," said I, "he's ALIVE at all events; so leave us, if you
- please, and I will see to this strange affair myself."
- Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon
- Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could
- do--for all my polite arts and blandishments--he would not move a peg,
- nor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in
- the slightest way.
- I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan; do
- they fast on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so;
- yes, it's part of his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; he'll
- get up sooner or later, no doubt. It can't last for ever, thank God,
- and his Ramadan only comes once a year; and I don't believe it's very
- punctual then.
- I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long
- stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage, as
- they called it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or brig,
- confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only); after
- listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o'clock, I went
- up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Queequeg must
- certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no; there he
- was just where I had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began to
- grow vexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be
- sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room,
- holding a piece of wood on his head.
- "For heaven's sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up and have
- some supper. You'll starve; you'll kill yourself, Queequeg." But not a
- word did he reply.
- Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed and to sleep;
- and no doubt, before a great while, he would follow me. But previous to
- turning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as
- it promised to be a very cold night; and he had nothing but his ordinary
- round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could not get into
- the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle; and the mere thought
- of Queequeg--not four feet off--sitting there in that uneasy position,
- stark alone in the cold and dark; this made me really wretched. Think of
- it; sleeping all night in the same room with a wide awake pagan on his
- hams in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan!
- But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break of
- day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he
- had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of
- sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints,
- but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his
- forehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan was over.
- Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion,
- be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any
- other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when
- a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment
- to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to
- lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and
- argue the point with him.
- And just so I now did with Queequeg. "Queequeg," said I, "get into bed
- now, and lie and listen to me." I then went on, beginning with the rise
- and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various
- religions of the present time, during which time I labored to show
- Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in
- cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless
- for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and
- common sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such an
- extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained
- me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan
- of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the
- spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be
- half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish
- such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg,
- said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested
- apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary
- dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
- I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with
- dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it
- in. He said no; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great
- feast given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great battle
- wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o'clock in the
- afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening.
- "No more, Queequeg," said I, shuddering; "that will do;" for I knew the
- inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who had
- visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when
- a great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the
- yard or garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed
- in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with
- breadfruit and cocoanuts; and with some parsley in their mouths, were
- sent round with the victor's compliments to all his friends, just as
- though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys.
- After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much
- impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow seemed
- dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered from his
- own point of view; and, in the second place, he did not more than one
- third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would; and, finally, he
- no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion than
- I did. He looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and
- compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible
- young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety.
- At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty
- breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not
- make much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the
- Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.
- CHAPTER 18. His Mark.
- As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg
- carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us
- from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal,
- and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft,
- unless they previously produced their papers.
- "What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?" said I, now jumping on the
- bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.
- "I mean," he replied, "he must show his papers."
- "Yes," said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from
- behind Peleg's, out of the wigwam. "He must show that he's converted.
- Son of darkness," he added, turning to Queequeg, "art thou at present in
- communion with any Christian church?"
- "Why," said I, "he's a member of the first Congregational Church." Here
- be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at
- last come to be converted into the churches.
- "First Congregational Church," cried Bildad, "what! that worships in
- Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman's meeting-house?" and so saying, taking
- out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana
- handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the
- wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at
- Queequeg.
- "How long hath he been a member?" he then said, turning to me; "not very
- long, I rather guess, young man."
- "No," said Peleg, "and he hasn't been baptized right either, or it would
- have washed some of that devil's blue off his face."
- "Do tell, now," cried Bildad, "is this Philistine a regular member of
- Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it
- every Lord's day."
- "I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting," said
- I; "all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First
- Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is."
- "Young man," said Bildad sternly, "thou art skylarking with me--explain
- thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me."
- Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. "I mean, sir, the same
- ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there,
- and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of
- us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole
- worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some
- queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in THAT we all join
- hands."
- "Splice, thou mean'st SPLICE hands," cried Peleg, drawing nearer. "Young
- man, you'd better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand;
- I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy--why Father Mapple
- himself couldn't beat it, and he's reckoned something. Come aboard, come
- aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog there--what's
- that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By the great anchor, what
- a harpoon he's got there! looks like good stuff that; and he handles it
- about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you ever stand
- in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?"
- Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon
- the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats
- hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his
- harpoon, cried out in some such way as this:--
- "Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well,
- spose him one whale eye, well, den!" and taking sharp aim at it, he
- darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean across the
- ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.
- "Now," said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, "spos-ee him whale-e
- eye; why, dad whale dead."
- "Quick, Bildad," said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close
- vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway.
- "Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship's papers. We must have
- Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog,
- we'll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that's more than ever was given a
- harpooneer yet out of Nantucket."
- So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon
- enrolled among the same ship's company to which I myself belonged.
- When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for
- signing, he turned to me and said, "I guess, Quohog there don't know how
- to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name or
- make thy mark?"
- But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken
- part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the
- offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact
- counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so
- that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his appellative,
- it stood something like this:--
- Quohog. his X mark.
- Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing Queequeg,
- and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his
- broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting
- one entitled "The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to Lose," placed it in
- Queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his,
- looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, "Son of darkness, I must do my
- duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the
- souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I
- sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn
- the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind
- thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!"
- Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's language,
- heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
- "Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,"
- cried Peleg. "Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers--it takes the shark
- out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish.
- There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of all
- Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to
- good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and
- sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove
- and went to Davy Jones."
- "Peleg! Peleg!" said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, "thou thyself,
- as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what
- it is to have the fear of death; how, then, can'st thou prate in this
- ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this
- same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan,
- that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did'st thou not
- think of Death and the Judgment then?"
- "Hear him, hear him now," cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and
- thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,--"hear him, all of ye.
- Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink!
- Death and the Judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an
- everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us,
- fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think
- about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of;
- and how to save all hands--how to rig jury-masts--how to get into the
- nearest port; that was what I was thinking of."
- Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck,
- where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some
- sailmakers who were mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then
- he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which
- otherwise might have been wasted.
- CHAPTER 19. The Prophet.
- "Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?"
- Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from
- the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when
- the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us,
- levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but
- shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a
- black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all
- directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed
- bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.
- "Have ye shipped in her?" he repeated.
- "You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose," said I, trying to gain a little
- more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
- "Aye, the Pequod--that ship there," he said, drawing back his whole
- arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed
- bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.
- "Yes," said I, "we have just signed the articles."
- "Anything down there about your souls?"
- "About what?"
- "Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though,
- I know many chaps that hav'n't got any,--good luck to 'em; and they are
- all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."
- "What are you jabbering about, shipmate?" said I.
- "HE'S got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort
- in other chaps," abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis
- upon the word HE.
- "Queequeg," said I, "let's go; this fellow has broken loose from
- somewhere; he's talking about something and somebody we don't know."
- "Stop!" cried the stranger. "Ye said true--ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder
- yet, have ye?"
- "Who's Old Thunder?" said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness
- of his manner.
- "Captain Ahab."
- "What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?"
- "Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye
- hav'n't seen him yet, have ye?"
- "No, we hav'n't. He's sick they say, but is getting better, and will be
- all right again before long."
- "All right again before long!" laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
- derisive sort of laugh. "Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then
- this left arm of mine will be all right; not before."
- "What do you know about him?"
- "What did they TELL you about him? Say that!"
- "They didn't tell much of anything about him; only I've heard that he's
- a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew."
- "That's true, that's true--yes, both true enough. But you must jump when
- he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go--that's the word with
- Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape
- Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights;
- nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in
- Santa?--heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash
- he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage,
- according to the prophecy. Didn't ye hear a word about them matters and
- something more, eh? No, I don't think ye did; how could ye? Who knows
- it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows'ever, mayhap, ye've heard tell
- about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare
- say. Oh yes, THAT every one knows a'most--I mean they know he's only one
- leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off."
- "My friend," said I, "what all this gibberish of yours is about, I
- don't know, and I don't much care; for it seems to me that you must be a
- little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of
- that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about
- the loss of his leg."
- "ALL about it, eh--sure you do?--all?"
- "Pretty sure."
- With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like
- stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a
- little, turned and said:--"Ye've shipped, have ye? Names down on the
- papers? Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be;
- and then again, perhaps it won't be, after all. Anyhow, it's all fixed
- and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I
- suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye,
- shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped
- ye."
- "Look here, friend," said I, "if you have anything important to tell
- us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are
- mistaken in your game; that's all I have to say."
- "And it's said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way;
- you are just the man for him--the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates,
- morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell 'em I've concluded not to make one
- of 'em."
- "Ah, my dear fellow, you can't fool us that way--you can't fool us. It
- is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great
- secret in him."
- "Morning to ye, shipmates, morning."
- "Morning it is," said I. "Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this crazy
- man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?"
- "Elijah."
- Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each
- other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was
- nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone
- perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and
- looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us,
- though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I
- said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my
- comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner
- that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging
- us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This
- circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing,
- shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments
- and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain
- Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver
- calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship
- the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage
- we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things.
- I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really
- dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg,
- and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without
- seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it
- seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.
- CHAPTER 20. All Astir.
- A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod.
- Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on
- board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything
- betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain
- Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp
- look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing
- at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were
- working till long after night-fall.
- On the day following Queequeg's signing the articles, word was given at
- all the inns where the ship's company were stopping, that their chests
- must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon
- the vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps,
- resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they
- always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail
- for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and
- there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod
- was fully equipped.
- Every one knows what a multitude of things--beds, sauce-pans, knives
- and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are
- indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling,
- which necessitates a three-years' housekeeping upon the wide ocean,
- far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And
- though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means
- to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of the
- whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the
- fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors
- usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling
- vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially
- to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of
- the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare
- lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain
- and duplicate ship.
- At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the
- Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water,
- fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time
- there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and
- ends of things, both large and small.
- Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain
- Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable
- spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if SHE
- could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once
- fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar
- of pickles for the steward's pantry; another time with a bunch of quills
- for the chief mate's desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a
- roll of flannel for the small of some one's rheumatic back. Never did
- any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity--Aunt Charity, as
- everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this charitable
- Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand
- and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and
- consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother
- Bildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of
- well-saved dollars.
- But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on
- board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and
- a still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor
- Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him
- a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down
- went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once in a
- while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men
- down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then
- concluded by roaring back into his wigwam.
- During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the
- craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when
- he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would
- answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard
- every day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend
- to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been
- downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart
- that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage,
- without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute
- dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea.
- But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be
- already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his
- suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said
- nothing, and tried to think nothing.
- At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would
- certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start.
- CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.
- It was nearly six o'clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we
- drew nigh the wharf.
- "There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right," said I to
- Queequeg, "it can't be shadows; she's off by sunrise, I guess; come on!"
- "Avast!" cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close behind
- us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating himself
- between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight,
- strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah.
- "Going aboard?"
- "Hands off, will you," said I.
- "Lookee here," said Queequeg, shaking himself, "go 'way!"
- "Ain't going aboard, then?"
- "Yes, we are," said I, "but what business is that of yours? Do you know,
- Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?"
- "No, no, no; I wasn't aware of that," said Elijah, slowly and
- wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable
- glances.
- "Elijah," said I, "you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We
- are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be
- detained."
- "Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?"
- "He's cracked, Queequeg," said I, "come on."
- "Holloa!" cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a few
- paces.
- "Never mind him," said I, "Queequeg, come on."
- But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my
- shoulder, said--"Did ye see anything looking like men going towards that
- ship a while ago?"
- Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, "Yes,
- I thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be sure."
- "Very dim, very dim," said Elijah. "Morning to ye."
- Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us; and
- touching my shoulder again, said, "See if you can find 'em now, will ye?
- "Find who?"
- "Morning to ye! morning to ye!" he rejoined, again moving off. "Oh! I
- was going to warn ye against--but never mind, never mind--it's all one,
- all in the family too;--sharp frost this morning, ain't it? Good-bye to
- ye. Shan't see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it's before the Grand
- Jury." And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me, for
- the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence.
- At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound
- quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the
- hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward
- to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a
- light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a
- tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his
- face downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber
- slept upon him.
- "Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?" said I,
- looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the wharf,
- Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I would
- have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter,
- were it not for Elijah's otherwise inexplicable question. But I beat the
- thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg
- that perhaps we had best sit up with the body; telling him to establish
- himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper's rear, as though
- feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado, sat quietly
- down there.
- "Gracious! Queequeg, don't sit there," said I.
- "Oh! perry dood seat," said Queequeg, "my country way; won't hurt him
- face."
- "Face!" said I, "call that his face? very benevolent countenance then;
- but how hard he breathes, he's heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you
- are heavy, it's grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look,
- he'll twitch you off soon. I wonder he don't wake."
- Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and
- lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing
- over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him
- in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his
- land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king,
- chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening some
- of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in
- that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay
- them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on
- an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible
- into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and
- desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps
- in some damp marshy place.
- While narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the tomahawk
- from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper's head.
- "What's that for, Queequeg?"
- "Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!"
- He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe,
- which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed
- his soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The
- strong vapour now completely filling the contracted hole, it began
- to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; then seemed
- troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat up and
- rubbed his eyes.
- "Holloa!" he breathed at last, "who be ye smokers?"
- "Shipped men," answered I, "when does she sail?"
- "Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. The Captain
- came aboard last night."
- "What Captain?--Ahab?"
- "Who but him indeed?"
- I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when we
- heard a noise on deck.
- "Holloa! Starbuck's astir," said the rigger. "He's a lively chief mate,
- that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to." And so
- saying he went on deck, and we followed.
- It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and
- threes; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively
- engaged; and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various
- last things on board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly
- enshrined within his cabin.
- CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.
- At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship's riggers,
- and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the
- ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last
- gift--a night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a
- spare Bible for the steward--after all this, the two Captains, Peleg
- and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg
- said:
- "Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Ahab is
- all ready--just spoke to him--nothing more to be got from shore, eh?
- Well, call all hands, then. Muster 'em aft here--blast 'em!"
- "No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg," said Bildad,
- "but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding."
- How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain
- Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the
- quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as
- well as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of
- him was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then,
- the idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the
- ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was
- not at all his proper business, but the pilot's; and as he was not
- yet completely recovered--so they said--therefore, Captain Ahab stayed
- below. And all this seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchant
- service many captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable
- time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table,
- having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends, before they
- quit the ship for good with the pilot.
- But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain
- Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and
- commanding, and not Bildad.
- "Aft here, ye sons of bachelors," he cried, as the sailors lingered at
- the main-mast. "Mr. Starbuck, drive'em aft."
- "Strike the tent there!"--was the next order. As I hinted before, this
- whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the
- Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to
- be the next thing to heaving up the anchor.
- "Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!--jump!"--was the next command, and
- the crew sprang for the handspikes.
- Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot
- is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it
- known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed pilots
- of the port--he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in
- order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned
- in, for he never piloted any other craft--Bildad, I say, might now
- be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching
- anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody,
- to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of
- a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will.
- Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had told them that no
- profane songs would be allowed on board the Pequod, particularly in
- getting under weigh; and Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice
- copy of Watts in each seaman's berth.
- Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped
- and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he would
- sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused
- on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the
- perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a
- pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with the thought that in pious
- Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and
- seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and
- turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the
- act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first
- kick.
- "Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?" he roared.
- "Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don't ye
- spring, I say, all of ye--spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red
- whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I
- say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!" And so saying, he moved
- along the windlass, here and there using his leg very freely, while
- imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I,
- Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day.
- At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It
- was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into
- night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose
- freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of
- teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white
- ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from
- the bows.
- Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the
- old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost
- all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady
- notes were heard,--
- "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green.
- So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between."
- Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They
- were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the
- boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was
- yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads
- and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring,
- untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.
- At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed
- no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging
- alongside.
- It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at
- this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet;
- very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a
- voyage--beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of
- his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate
- sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to
- encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to
- a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,--poor old Bildad
- lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the
- cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck, and
- looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only
- bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards
- the land; looked aloft; looked right and left; looked everywhere
- and nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin,
- convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern,
- for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say,
- "Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can."
- As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all
- his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern
- came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck--now
- a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate.
- But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look
- about him,--"Captain Bildad--come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the
- main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now!
- Careful, careful!--come, Bildad, boy--say your last. Luck to ye,
- Starbuck--luck to ye, Mr. Stubb--luck to ye, Mr. Flask--good-bye and
- good luck to ye all--and this day three years I'll have a hot supper
- smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away!"
- "God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men," murmured old
- Bildad, almost incoherently. "I hope ye'll have fine weather now, so
- that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye--a pleasant sun is all
- he needs, and ye'll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go.
- Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don't stave the boats needlessly,
- ye harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent.
- within the year. Don't forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind
- that cooper don't waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in
- the green locker! Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, men; but don't
- miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts. Have an
- eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought.
- If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye,
- good-bye! Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr.
- Starbuck; it'll spoil. Be careful with the butter--twenty cents the
- pound it was, and mind ye, if--"
- "Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,--away!" and with that,
- Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.
- Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a
- screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave
- three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone
- Atlantic.
- CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore.
- Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded
- mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
- When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive
- bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her
- helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon
- the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous
- voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another
- tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest
- things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this
- six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say
- that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably
- drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port
- is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm
- blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale,
- the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all
- hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make
- her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail
- off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would
- blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again;
- for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her
- bitterest foe!
- Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally
- intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid
- effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while
- the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the
- treacherous, slavish shore?
- But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless,
- indefinite as God--so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite,
- than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!
- For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of
- the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart,
- O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy
- ocean-perishing--straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
- CHAPTER 24. The Advocate.
- As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling;
- and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among
- landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I
- am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done
- to us hunters of whales.
- In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish
- the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not
- accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a
- stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society,
- it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were
- he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation
- of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm
- Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed
- pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.
- Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us
- whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a
- butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we
- are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is
- true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been
- all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honour. And
- as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall
- soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown,
- and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship
- at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even
- granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery
- decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those
- battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies'
- plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit
- of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran
- who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the
- apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air
- over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared
- with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
- But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it
- unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding
- adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round
- the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!
- But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of
- scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.
- Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling
- fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit
- out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some
- score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did
- Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties
- upwards of L1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of
- America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world;
- sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen
- thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth,
- at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our
- harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if
- there be not something puissant in whaling?
- But this is not the half; look again.
- I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,
- point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty
- years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in
- one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way
- and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so
- continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may
- well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves
- pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to
- catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past
- the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and
- least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes
- which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If
- American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage
- harbors, let them fire salutes to the honour and glory of the
- whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted
- between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes
- of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that
- scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were
- as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their
- succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters,
- and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin
- wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets would
- not willingly have dared. All that is made such a flourish of in the old
- South Sea Voyages, those things were but the life-time commonplaces of
- our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates
- three chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the
- ship's common log. Ah, the world! Oh, the world!
- Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial,
- scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe and
- the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast.
- It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the
- Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it
- might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the
- liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and
- the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
- That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given
- to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-born
- discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores
- as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there. The
- whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover,
- in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were
- several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the
- whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted
- isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage
- to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the
- merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their
- first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become
- hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due;
- for already she is on the threshold.
- But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no
- aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to
- shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet
- every time.
- The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you
- will say.
- THE WHALE NO FAMOUS AUTHOR, AND WHALING NO FAMOUS CHRONICLER? Who wrote
- the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed
- the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than
- Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from
- Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our
- glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
- True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no
- good blood in their veins.
- NO GOOD BLOOD IN THEIR VEINS? They have something better than royal
- blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;
- afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers
- of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and
- harpooneers--all kith and kin to noble Benjamin--this day darting the
- barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
- Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not
- respectable.
- WHALING NOT RESPECTABLE? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory
- law, the whale is declared "a royal fish."*
- Oh, that's only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any
- grand imposing way.
- THE WHALE NEVER FIGURED IN ANY GRAND IMPOSING WAY? In one of the mighty
- triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world's capital,
- the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were
- the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*
- *See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
- Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real
- dignity in whaling.
- NO DIGNITY IN WHALING? The dignity of our calling the very heavens
- attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your
- hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I
- know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty
- whales. I account that man more honourable than that great captain of
- antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
- And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered
- prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small
- but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if
- hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather
- have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or
- more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here
- I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a
- whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
- CHAPTER 25. Postscript.
- In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but
- substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who
- should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might
- tell eloquently upon his cause--such an advocate, would he not be
- blameworthy?
- It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern
- ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is
- gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there
- may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely--who knows?
- Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his
- coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they
- anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint
- machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential
- dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but
- meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably
- smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil,
- unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him
- somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.
- But the only thing to be considered here, is this--what kind of oil is
- used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil,
- nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What
- then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted
- state, the sweetest of all oils?
- Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and
- queens with coronation stuff!
- CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.
- The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a
- Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy
- coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard
- as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would
- not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of
- general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which
- his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those
- summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his
- thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and
- cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely
- the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the
- contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped
- up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified
- Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come,
- and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like
- a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well
- in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet
- lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted
- through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a
- telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for
- all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities
- in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to
- overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and
- endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his
- life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that
- sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to
- spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents
- and inward presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent the
- welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories
- of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the
- original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those
- latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush
- of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous
- vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said
- Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean,
- not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises
- from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly
- fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
- "Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there, is as careful
- a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery." But we shall ere long
- see what that word "careful" precisely means when used by a man like
- Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.
- Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a
- sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all
- mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this
- business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of
- the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted.
- Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor
- for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting
- him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill
- whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and that
- hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was
- his own father's? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn
- limbs of his brother?
- With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
- superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which
- could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But
- it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such
- terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature
- that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in
- him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its
- confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it
- was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which,
- while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or
- whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet
- cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors,
- which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and
- mighty man.
- But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete
- abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to
- write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose
- the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint
- stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be;
- men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble
- and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any
- ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their
- costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves,
- so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character
- seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of
- a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight,
- completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this
- august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but
- that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it
- shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic
- dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The
- great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His
- omnipresence, our divine equality!
- If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall
- hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic
- graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them
- all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch
- that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow
- over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear
- me out in it, thou Just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal
- mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great
- democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the
- pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves
- of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who
- didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a
- war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all
- Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from
- the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!
- CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.
- Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence,
- according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky;
- neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an
- indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the
- chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged
- for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his
- whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his
- crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable
- arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the
- snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of
- the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as
- a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes
- while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had,
- for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he
- thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of
- it at all, might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his
- mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor,
- he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir
- themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed
- the order, and not sooner.
- What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going,
- unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a
- world full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs;
- what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that
- thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black
- little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would
- almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his
- nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready
- loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he
- turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from
- the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in
- readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his
- legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.
- I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his
- peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air, whether
- ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of
- the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the
- cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their
- mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb's tobacco
- smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent.
- The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard. A
- short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,
- who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally
- and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of
- honour with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost
- was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic
- bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of
- any possible danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion,
- the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least
- water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small
- application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This
- ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in
- the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a
- three years' voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted
- that length of time. As a carpenter's nails are divided into wrought
- nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask
- was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. They
- called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form, he could
- be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in Arctic
- whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted
- into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those
- battering seas.
- Now these three mates--Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous
- men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the
- Pequod's boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which
- Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales,
- these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with
- their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers;
- even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins.
- And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic
- Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer,
- who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when
- the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and
- moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy
- and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set
- down who the Pequod's harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of
- them belonged.
- First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected
- for his squire. But Queequeg is already known.
- Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly
- promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last
- remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring
- island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the
- fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego's
- long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones, and black rounding
- eyes--for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their
- glittering expression--all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor
- of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest
- of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal
- forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild
- beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great
- whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the
- infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe
- snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of
- the earlier Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son
- of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second
- mate's squire.
- Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black
- negro-savage, with a lion-like tread--an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended
- from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called
- them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to
- them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler,
- lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been
- anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors
- most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold
- life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what
- manner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues,
- and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six
- feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at
- him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to
- beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus
- Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man
- beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that
- at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the
- mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though
- pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the
- American whale fishery as with the American army and military and
- merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction
- of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all
- these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest
- of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of
- these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound
- Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy
- peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers
- sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to
- receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards,
- they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but
- Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders
- in the Pequod, ISOLATOES too, I call such, not acknowledging the common
- continent of men, but each ISOLATO living on a separate continent of his
- own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were!
- An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all
- the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the
- world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever
- come back. Black Little Pip--he never did--oh, no! he went before. Poor
- Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere long see him,
- beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for,
- to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and
- beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there!
- CHAPTER 28. Ahab.
- For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen
- of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches,
- and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the
- only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin
- with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain they
- but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and dictator was
- there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate
- into the now sacred retreat of the cabin.
- Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly
- gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague
- disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the
- sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened
- at times by the ragged Elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly
- recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived
- of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was
- almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish
- prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or
- uneasiness--to call it so--which I felt, yet whenever I came to look
- about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such
- emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew,
- were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the
- tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me
- acquainted with, still I ascribed this--and rightly ascribed it--to the
- fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation
- in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect
- of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most
- forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings, and induce
- confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage. Three
- better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way,
- could not readily be found, and they were every one of them Americans; a
- Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the
- ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather,
- though all the time running away from it to the southward; and by every
- degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that
- merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one
- of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the
- transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water
- with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I
- mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I
- levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me.
- Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck.
- There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the
- recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when
- the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them,
- or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His
- whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an
- unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out
- from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his
- tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing,
- you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that
- perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of
- a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and
- without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top
- to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly
- alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it
- was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say.
- By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was
- made to it, especially by the mates. But once Tashtego's senior, an old
- Gay-Head Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till
- he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded, and
- then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in
- an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially
- negatived, by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man,
- who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this
- laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the
- immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with
- preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously
- contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should
- be tranquilly laid out--which might hardly come to pass, so he
- muttered--then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would
- find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.
- So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid
- brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted
- that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric
- white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that
- this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of
- the sperm whale's jaw. "Aye, he was dismasted off Japan," said the old
- Gay-Head Indian once; "but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another
- mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of 'em."
- I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of
- the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there
- was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank.
- His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a
- shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the
- ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude,
- a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless,
- forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his
- officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures
- and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful,
- consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that,
- but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his
- face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.
- Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin.
- But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either
- standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or
- heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to
- grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as
- if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry
- bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it
- came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet,
- for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck,
- he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was
- only making a passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling
- preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, so
- that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite
- Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that
- layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the
- loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.
- Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the
- pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from
- his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May,
- trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest,
- most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green
- sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the
- end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More
- than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any
- other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.
- CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
- Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now
- went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost
- perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic.
- The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days,
- were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up--flaked up, with
- rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in
- jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their
- absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man,
- 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights.
- But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new
- spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the
- soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory
- shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights.
- And all these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's
- texture.
- Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less
- man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders,
- the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the
- night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he
- seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits
- were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. "It feels
- like going down into one's tomb,"--he would mutter to himself--"for an
- old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my
- grave-dug berth."
- So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were
- set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below;
- and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors
- flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt
- it to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when
- this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the
- silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man
- would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way.
- Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these,
- he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his
- wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such
- would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that
- their dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once,
- the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy,
- lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast,
- Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a certain
- unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was
- pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but there might
- be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly and
- hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the
- ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.
- "Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldst wad me that
- fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave;
- where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at
- last.--Down, dog, and kennel!"
- Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly
- scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, "I
- am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like
- it, sir."
- "Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away,
- as if to avoid some passionate temptation.
- "No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamely be called
- a dog, sir."
- "Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone,
- or I'll clear the world of thee!"
- As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in
- his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
- "I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,"
- muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. "It's
- very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't well know whether to go
- back and strike him, or--what's that?--down here on my knees and pray
- for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the
- first time I ever DID pray. It's queer; very queer; and he's queer too;
- aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old man Stubb ever
- sailed with. How he flashed at me!--his eyes like powder-pans! is he
- mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be
- something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more
- than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don't sleep then. Didn't
- that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds
- the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets
- down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the
- pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on
- it? A hot old man! I guess he's got what some folks ashore call
- a conscience; it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say--worse nor a
- toothache. Well, well; I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep me
- from catching it. He's full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the
- after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what's
- that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments with him in
- the hold? Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old
- game--Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be
- born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think
- of it, that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of
- queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But
- that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and
- sleep when you can, is my twelfth--So here goes again. But how's that?
- didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and
- piled a lot of jackasses on top of THAT! He might as well have kicked
- me, and done with it. Maybe he DID kick me, and I didn't observe it,
- I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a
- bleached bone. What the devil's the matter with me? I don't stand right
- on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong
- side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though--How? how?
- how?--but the only way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again;
- and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by
- daylight."
- CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.
- When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the
- bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor
- of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe.
- Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the
- weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.
- In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were
- fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one
- look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking
- him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of
- the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
- Some moments passed, during which the thick vapour came from his mouth
- in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. "How
- now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no
- longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be
- gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring--aye, and
- ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with
- such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the
- strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe?
- This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapours
- among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll
- smoke no more--"
- He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the
- waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe
- made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.
- CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.
- Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.
- "Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man's
- ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick
- back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then,
- presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking
- at it. But what was still more curious, Flask--you know how curious all
- dreams are--through all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be
- thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an insult, that
- kick from Ahab. 'Why,' thinks I, 'what's the row? It's not a real leg,
- only a false leg.' And there's a mighty difference between a living
- thump and a dead thump. That's what makes a blow from the hand, Flask,
- fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living
- member--that makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to
- myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against
- that cursed pyramid--so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all
- the while, I say, I was thinking to myself, 'what's his leg now, but
- a cane--a whalebone cane. Yes,' thinks I, 'it was only a playful
- cudgelling--in fact, only a whaleboning that he gave me--not a base
- kick. Besides,' thinks I, 'look at it once; why, the end of it--the foot
- part--what a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad footed farmer
- kicked me, THERE'S a devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled
- down to a point only.' But now comes the greatest joke of the
- dream, Flask. While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of
- badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the
- shoulders, and slews me round. 'What are you 'bout?' says he. Slid! man,
- but I was frightened. Such a phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was over
- the fright. 'What am I about?' says I at last. 'And what business is
- that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do YOU want a kick?'
- By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round his
- stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a
- clout--what do you think, I saw?--why thunder alive, man, his stern
- was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second
- thoughts, 'I guess I won't kick you, old fellow.' 'Wise Stubb,' said he,
- 'wise Stubb;' and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of
- his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn't going to stop saying
- over his 'wise Stubb, wise Stubb,' I thought I might as well fall to
- kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot for it,
- when he roared out, 'Stop that kicking!' 'Halloa,' says I, 'what's
- the matter now, old fellow?' 'Look ye here,' says he; 'let's argue
- the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,' says
- I--'right HERE it was.' 'Very good,' says he--'he used his ivory leg,
- didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,' says I. 'Well then,' says he, 'wise Stubb,
- what have you to complain of? Didn't he kick with right good will? it
- wasn't a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you were
- kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It's an
- honour; I consider it an honour. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the
- greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made
- garter-knights of; but, be YOUR boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by
- old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; BE kicked by him;
- account his kicks honours; and on no account kick back; for you can't
- help yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see that pyramid?' With that, he
- all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into
- the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was in my hammock! Now, what
- do you think of that dream, Flask?"
- "I don't know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.'"
- "May be; may be. But it's made a wise man of me, Flask. D'ye see Ahab
- standing there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best thing
- you can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to him,
- whatever he says. Halloa! What's that he shouts? Hark!"
- "Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!
- "If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!
- "What do you think of that now, Flask? ain't there a small drop of
- something queer about that, eh? A white whale--did ye mark that, man?
- Look ye--there's something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask.
- Ahab has that that's bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this way."
- CHAPTER 32. Cetology.
- Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost
- in its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the
- Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the
- leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost
- indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more
- special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to
- follow.
- It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,
- that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The
- classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here
- essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.
- "No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
- Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
- "It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the
- inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and
- families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal"
- (sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.
- "Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters."
- "Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea." "A field
- strewn with thorns." "All these incomplete indications but serve to
- torture us naturalists."
- Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson,
- those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real
- knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in
- some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are
- the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at
- large or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few:--The Authors
- of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner;
- Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson;
- Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier;
- John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the
- Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what
- ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited
- extracts will show.
- Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen
- ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional
- harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate
- subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing
- authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great
- sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy
- mentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper
- upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest
- of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the
- profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the
- then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to
- this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats
- and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference
- to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past days,
- will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, was to
- them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a new
- proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all,--the
- Greenland whale is deposed,--the great sperm whale now reigneth!
- There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living
- sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree
- succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's; both in
- their time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact and
- reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale to be found
- in their volumes is necessarily small; but so far as it goes, it is of
- excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific description. As
- yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete
- in any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an
- unwritten life.
- Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular
- comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the
- present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent
- laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I
- hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete;
- because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very
- reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical
- description of the various species, or--in this place at least--to much
- of any description. My object here is simply to project the draught of a
- systematization of cetology. I am the architect, not the builder.
- But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-Office
- is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them;
- to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very
- pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should
- essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job
- might well appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with thee?
- Behold the hope of him is vain! But I have swam through libraries and
- sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible
- hands; I am in earnest; and I will try. There are some preliminaries to
- settle.
- First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology
- is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it
- still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of
- Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnaeus declares, "I hereby separate the whales from
- the fish." But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850,
- sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnaeus's express edict,
- were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the
- Leviathan.
- The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the whales from
- the waters, he states as follows: "On account of their warm bilocular
- heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem
- intrantem feminam mammis lactantem," and finally, "ex lege naturae jure
- meritoque." I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley
- Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and
- they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether
- insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.
- Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned
- ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.
- This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal
- respect does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus has given
- you those items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood;
- whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded.
- Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as
- conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then, a
- whale is A SPOUTING FISH WITH A HORIZONTAL TAIL. There you have
- him. However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded
- meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a
- fish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is
- still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have
- noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a
- vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail,
- though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal
- position.
- By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude
- from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified
- with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other
- hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.*
- Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish must be
- included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the grand
- divisions of the entire whale host.
- *I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and
- Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included
- by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a noisy,
- contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on
- wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials
- as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the
- Kingdom of Cetology.
- First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary
- BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all,
- both small and large.
- I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.
- As the type of the FOLIO I present the SPERM WHALE; of the OCTAVO, the
- GRAMPUS; of the DUODECIMO, the PORPOISE.
- FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:--I. The SPERM
- WHALE; II. the RIGHT WHALE; III. the FIN-BACK WHALE; IV. the HUMP-BACKED
- WHALE; V. the RAZOR-BACK WHALE; VI. the SULPHUR-BOTTOM WHALE.
- BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER I. (SPERM WHALE).--This whale, among the
- English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter
- whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the
- French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the
- Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe;
- the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the most majestic in
- aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being
- the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is
- obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged
- upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically
- considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was
- almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil
- was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days
- spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a
- creature identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland
- or Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that
- quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of
- the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was
- exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment
- and medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays
- buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the
- true nature of spermaceti became known, its original name was still
- retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so
- strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the appellation must at
- last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti
- was really derived.
- BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER II. (RIGHT WHALE).--In one respect this is the
- most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted
- by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and
- the oil specially known as "whale oil," an inferior article in commerce.
- Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the
- following titles: The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale;
- the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of
- obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus multitudinously
- baptised. What then is the whale, which I include in the second species
- of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the
- Greenland Whale of the English whalemen; the Baleine Ordinaire of the
- French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale
- which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and
- English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen
- have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor'
- West Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them
- Right Whale Cruising Grounds.
- Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the
- English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree
- in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single
- determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by
- endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that
- some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The
- right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference
- to elucidating the sperm whale.
- BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER III. (FIN-BACK).--Under this head I reckon
- a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and
- Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale
- whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the
- Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and
- in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less
- portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great lips
- present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds
- of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which
- he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is some
- three or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the
- back, of an angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if
- not the slightest other part of the creature be visible, this isolated
- fin will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from the surface. When
- the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples,
- and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled
- surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it
- somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on
- it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. The Fin-Back is not
- gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. Very
- shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the
- remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet
- rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with
- such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present
- pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable
- Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From
- having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with
- the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated WHALEBONE WHALES,
- that is, whales with baleen. Of these so called Whalebone whales, there
- would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are little
- known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched
- whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are the fishermen's
- names for a few sorts.
- In connection with this appellative of "Whalebone whales," it is of
- great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be
- convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is
- in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon
- either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those
- marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford
- the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other detached
- bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents. How
- then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are things whose
- peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales,
- without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other
- and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked
- whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then, this same
- humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen;
- but there again the similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the
- other parts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such
- irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached,
- such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general
- methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the
- whale-naturalists has split.
- But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the
- whale, in his anatomy--there, at least, we shall be able to hit the
- right classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the
- Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have
- seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the
- Greenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the various
- leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as
- available to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated.
- What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in
- their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is
- the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only one that can
- possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed.
- BOOK I. (FOLIO) CHAPTER IV. (HUMP-BACK).--This whale is often seen on
- the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and
- towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you
- might call him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular
- name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm
- whale also has a hump though a smaller one. His oil is not very
- valuable. He has baleen. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of
- all the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any
- other of them.
- BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER V. (RAZOR-BACK).--Of this whale little is known
- but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring
- nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he
- has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises in a long
- sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does anybody
- else.
- BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER VI. (SULPHUR-BOTTOM).--Another retiring
- gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the
- Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen;
- at least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas,
- and then always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is
- never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are
- told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true
- of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer.
- Thus ends BOOK I. (FOLIO), and now begins BOOK II. (OCTAVO).
- OCTAVOES.*--These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which
- present may be numbered:--I., the GRAMPUS; II., the BLACK FISH; III.,
- the NARWHALE; IV., the THRASHER; V., the KILLER.
- *Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.
- Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of
- the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them
- in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its dimensioned form
- does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume
- does.
- BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER I. (GRAMPUS).--Though this fish, whose
- loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb
- to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not
- popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the grand distinctive
- features of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one.
- He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet
- in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist. He swims in
- herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable in
- quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is
- regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.
- BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER II. (BLACK FISH).--I give the popular
- fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are the best.
- Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so,
- and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called,
- because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the
- Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and from the
- circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he
- carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale
- averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost
- all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin
- in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more
- profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena
- whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment--as
- some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by
- themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their
- blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you upwards of
- thirty gallons of oil.
- BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER III. (NARWHALE), that is, NOSTRIL
- WHALE.--Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose
- from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The
- creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five
- feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly
- speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw
- in a line a little depressed from the horizontal. But it is only
- found on the sinister side, which has an ill effect, giving its owner
- something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What
- precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would be hard to
- say. It does not seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and
- bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for
- a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin
- said it was used for an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the
- surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his
- horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot prove either of these
- surmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that however this one-sided
- horn may really be used by the Narwhale--however that may be--it would
- certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets.
- The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, and
- the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism
- to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From certain
- cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn
- was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison,
- and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also
- distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the
- horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it
- was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells
- me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when
- Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window
- of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; "when Sir
- Martin returned from that voyage," saith Black Letter, "on bended knees
- he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale,
- which for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor." An Irish
- author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise
- present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the
- unicorn nature.
- The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a
- milk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black.
- His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it, and
- he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.
- BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER IV. (KILLER).--Of this whale little is
- precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed
- naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say
- that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage--a sort of
- Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and
- hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The
- Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception
- might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground
- of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea;
- Bonapartes and Sharks included.
- BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER V. (THRASHER).--This gentleman is famous for
- his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He mounts
- the Folio whale's back, and as he swims, he works his passage by
- flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar
- process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both
- are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.
- Thus ends BOOK II. (OCTAVO), and begins BOOK III. (DUODECIMO).
- DUODECIMOES.--These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza Porpoise.
- II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.
- To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
- possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five
- feet should be marshalled among WHALES--a word, which, in the popular
- sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set
- down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my
- definition of what a whale is--i.e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal
- tail.
- BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER 1. (HUZZA PORPOISE).--This is the
- common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own
- bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and something
- must be done to distinguish them. I call him thus, because he always
- swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing
- themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their
- appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine
- spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward. They
- are the lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted a
- lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding
- these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of godly
- gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will
- yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid
- extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among
- jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise
- meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that
- a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very
- readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him; and
- you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature.
- BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER II. (ALGERINE PORPOISE).--A pirate. Very
- savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger
- than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make. Provoke him,
- and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many times, but
- never yet saw him captured.
- BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER III. (MEALY-MOUTHED PORPOISE).--The
- largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it is
- known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been designated,
- is that of the fishers--Right-Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance that
- he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs
- in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly
- girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has
- no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail,
- and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils
- all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable,
- yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called
- the "bright waist," that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two
- separate colours, black above and white below. The white comprises part
- of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he
- had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and
- mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise.
- Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as
- the Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the
- Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive,
- half-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by
- reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their
- fore-castle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to
- future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If
- any of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then
- he can readily be incorporated into this System, according to his Folio,
- Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:--The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale;
- the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon
- Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the
- Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic,
- Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other lists of
- uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I omit
- them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for
- mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.
- Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be
- here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have
- kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus
- unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the
- crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small
- erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true
- ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever
- completing anything. This whole book is but a draught--nay, but the
- draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
- CHAPTER 33. The Specksynder.
- Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place
- as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising
- from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown
- of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.
- The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is evinced
- by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries
- and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in
- the person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an
- officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter;
- usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In
- those days, the captain's authority was restricted to the navigation
- and general management of the vessel; while over the whale-hunting
- department and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer
- reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted
- title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but
- his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply
- as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain's more
- inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the
- harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since
- in the American Fishery he is not only an important officer in the boat,
- but under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling ground) the
- command of the ship's deck is also his; therefore the grand political
- maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart from
- the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their
- professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as
- their social equal.
- Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is
- this--the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and
- merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and
- so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in
- the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the
- captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.
- Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest
- of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and
- the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high
- or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their
- common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and
- hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less
- rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind
- how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some
- primitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious
- externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed,
- and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in
- which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated
- grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost
- as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the
- shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
- And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least
- given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage
- he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he
- required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon
- the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar
- circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he
- addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or IN
- TERROREM, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means
- unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.
- Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those
- forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally
- making use of them for other and more private ends than they were
- legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain,
- which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through
- those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible
- dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will,
- it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men,
- without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always,
- in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever
- keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and
- leaves the highest honours that this air can give, to those men who
- become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice
- hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted
- superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks
- in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them,
- that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted
- potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown
- of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian
- herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the
- tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest
- sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in
- his art, as the one now alluded to.
- But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
- grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
- Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
- whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings
- and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it
- must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and
- featured in the unbodied air!
- CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.
- It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread
- face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and
- master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an
- observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the
- smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on
- the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the
- tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But
- presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to
- the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, "Dinner, Mr.
- Starbuck," disappears into the cabin.
- When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck, the
- first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck
- rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after
- a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness,
- "Dinner, Mr. Stubb," and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges
- about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to
- see whether it will be all right with that important rope, he likewise
- takes up the old burden, and with a rapid "Dinner, Mr. Flask," follows
- after his predecessors.
- But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck,
- seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all
- sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his
- shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right
- over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching
- his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so
- far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other
- processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into
- the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and,
- then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's presence,
- in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.
- It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
- artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck
- some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and
- defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those
- very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that
- same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say
- deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of
- the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this
- difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of
- Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously,
- therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he
- who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own
- private dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power
- and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man's royalty of
- state transcends Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who
- has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It
- is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now,
- if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a
- ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that
- peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.
- Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned
- sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still
- deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be
- served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab,
- there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind,
- their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as he carved
- the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world they
- would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even
- upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when reaching out his
- knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab thereby
- motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the mate received his meat as
- though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little started
- if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed it
- noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like
- the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly
- dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were
- somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab
- forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a relief it was
- to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. And
- poor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this weary
- family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would have
- been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this
- must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had
- he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more would he have
- been able to hold his head up in this honest world; nevertheless,
- strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself,
- the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all, did
- Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners
- of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear,
- sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such
- marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for
- him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!
- Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask
- is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was badly
- jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him;
- and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb
- even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small
- appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask
- must bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day;
- for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck.
- Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he
- had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never
- known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what
- he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him.
- Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from
- my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of
- old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before the
- mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory:
- there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any mere
- sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official
- capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance,
- was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin
- sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.
- Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table
- in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted
- order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was
- restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the three
- harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees.
- They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of the high and mighty
- cabin.
- In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
- invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire care-free
- license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows
- the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the
- sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food
- with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords;
- they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices.
- Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out
- the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was
- fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of
- the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with
- a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of
- accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once
- Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by
- snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty
- wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the
- circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous,
- shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny
- of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing
- spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous
- visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one
- continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished
- with all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into
- his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the
- blinds of its door, till all was over.
- It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing
- his filed teeth to the Indian's: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the
- floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low
- carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin
- framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a
- ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious,
- not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively
- small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad,
- baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed
- strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through his
- dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by
- beef or by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a
- mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating--an ugly sound enough--so
- much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether
- any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear
- Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be
- picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging
- round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the
- whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their
- lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they
- would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at
- all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his
- Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some
- murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the
- white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on
- his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight,
- the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous,
- fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every
- step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.
- But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived
- there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were
- scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time,
- when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.
- In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale
- captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights
- the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that
- anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth,
- the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to
- have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it
- was something as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for
- a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing,
- residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin
- was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally
- included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He
- lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled
- Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of
- the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter
- there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age,
- Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the
- sullen paws of its gloom!
- CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head.
- It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the
- other seamen my first mast-head came round.
- In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost
- simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port; even though she may
- have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper
- cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years' voyage
- she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her--say, an empty vial
- even--then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her
- skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether
- relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.
- Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very
- ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here.
- I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old
- Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.
- For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by
- their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia,
- or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great
- stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the dread
- gale of God's wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders
- priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of
- mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among
- archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical
- purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair-like
- formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious
- long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount
- to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a
- modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In
- Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him
- a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of
- his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a
- tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless
- stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his place by fogs
- or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to
- the last, literally died at his post. Of modern standers-of-mast-heads
- we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and bronze men; who,
- though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still entirely
- incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange
- sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of Vendome,
- stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air;
- careless, now, who rules the decks below; whether Louis Philippe, Louis
- Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on
- his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars,
- his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals
- will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his
- mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that
- London smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for
- where there is smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor
- Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however
- madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks
- upon which they gaze; however it may be surmised, that their spirits
- penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals
- and what rocks must be shunned.
- It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head
- standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is
- not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole
- historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us,
- that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly
- launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected lofty
- spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by means
- of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few
- years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand,
- who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh
- the beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the
- one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads
- are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their
- regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two
- hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant
- the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There
- you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the
- deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and
- between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even
- as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old
- Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with
- nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the
- drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the
- most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests
- you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts
- of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear
- of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are
- never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner--for
- all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and
- your bill of fare is immutable.
- In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years'
- voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the
- mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be
- deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion
- of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute
- of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a
- comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock,
- a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small
- and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your
- most usual point of perch is the head of the t' gallant-mast, where you
- stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called
- the t' gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner
- feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure,
- in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of
- a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more
- of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its
- fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out
- of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim
- crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of
- a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You
- cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you
- make a convenient closet of your watch-coat.
- Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a
- southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents
- or pulpits, called CROW'S-NESTS, in which the look-outs of a Greenland
- whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In
- the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A Voyage among the
- Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the
- re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;" in
- this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with
- a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented
- CROW'S-NEST of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good
- craft. He called it the SLEET'S CROW'S-NEST, in honour of himself; he
- being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous
- false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our
- own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so
- likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we
- may beget. In shape, the Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a large
- tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with
- a movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale.
- Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a
- little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the
- stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for
- umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which
- to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical
- conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this
- crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him
- (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for
- the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns
- infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from
- the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon
- them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor of love
- for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed
- conveniences of his crow's-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many
- of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his
- experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for
- the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called
- the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to
- the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the
- Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down
- blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very
- discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned "binnacle
- deviations," "azimuth compass observations," and "approximate errors,"
- he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed
- in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted
- occasionally towards that well replenished little case-bottle, so nicely
- tucked in on one side of his crow's nest, within easy reach of his hand.
- Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, the
- honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he
- should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend
- and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded
- head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest
- within three or four perches of the pole.
- But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as
- Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is
- greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those
- seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used
- to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a
- chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there;
- then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the
- top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at
- last mount to my ultimate destination.
- Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but
- sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how
- could I--being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering
- altitude--how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all
- whale-ships' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out
- every time."
- And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of
- Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with
- lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who
- offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware
- of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be
- killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes
- round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor
- are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery
- furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded
- young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking
- sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches
- himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and
- in moody phrase ejaculates:--
- "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand
- blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."
- Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded
- young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient
- "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost
- to all honourable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would
- rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young
- Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are
- short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have
- left their opera-glasses at home.
- "Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've been
- cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale
- yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here."
- Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in
- the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of
- vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending
- cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity;
- takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep,
- blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every
- strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every
- dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him
- the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by
- continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs
- away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like
- Crammer's(Thomas Cranmer) sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every
- shore the round globe over.
- There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a
- gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from
- the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye,
- move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity
- comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps,
- at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you
- drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise
- for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
- CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.
- (ENTER AHAB: THEN, ALL)
- It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one
- morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the
- cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that
- hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the
- garden.
- Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old
- rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over
- dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did
- you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also,
- you would see still stranger foot-prints--the foot-prints of his one
- unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.
- But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as
- his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his
- thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the
- main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought
- turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely
- possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every
- outer movement.
- "D'ye mark him, Flask?" whispered Stubb; "the chick that's in him pecks
- the shell. 'Twill soon be out."
- The hours wore on;--Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing the
- deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.
- It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the
- bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with
- one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft.
- "Sir!" said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on
- ship-board except in some extraordinary case.
- "Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab. "Mast-heads, there! come down!"
- When the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious and not
- wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike
- the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly
- glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew,
- started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were nigh him
- resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched
- hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among
- the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have
- summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But
- this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:--
- "What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"
- "Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed
- voices.
- "Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the
- hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically
- thrown them.
- "And what do ye next, men?"
- "Lower away, and after him!"
- "And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"
- "A dead whale or a stove boat!"
- More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the
- countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began
- to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they
- themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.
- But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his
- pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost
- convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:--
- "All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white
- whale. Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?"--holding up a
- broad bright coin to the sun--"it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D'ye
- see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul."
- While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was
- slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if
- to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile
- lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and
- inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his
- vitality in him.
- Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast
- with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the
- other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever of ye
- raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw;
- whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes
- punctured in his starboard fluke--look ye, whosoever of ye raises me
- that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!"
- "Huzza! huzza!" cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they
- hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.
- "It's a white whale, I say," resumed Ahab, as he threw down the topmaul:
- "a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white water;
- if ye see but a bubble, sing out."
- All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even
- more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention
- of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was
- separately touched by some specific recollection.
- "Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale must be the same that
- some call Moby Dick."
- "Moby Dick?" shouted Ahab. "Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?"
- "Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?" said the
- Gay-Header deliberately.
- "And has he a curious spout, too," said Daggoo, "very bushy, even for a
- parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?"
- "And he have one, two, three--oh! good many iron in him hide, too,
- Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, like
- him--him--" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and
- round as though uncorking a bottle--"like him--him--"
- "Corkscrew!" cried Ahab, "aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted
- and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole
- shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the
- great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a
- split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have
- seen--Moby Dick--Moby Dick!"
- "Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far
- been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed
- struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. "Captain
- Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick--but it was not Moby Dick that took off
- thy leg?"
- "Who told thee that?" cried Ahab; then pausing, "Aye, Starbuck; aye, my
- hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that
- brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he shouted with
- a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose;
- "Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor
- pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!" Then tossing both arms, with
- measureless imprecations he shouted out: "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him
- round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and
- round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have
- shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and
- over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.
- What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look
- brave."
- "Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the
- excited old man: "A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for
- Moby Dick!"
- "God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and half shout. "God bless ye,
- men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what's this long
- face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not
- game for Moby Dick?"
- "I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain
- Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I
- came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance. How many barrels
- will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it
- will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market."
- "Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest
- a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and the
- accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by
- girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let
- me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium HERE!"
- "He smites his chest," whispered Stubb, "what's that for? methinks it
- rings most vast, but hollow."
- "Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee
- from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing,
- Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."
- "Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer. All visible objects, man,
- are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act, the
- undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth
- the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man
- will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside
- except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that
- wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But
- 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength,
- with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is
- chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale
- principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy,
- man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that,
- then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play
- herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man,
- is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off
- thine eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish
- stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to
- anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing
- unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I
- meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of
- spotted tawn--living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan
- leopards--the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek,
- and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the
- crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?
- See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it.
- Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot,
- Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin; no
- wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt,
- then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back,
- when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings
- seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!--Aye, aye!
- thy silence, then, THAT voices thee. (ASIDE) Something shot from my
- dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine;
- cannot oppose me now, without rebellion."
- "God keep me!--keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.
- But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab
- did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the
- hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage;
- nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment
- their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast eyes lighted up with
- the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the winds
- blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah,
- ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But
- rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much
- predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things
- within. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost
- necessities in our being, these still drive us on.
- "The measure! the measure!" cried Ahab.
- Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he
- ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near
- the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates
- stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company
- formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly
- eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the
- bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere
- he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only to
- fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.
- "Drink and pass!" he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the
- nearest seaman. "The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short
- draughts--long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so; it
- goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the
- serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this
- way it comes. Hand it me--here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so
- brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!
- "Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and
- ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there
- with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some
- sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you
- will yet see that--Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand
- it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, were't not thou St.
- Vitus' imp--away, thou ague!
- "Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let
- me touch the axis." So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the
- three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so doing,
- suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently from
- Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some
- nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the
- same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic
- life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic
- aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eye of
- Starbuck fell downright.
- "In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three but
- once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, THAT had
- perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye
- dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do
- appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there--yon three
- most honourable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain
- the task? What, when the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using
- his tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension, THAT
- shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizings
- and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!"
- Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the
- detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs
- up, before him.
- "Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye
- not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers,
- advance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!" Forthwith,
- slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon
- sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.
- "Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow
- them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha!
- Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon
- it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful
- whaleboat's bow--Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt
- Moby Dick to his death!" The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted;
- and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were
- simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and
- shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds
- among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all
- dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.
- CHAPTER 37. Sunset.
- THE CABIN; BY THE STERN WINDOWS; AHAB SITTING ALONE, AND GAZING OUT.
- I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I
- sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them;
- but first I pass.
- Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine.
- The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun--slow dived from noon--goes
- down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then,
- the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is
- it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but
- darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron--that
- I know--not gold. 'Tis split, too--that I feel; the jagged edge galls
- me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull,
- mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!
- Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred
- me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me;
- all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted with
- the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly
- and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good night--good
- night! (WAVING HIS HAND, HE MOVES FROM THE WINDOW.)
- 'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least;
- but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they
- revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all
- stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the
- match itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've willed; and
- what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad--Starbuck does; but I'm
- demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm
- to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered;
- and--Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my
- dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's
- more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye
- cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!
- I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies--Take some one of your own
- size; don't pommel ME! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but
- YE have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have
- no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see
- if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve
- yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is
- laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded
- gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds,
- unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron
- way!
- CHAPTER 38. Dusk.
- BY THE MAINMAST; STARBUCK LEANING AGAINST IT.
- My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman!
- Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But
- he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see
- his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I,
- the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no
- knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries;--aye, he would
- be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I
- plainly see my miserable office,--to obey, rebelling; and worse yet,
- to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would
- shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide.
- The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small
- gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God may
- wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole
- clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to
- lift again.
- [A BURST OF REVELRY FROM THE FORECASTLE.]
- Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human
- mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white whale
- is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward!
- mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life. Foremost
- through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering
- bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his
- sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake, and further
- on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills me through!
- Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like
- this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,--as wild, untutored
- things are forced to feed--Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent
- horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the
- soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim,
- phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!
- CHAPTER 39. First Night Watch.
- Fore-Top.
- (STUBB SOLUS, AND MENDING A BRACE.)
- Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!--I've been thinking over it
- ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence. Why so? Because a
- laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer; and come what
- will, one comfort's always left--that unfailing comfort is, it's all
- predestinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor
- eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure
- the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it; had had the
- gift, might readily have prophesied it--for when I clapped my eye upon
- his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, WISE Stubb--that's my title--well,
- Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be
- coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish
- leering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel funny. Fa, la! lirra,
- skirra! What's my juicy little pear at home doing now? Crying its eyes
- out?--Giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as
- a frigate's pennant, and so am I--fa, la! lirra, skirra! Oh--
- We'll drink to-night with hearts as light, To love, as gay and fleeting
- As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim, And break on the lips while
- meeting.
- A brave stave that--who calls? Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye, sir--(ASIDE) he's
- my superior, he has his too, if I'm not mistaken.--Aye, aye, sir, just
- through with this job--coming.
- CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.
- HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.
- (FORESAIL RISES AND DISCOVERS THE WATCH STANDING, LOUNGING, LEANING, AND
- LYING IN VARIOUS ATTITUDES, ALL SINGING IN CHORUS.)
- Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
- Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
- Our captain's commanded.--
- 1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad for the
- digestion! Take a tonic, follow me! (SINGS, AND ALL FOLLOW)
- Our captain stood upon the deck,
- A spy-glass in his hand,
- A viewing of those gallant whales
- That blew at every strand.
- Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,
- And by your braces stand,
- And we'll have one of those fine whales,
- Hand, boys, over hand!
- So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
- While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!
- MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there, forward!
- 2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d'ye hear,
- bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me
- call the watch. I've the sort of mouth for that--the hogshead mouth.
- So, so, (THRUSTS HIS HEAD DOWN THE SCUTTLE,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y!
- Eight bells there below! Tumble up!
- DUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I
- mark this in our old Mogul's wine; it's quite as deadening to some as
- filliping to others. We sing; they sleep--aye, lie down there, like
- ground-tier butts. At 'em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail
- 'em through it. Tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell 'em
- it's the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment.
- That's the way--THAT'S it; thy throat ain't spoiled with eating
- Amsterdam butter.
- FRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to
- anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand
- by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!
- PIP. (SULKY AND SLEEPY) Don't know where it is.
- FRENCH SAILOR. Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men,
- I say; merry's the word; hurrah! Damn me, won't you dance? Form, now,
- Indian-file, and gallop into the double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs!
- legs!
- ICELAND SAILOR. I don't like your floor, maty; it's too springy to my
- taste. I'm used to ice-floors. I'm sorry to throw cold water on the
- subject; but excuse me.
- MALTESE SAILOR. Me too; where's your girls? Who but a fool would take
- his left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d'ye do? Partners! I
- must have partners!
- SICILIAN SAILOR. Aye; girls and a green!--then I'll hop with ye; yea,
- turn grasshopper!
- LONG-ISLAND SAILOR. Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more of us.
- Hoe corn when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here
- comes the music; now for it!
- AZORE SAILOR. (ASCENDING, AND PITCHING THE TAMBOURINE UP THE SCUTTLE.)
- Here you are, Pip; and there's the windlass-bitts; up you mount! Now,
- boys! (THE HALF OF THEM DANCE TO THE TAMBOURINE; SOME GO BELOW; SOME
- SLEEP OR LIE AMONG THE COILS OF RIGGING. OATHS A-PLENTY.)
- AZORE SAILOR. (DANCING) Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it,
- stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!
- PIP. Jinglers, you say?--there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.
- CHINA SAILOR. Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of
- thyself.
- FRENCH SAILOR. Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it!
- Split jibs! tear yourselves!
- TASHTEGO. (QUIETLY SMOKING) That's a white man; he calls that fun:
- humph! I save my sweat.
- OLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what
- they are dancing over. I'll dance over your grave, I will--that's
- the bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round
- corners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and the green-skulled
- crews! Well, well; belike the whole world's a ball, as you scholars have
- it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you're
- young; I was once.
- 3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!--whew! this is worse than pulling after
- whales in a calm--give us a whiff, Tash.
- (THEY CEASE DANCING, AND GATHER IN CLUSTERS. MEANTIME THE SKY
- DARKENS--THE WIND RISES.)
- LASCAR SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The sky-born,
- high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!
- MALTESE SAILOR. (RECLINING AND SHAKING HIS CAP.) It's the waves--the
- snow's caps turn to jig it now. They'll shake their tassels soon. Now
- would all the waves were women, then I'd go drown, and chassee with them
- evermore! There's naught so sweet on earth--heaven may not match
- it!--as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the
- over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.
- SICILIAN SAILOR. (RECLINING.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad--fleet
- interlacings of the limbs--lithe swayings--coyings--flutterings! lip!
- heart! hip! all graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye,
- else come satiety. Eh, Pagan? (NUDGING.)
- TAHITAN SAILOR. (RECLINING ON A MAT.) Hail, holy nakedness of our
- dancing girls!--the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I
- still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven
- in the wood, my mat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn
- and wilted quite. Ah me!--not thou nor I can bear the change! How
- then, if so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring streams from
- Pirohitee's peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drown the
- villages?--The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (LEAPS TO HIS
- FEET.)
- PORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashing 'gainst the side! Stand
- by for reefing, hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell
- they'll go lunging presently.
- DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou
- holdest! Well done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He's no more
- afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic
- with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!
- 4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old
- Ahab tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a
- waterspout with a pistol--fire your ship right into it!
- ENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old man's a grand old cove! We are the
- lads to hunt him up his whale!
- ALL. Aye! aye!
- OLD MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort
- of tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here there's none
- but the crew's cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort
- of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea.
- Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there's another in the
- sky--lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.
- DAGGOO. What of that? Who's afraid of black's afraid of me! I'm quarried
- out of it!
- SPANISH SAILOR. (ASIDE.) He wants to bully, ah!--the old grudge makes
- me touchy (ADVANCING.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark
- side of mankind--devilish dark at that. No offence.
- DAGGOO (GRIMLY). None.
- ST. JAGO'S SAILOR. That Spaniard's mad or drunk. But that can't be, or
- else in his one case our old Mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in
- working.
- 5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. What's that I saw--lightning? Yes.
- SPANISH SAILOR. No; Daggoo showing his teeth.
- DAGGOO (SPRINGING). Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!
- SPANISH SAILOR (MEETING HIM). Knife thee heartily! big frame, small
- spirit!
- ALL. A row! a row! a row!
- TASHTEGO (WITH A WHIFF). A row a'low, and a row aloft--Gods and
- men--both brawlers! Humph!
- BELFAST SAILOR. A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge
- in with ye!
- ENGLISH SAILOR. Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard's knife! A ring, a ring!
- OLD MANX SAILOR. Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring
- Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad'st thou
- the ring?
- MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Hands by the halyards! in
- top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef topsails!
- ALL. The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (THEY SCATTER.)
- PIP (SHRINKING UNDER THE WINDLASS). Jollies? Lord help such jollies!
- Crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower,
- Pip, here comes the royal yard! It's worse than being in the whirled
- woods, the last day of the year! Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now?
- But there they go, all cursing, and here I don't. Fine prospects to 'em;
- they're on the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall!
- But those chaps there are worse yet--they are your white squalls, they.
- White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I heard all their
- chat just now, and the white whale--shirr! shirr!--but spoken of
- once! and only this evening--it makes me jingle all over like my
- tambourine--that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in to hunt him! Oh,
- thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on
- this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no
- bowels to feel fear!
- CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick.
- I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest;
- my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more
- did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A
- wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud
- seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous
- monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of
- violence and revenge.
- For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied,
- secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly
- frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of his
- existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen him;
- while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given battle to
- him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of whale-cruisers;
- the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire watery
- circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest along
- solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or
- more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any sort;
- the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the irregularity of the
- times of sailing from home; all these, with other circumstances, direct
- and indirect, long obstructed the spread through the whole world-wide
- whaling-fleet of the special individualizing tidings concerning Moby
- Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported to have
- encountered, at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian,
- a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after
- doing great mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped them; to
- some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in
- question must have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as of late the
- Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent
- instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the monster
- attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident ignorantly gave
- battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were
- content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to
- the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual
- cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and
- the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded.
- And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by chance
- caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had every one of
- them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any other
- whale of that species. But at length, such calamities did ensue in these
- assaults--not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs, or
- devouring amputations--but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those
- repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors
- upon Moby Dick; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many
- brave hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come.
- Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more
- horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do
- fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising
- terrible events,--as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in
- maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound,
- wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. And as the
- sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses
- every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness
- of the rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen
- as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary
- to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most
- directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing
- in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but,
- hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that
- though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you
- would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone, or aught hospitable beneath
- that part of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too
- such a calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all
- tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.
- No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over
- the widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale did
- in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints,
- and half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which
- eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything
- that visibly appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally
- strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White
- Whale, few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his
- jaw.
- But there were still other and more vital practical influences at work.
- Not even at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm
- Whale, as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the
- leviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There are
- those this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous
- enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would
- perhaps--either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or
- timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are
- plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing
- under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the Sperm
- Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to
- the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the North; seated on their
- hatches, these men will hearken with a childish fireside interest
- and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern whaling. Nor is the
- pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere more
- feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which stem him.
- And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former
- legendary times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book
- naturalists--Olassen and Povelson--declaring the Sperm Whale not only to
- be a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to be so
- incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood. Nor
- even down to so late a time as Cuvier's, were these or almost similar
- impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, the Baron himself
- affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included) are
- "struck with the most lively terrors," and "often in the precipitancy of
- their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to
- cause instantaneous death." And however the general experiences in the
- fishery may amend such reports as these; yet in their full terribleness,
- even to the bloodthirsty item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in
- them is, in some vicissitudes of their vocation, revived in the minds of
- the hunters.
- So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a few of
- the fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier days
- of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to induce long
- practised Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring
- warfare; such men protesting that although other leviathans might be
- hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at such an apparition
- as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it, would
- be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity. On this head, there are
- some remarkable documents that may be consulted.
- Nevertheless, some there were, who even in the face of these things
- were ready to give chase to Moby Dick; and a still greater number who,
- chancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely, without the
- specific details of any certain calamity, and without superstitious
- accompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if
- offered.
- One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked
- with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined,
- was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had
- actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same
- instant of time.
- Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit altogether
- without some faint show of superstitious probability. For as the secrets
- of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged, even to
- the most erudite research; so the hidden ways of the Sperm Whale
- when beneath the surface remain, in great part, unaccountable to his
- pursuers; and from time to time have originated the most curious and
- contradictory speculations regarding them, especially concerning the
- mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he transports
- himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points.
- It is a thing well known to both American and English whale-ships, and
- as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby,
- that some whales have been captured far north in the Pacific, in whose
- bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland
- seas. Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has
- been declared that the interval of time between the two assaults could
- not have exceeded very many days. Hence, by inference, it has been
- believed by some whalemen, that the Nor' West Passage, so long a problem
- to man, was never a problem to the whale. So that here, in the real
- living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old times of
- the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said
- to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface);
- and that still more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near
- Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land
- by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost fully
- equalled by the realities of the whalemen.
- Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and knowing
- that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped
- alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should
- go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only
- ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time); that
- though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would still
- swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to spout thick
- blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for again in
- unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his unsullied jet would
- once more be seen.
- But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough in
- the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike
- the imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his
- uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales,
- but, as was elsewhere thrown out--a peculiar snow-white wrinkled
- forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent
- features; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he
- revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him.
- The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with
- the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive
- appellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by
- his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue
- sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden
- gleamings.
- Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his
- deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural terror,
- as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to specific
- accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults. More than
- all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught
- else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers, with every
- apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known to turn
- round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their boats to
- splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship.
- Already several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar
- disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual
- in the fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's
- infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death
- that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an
- unintelligent agent.
- Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of
- his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed
- boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the
- white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene, exasperating
- sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
- His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the
- eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had
- dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking
- with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale.
- That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his
- sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's
- leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no
- hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice.
- Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal
- encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale,
- all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came
- to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his
- intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before
- him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which
- some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with
- half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been
- from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe
- one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced
- in their statue devil;--Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them;
- but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he
- pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and
- torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice
- in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle
- demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly
- personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon
- the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt
- by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a
- mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.
- It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at
- the precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the
- monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate,
- corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he
- probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.
- Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long
- months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one
- hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape;
- then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another;
- and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on the homeward
- voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems
- all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage,
- he was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital
- strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified
- by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even
- there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung
- to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more sufferable
- latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated across the
- tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's delirium seemed
- left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his
- dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he bore that
- firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once
- again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now gone; even
- then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a
- cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but
- become transfigured into some still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacy
- subsided not, but deepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson,
- when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the
- Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of
- Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not
- one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living
- agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope may
- stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it,
- and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far
- from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a
- thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon
- any one reasonable object.
- This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted.
- But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding
- far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where
- we here stand--however grand and wonderful, now quit it;--and take your
- way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes;
- where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root
- of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique
- buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken
- throne, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he
- patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of
- ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that proud,
- sad king! A family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled
- royalties; and from your grim sire only will the old State-secret come.
- Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means
- are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to kill, or
- change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind he did long
- dissemble; in some sort, did still. But that thing of his dissembling
- was only subject to his perceptibility, not to his will determinate.
- Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling, that when
- with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer thought him
- otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the
- terrible casualty which had overtaken him.
- The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly
- ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added moodiness which
- always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the Pequod on the
- present voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely,
- that far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on
- account of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent
- isle were inclined to harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons he
- was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full
- of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and
- scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable
- idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart
- his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes.
- Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that,
- yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on
- his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is,
- that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in
- him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only
- and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of his
- old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him
- then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the
- ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on profitable cruises, the
- profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an
- audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge.
- Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a
- Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made
- up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled
- also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in
- Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in
- Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered,
- seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him
- to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded
- to the old man's ire--by what evil magic their souls were possessed,
- that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much
- their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be--what the White
- Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in
- some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon
- of the seas of life,--all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than
- Ishmael can go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one
- tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his
- pick? Who does not feel the irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow
- of a seventy-four can stand still? For one, I gave myself up to the
- abandonment of the time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to
- encounter the whale, could see naught in that brute but the deadliest
- ill.
- CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of The Whale.
- What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he
- was to me, as yet remains unsaid.
- Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which
- could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there
- was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him,
- which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and
- yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of
- putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale
- that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself
- here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all
- these chapters might be naught.
- Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as
- if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas,
- and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a
- certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old
- kings of Pegu placing the title "Lord of the White Elephants" above all
- their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings
- of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard;
- and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger;
- and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome,
- having for the imperial colour the same imperial hue; and though this
- pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white
- man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all
- this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among
- the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal
- sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many
- touching, noble things--the innocence of brides, the benignity of age;
- though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt
- of wampum was the deepest pledge of honour; though in many climes,
- whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge,
- and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by
- milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most
- august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness
- and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being
- held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove
- himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the
- noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was
- by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful
- creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit
- with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from
- the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of
- one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the
- cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is
- specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though
- in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and
- the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white
- throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all
- these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honourable,
- and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea
- of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness
- which affrights in blood.
- This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when
- divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object
- terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds.
- Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics;
- what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent
- horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an
- abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb
- gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his
- heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or
- shark.*
- *With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him
- who would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not
- the whiteness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable
- hideousness of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness,
- it might be said, only rises from the circumstance, that the
- irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in the
- fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringing together
- two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us
- with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be true;
- yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified
- terror.
- As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that
- creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the
- same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly
- hit by the French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish
- mass for the dead begins with "Requiem eternam" (eternal rest), whence
- REQUIEM denominating the mass itself, and any other funeral music. Now,
- in allusion to the white, silent stillness of death in this shark, and
- the mild deadliness of his habits, the French call him REQUIN.
- Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual
- wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all
- imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great,
- unflattering laureate, Nature.*
- *I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged
- gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch
- below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the
- main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and
- with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth
- its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous
- flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered
- cries, as some king's ghost in supernatural distress. Through its
- inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took
- hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white
- thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled
- waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of
- towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only
- hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and
- turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney!
- never had heard that name before; is it conceivable that this glorious
- thing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But some time after, I
- learned that goney was some seaman's name for albatross. So that by no
- possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those
- mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our
- deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be
- an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little
- brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.
- I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird
- chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this,
- that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses;
- and these I have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I
- beheld the Antarctic fowl.
- But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will
- tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea.
- At last the Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern
- tally round its neck, with the ship's time and place; and then letting
- it escape. But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was
- taken off in Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding,
- the invoking, and adoring cherubim!
- Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of
- the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,
- large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a
- thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the
- elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those
- days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. At
- their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which
- every evening leads on the hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his
- mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more
- resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him. A
- most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, western
- world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the
- glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a god,
- bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid
- his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly
- streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his
- circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon, the White
- Steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through his
- cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the
- bravest Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe. Nor
- can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of this noble
- horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so clothed him
- with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it which, though
- commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.
- But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that
- accessory and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and
- Albatross.
- What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks
- the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It
- is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name
- he bears. The Albino is as well made as other men--has no substantive
- deformity--and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him
- more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be so?
- Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but
- not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces
- this crowning attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the
- gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas has been denominated the White
- Squall. Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice
- omitted so potent an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of
- that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of their
- faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the
- market-place!
- Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all
- mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue. It
- cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of
- the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering
- there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of
- consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And
- from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of the shroud
- in which we wrap them. Nor even in our superstitions do we fail to
- throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms; all ghosts rising in a
- milk-white fog--Yea, while these terrors seize us, let us add, that even
- the king of terrors, when personified by the evangelist, rides on his
- pallid horse.
- Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious
- thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest
- idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.
- But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to
- account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we, then,
- by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of
- whiteness--though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped
- of all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful,
- but nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however
- modified;--can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us
- to the hidden cause we seek?
- Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,
- and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls. And
- though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions about
- to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few perhaps were
- entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore may not be able to
- recall them now.
- Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely
- acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare mention
- of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless
- processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded with
- new-fallen snow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the
- Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a White Friar or
- a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?
- Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and
- kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White
- Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of
- an untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its
- neighbors--the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer
- towers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods,
- comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of
- that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is full of a soft,
- dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes and
- longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a spectralness
- over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal
- thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, followed by
- the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly
- unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading
- the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does "the tall pale man" of the
- Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the
- green of the groves--why is this phantom more terrible than all the
- whooping imps of the Blocksburg?
- Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling
- earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the
- tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide
- field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop
- (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of
- house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;--it
- is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest,
- saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and
- there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro,
- this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful
- greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid
- pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.
- I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness
- is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of
- objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught
- of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost
- solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under
- any form at all approaching to muteness or universality. What I mean
- by these two statements may perhaps be respectively elucidated by the
- following examples.
- First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if by
- night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just
- enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely
- similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view his
- ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness--as if from
- encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round
- him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded phantom
- of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the
- lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm they both go
- down; he never rests till blue water is under him again. Yet where is
- the mariner who will tell thee, "Sir, it was not so much the fear of
- striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous whiteness that so
- stirred me?"
- Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the
- snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the
- mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast
- altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be
- to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the
- backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an
- unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig
- to break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the
- scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal trick
- of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half
- shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery,
- views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean
- ice monuments and splintered crosses.
- But thou sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is but
- a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo,
- Ishmael.
- Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley of
- Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey--why is it that upon the
- sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that
- he cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness--why
- will he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies
- of affright? There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild
- creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he
- smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience of
- former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt, of the black
- bisons of distant Oregon?
- No; but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the
- knowledge of the demonism in the world. Though thousands of miles from
- Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending, goring bison
- herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies, which
- this instant they may be trampling into dust.
- Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings
- of the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the
- windrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking
- of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt!
- Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic
- sign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere
- those things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible
- world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.
- But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and
- learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange
- and far more portentous--why, as we have seen, it is at once the
- most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the
- Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in
- things the most appalling to mankind.
- Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids
- and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the
- thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky
- way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as
- the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all
- colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness,
- full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows--a colourless, all-colour
- of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory
- of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues--every stately
- or lovely emblazoning--the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea,
- and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of
- young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent
- in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature
- absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but
- the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that
- the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great
- principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself, and
- if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even
- tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge--pondering all this, the
- palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in
- Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their
- eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental
- white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these
- things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery
- hunt?
- CHAPTER 43. Hark!
- "HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?"
- It was the middle-watch; a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a
- cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the
- scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets
- to fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed
- precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle
- their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence,
- only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the
- unceasingly advancing keel.
- It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon, whose
- post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a Cholo, the
- words above.
- "Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?"
- "Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d'ye mean?"
- "There it is again--under the hatches--don't you hear it--a cough--it
- sounded like a cough."
- "Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket."
- "There again--there it is!--it sounds like two or three sleepers turning
- over, now!"
- "Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? It's the three soaked biscuits
- ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye--nothing else. Look to the
- bucket!"
- "Say what ye will, shipmate; I've sharp ears."
- "Aye, you are the chap, ain't ye, that heard the hum of the old
- Quakeress's knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; you're
- the chap."
- "Grin away; we'll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody
- down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I suspect
- our old Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask, one
- morning watch, that there was something of that sort in the wind."
- "Tish! the bucket!"
- CHAPTER 44. The Chart.
- Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that
- took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose
- with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom,
- and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread
- them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating himself before
- it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines and
- shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace
- additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At intervals, he
- would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein were set down
- the seasons and places in which, on various former voyages of various
- ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen.
- While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his
- head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw
- shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it
- almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses
- on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and
- courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.
- But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his
- cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were
- brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced, and
- others were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before
- him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to
- the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.
- Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans,
- it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary
- creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it
- seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby
- calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food; and, also, calling
- to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular
- latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to
- certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that ground
- in search of his prey.
- So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the
- sperm whale's resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that,
- could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world; were the
- logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated,
- then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to correspond in
- invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows.
- On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory
- charts of the sperm whale.*
- *Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne
- out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of
- the National Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By
- that circular, it appears that precisely such a chart is in
- course of completion; and portions of it are presented in
- the circular. "This chart divides the ocean into districts
- of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude;
- perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve
- columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each
- of which districts are three lines; one to show the number
- of days that have been spent in each month in every
- district, and the two others to show the number of days in
- which whales, sperm or right, have been seen."
- Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the
- sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct--say, rather, secret
- intelligence from the Deity--mostly swim in VEINS, as they are called;
- continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating
- exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with
- one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the
- direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor's parallel,
- and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own
- unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary VEIN in which at these
- times he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width
- (more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but
- never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship's mast-heads,
- when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone. The sum is, that at
- particular seasons within that breadth and along that path, migrating
- whales may with great confidence be looked for.
- And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate
- feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing
- the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his
- art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly
- without prospect of a meeting.
- There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his
- delirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality,
- perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons
- for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the
- herds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year,
- say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were found
- there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and unquestionable
- instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In general, the
- same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries
- and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So that though Moby
- Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on what is called the
- Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese
- Coast; yet it did not follow, that were the Pequod to visit either of
- those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, she would infallibly
- encounter him there. So, too, with some other feeding grounds, where
- he had at times revealed himself. But all these seemed only his casual
- stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged
- abode. And where Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have
- hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made to whatever
- way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a particular
- set time or place were attained, when all possibilities would become
- probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next
- thing to a certainty. That particular set time and place were conjoined
- in the one technical phrase--the Season-on-the-Line. For there and then,
- for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had been periodically descried,
- lingering in those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round,
- loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There
- it was, too, that most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had
- taken place; there the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was
- that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive
- to his vengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering
- vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering
- hunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one
- crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those
- hopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his
- unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest.
- Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the
- Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her commander
- to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then running
- down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time
- to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season.
- Yet the premature hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps, been
- correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of
- things. Because, an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days
- and nights was before him; an interval which, instead of impatiently
- enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance
- the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote from his
- periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the
- Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other
- waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor'-Westers,
- Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might
- blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's
- circumnavigating wake.
- But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not
- but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary
- whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of individual
- recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the
- thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar
- snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not but
- be unmistakable. And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab would mutter
- to himself, as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he
- would throw himself back in reveries--tallied him, and shall he escape?
- His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep's ear! And
- here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race; till a weariness
- and faintness of pondering came over him; and in the open air of the
- deck he would seek to recover his strength. Ah, God! what trances
- of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved
- revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own
- bloody nails in his palms.
- Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid
- dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through
- the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them
- round and round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing
- of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; 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. Yet these,
- perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent
- weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens
- of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming,
- unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had
- gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from
- it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or
- soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the
- characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer
- vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching
- contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no
- longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with
- the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up
- all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose,
- by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and
- devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay,
- could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was
- conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth.
- Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when
- what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated
- thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be
- sure, but without an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in
- itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature
- in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a
- vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature
- he creates.
- CHAPTER 45. The Affidavit.
- So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as
- indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars
- in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier
- part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume; but the
- leading matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly
- enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover to
- take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire
- subject may induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main
- points of this affair.
- I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall
- be content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of
- items, practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from these
- citations, I take it--the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of
- itself.
- First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after
- receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an
- interval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by
- the same hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same
- private cypher, have been taken from the body. In the instance where
- three years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons; and I
- think it may have been something more than that; the man who darted
- them happening, in the interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to
- Africa, went ashore there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated far
- into the interior, where he travelled for a period of nearly two years,
- often endangered by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas,
- with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of
- unknown regions. Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have
- been on its travels; no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe,
- brushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa; but to no purpose.
- This man and this whale again came together, and the one vanquished the
- other. I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to this; that
- is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the second attack,
- saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them, afterwards
- taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance, it so fell out
- that I was in the boat both times, first and last, and the last time
- distinctly recognised a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale's
- eye, which I had observed there three years previous. I say three years,
- but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are three instances,
- then, which I personally know the truth of; but I have heard of many
- other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no
- good ground to impeach.
- Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however ignorant
- the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several memorable
- historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean has been at
- distant times and places popularly cognisable. Why such a whale became
- thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to his bodily
- peculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for however peculiar
- in that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end to his
- peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly
- valuable oil. No: the reason was this: that from the fatal experiences
- of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about
- such a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that
- most fishermen were content to recognise him by merely touching their
- tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea,
- without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance. Like some
- poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man, they
- make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they
- pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump for
- their presumption.
- But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
- celebrity--Nay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he
- famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death,
- but he was admitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of
- a name; had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was it not so,
- O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long
- did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft
- seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack!
- thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of
- the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty
- jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross
- against the sky? Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked
- like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain
- prose, here are four whales as well known to the students of Cetacean
- History as Marius or Sylla to the classic scholar.
- But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at various
- times creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels, were
- finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out, chased and killed
- by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their anchors with
- that express object as much in view, as in setting out through the
- Narragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had it in his mind to capture
- that notorious murderous savage Annawon, the headmost warrior of the
- Indian King Philip.
- I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make
- mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in
- printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the
- whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For
- this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full
- as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of
- the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without
- some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the
- fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still
- worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.
- First: Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general
- perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid
- conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur.
- One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and
- deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at home,
- however transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do you suppose
- that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by the
- whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to the
- bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan--do you suppose that that
- poor fellow's name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read
- to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because the mails are very irregular
- between here and New Guinea. In fact, did you ever hear what might be
- called regular news direct or indirect from New Guinea? Yet I tell you
- that upon one particular voyage which I made to the Pacific, among many
- others we spoke thirty different ships, every one of which had had a
- death by a whale, some of them more than one, and three that had each
- lost a boat's crew. For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and
- candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was
- spilled for it.
- Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is
- an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that when
- narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold enormousness,
- they have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I
- declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses,
- when he wrote the history of the plagues of Egypt.
- But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon
- testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The Sperm
- Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously
- malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy, and
- sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale HAS done it.
- First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket,
- was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, lowered her
- boats, and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, several of
- the whales were wounded; when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping
- from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the
- ship. Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in, that in
- less than "ten minutes" she settled down and fell over. Not a surviving
- plank of her has been seen since. After the severest exposure, part of
- the crew reached the land in their boats. Being returned home at last,
- Captain Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific in command of another
- ship, but the gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and
- breakers; for the second time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith
- forswearing the sea, he has never tempted it since. At this day Captain
- Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I have seen Owen Chace, who was
- chief mate of the Essex at the time of the tragedy; I have read his
- plain and faithful narrative; I have conversed with his son; and all
- this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe.*
- *The following are extracts from Chace's narrative: "Every fact seemed
- to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which
- directed his operations; he made two several attacks upon the ship, at
- a short interval between them, both of which, according to their
- direction, were calculated to do us the most injury, by being made
- ahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for the shock;
- to effect which, the exact manoeuvres which he made were necessary. His
- aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated resentment and fury. He
- came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered, and in
- which we had struck three of his companions, as if fired with revenge
- for their sufferings." Again: "At all events, the whole circumstances
- taken together, all happening before my own eyes, and producing, at the
- time, impressions in my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the
- part of the whale (many of which impressions I cannot now recall),
- induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my opinion."
- Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during
- a black night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any
- hospitable shore. "The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the
- fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed
- upon hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful
- contemplation, seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's thought; the
- dismal looking wreck, and THE HORRID ASPECT AND REVENGE OF THE WHALE,
- wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again made its appearance."
- In another place--p. 45,--he speaks of "THE MYSTERIOUS AND MORTAL ATTACK
- OF THE ANIMAL."
- Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807
- totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic
- particulars of this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter,
- though from the whale hunters I have now and then heard casual allusions
- to it.
- Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J---, then
- commanding an American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be
- dining with a party of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in
- the harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales,
- the Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing strength
- ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present. He peremptorily
- denied for example, that any whale could so smite his stout sloop-of-war
- as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful. Very good; but there
- is more coming. Some weeks after, the Commodore set sail in this
- impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he was stopped on the way by a
- portly sperm whale, that begged a few moments' confidential business
- with him. That business consisted in fetching the Commodore's craft such
- a thwack, that with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest
- port to heave down and repair. I am not superstitious, but I consider
- the Commodore's interview with that whale as providential. Was not Saul
- of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright? I tell you, the
- sperm whale will stand no nonsense.
- I will now refer you to Langsdorff's Voyages for a little circumstance
- in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you
- must know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern's
- famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present century.
- Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter:
- "By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next day
- we were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather was very
- clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on
- our fur clothing. For some days we had very little wind; it was not
- till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up. An
- uncommon large whale, the body of which was larger than the ship itself,
- lay almost at the surface of the water, but was not perceived by any
- one on board till the moment when the ship, which was in full sail,
- was almost upon him, so that it was impossible to prevent its striking
- against him. We were thus placed in the most imminent danger, as this
- gigantic creature, setting up its back, raised the ship three feet at
- least out of the water. The masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether,
- while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck, concluding
- that we had struck upon some rock; instead of this we saw the monster
- sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain D'Wolf
- applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel
- had received any damage from the shock, but we found that very happily
- it had escaped entirely uninjured."
- Now, the Captain D'Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in
- question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual
- adventures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of
- Dorchester near Boston. I have the honour of being a nephew of his. I
- have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff.
- He substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by no means a large
- one: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast, and purchased by my
- uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home.
- In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full, too,
- of honest wonders--the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient Dampier's
- old chums--I found a little matter set down so like that just quoted
- from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a
- corroborative example, if such be needed.
- Lionel, it seems, was on his way to "John Ferdinando," as he calls
- the modern Juan Fernandes. "In our way thither," he says, "about four
- o'clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues
- from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which put our
- men in such consternation that they could hardly tell where they were
- or what to think; but every one began to prepare for death. And, indeed,
- the shock was so sudden and violent, that we took it for granted the
- ship had struck against a rock; but when the amazement was a little
- over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no ground..... The
- suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages, and
- several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks. Captain Davis, who
- lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his cabin!" Lionel then
- goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake, and seems to substantiate
- the imputation by stating that a great earthquake, somewhere about
- that time, did actually do great mischief along the Spanish land. But
- I should not much wonder if, in the darkness of that early hour of the
- morning, the shock was after all caused by an unseen whale vertically
- bumping the hull from beneath.
- I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to
- me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more
- than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing
- boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long
- withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship
- Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for his strength,
- let me say, that there have been examples where the lines attached to a
- running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship, and
- secured there; the whale towing her great hull through the water, as a
- horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if
- the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts,
- not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of
- destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent
- indication of his character, that upon being attacked he will frequently
- open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several
- consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one more and a
- concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which
- you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in
- this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these
- marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for
- the millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is nothing new
- under the sun.
- In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate
- of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius
- general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work
- every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always been
- considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in
- some one or two particulars, not at all affecting the matter presently
- to be mentioned.
- Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term
- of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured
- in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed
- vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty
- years. A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be
- gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what precise species
- this sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as
- well as for other reasons, he must have been a whale; and I am strongly
- inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a long
- time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the
- Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now I am
- certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the
- present constitution of things, a place for his habitual gregarious
- resort. But further investigations have recently proved to me, that in
- modern times there have been isolated instances of the presence of the
- sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that
- on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found
- the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes
- through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route,
- pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.
- In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance
- called BRIT is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I have
- every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale--squid or
- cuttle-fish--lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures,
- but by no means the largest of that sort, have been found at its
- surface. If, then, you properly put these statements together, and
- reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that, according to all
- human reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster, that for half a century stove
- the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm
- whale.
- CHAPTER 46. Surmises.
- Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his
- thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick;
- though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one
- passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long
- habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways, altogether to
- abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if
- this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more
- influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even
- considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the
- White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all
- sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he
- multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would
- prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed
- exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though
- not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet
- were by no means incapable of swaying him.
- To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in
- the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew,
- for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was
- over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual
- man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual
- mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in a
- sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced will
- were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain; still
- he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his
- captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from
- it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would elapse
- ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck
- would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his
- captain's leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial
- influences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle
- insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly
- manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing
- that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that
- strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that
- the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure
- background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted meditation
- unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches,
- his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby
- Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the
- announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less
- capricious and unreliable--they live in the varying outer weather, and
- they inhale its fickleness--and when retained for any object remote and
- blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the
- end, it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and
- employments should intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the
- final dash.
- Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion
- mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent.
- The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought
- Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the
- hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even
- breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the
- love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food
- for their more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and
- chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two
- thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without
- committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious
- perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final
- and romantic object--that final and romantic object, too many would have
- turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all
- hopes of cash--aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some months
- go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same
- quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon
- cashier Ahab.
- Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related
- to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps
- somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the
- Pequod's voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing,
- he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of
- usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew
- if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further
- obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From
- even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible
- consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must
- of course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection
- could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand,
- backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute
- atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be subjected
- to.
- For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be
- verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good
- degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod's
- voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force
- himself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general
- pursuit of his profession.
- Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three
- mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit
- reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.
- CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.
- It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging
- about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters.
- Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,
- for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet
- somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie
- lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own
- invisible self.
- I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I
- kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between
- the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as
- Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword
- between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and
- unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did
- there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by
- the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were
- the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving
- and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp
- subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and
- that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending
- of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here,
- thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own
- destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive,
- indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly,
- or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference
- in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final
- aspect of the completed fabric; this savage's sword, thought I,
- which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this
- easy, indifferent sword must be chance--aye, chance, free will, and
- necessity--nowise incompatible--all interweavingly working together.
- The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate
- course--its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that;
- free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and
- chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of
- necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though
- thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the
- last featuring blow at events.
- Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
- strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball
- of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds
- whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was
- that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward,
- his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he
- continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment
- perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's
- look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could
- that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from
- Tashtego the Indian's.
- As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and
- eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some
- prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries
- announcing their coming.
- "There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!"
- "Where-away?"
- "On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!"
- Instantly all was commotion.
- The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and
- reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from
- other tribes of his genus.
- "There go flukes!" was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales
- disappeared.
- "Quick, steward!" cried Ahab. "Time! time!"
- Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact
- minute to Ahab.
- The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling
- before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to
- leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of
- our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale
- when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while
- concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in the
- opposite quarter--this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action;
- for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego had
- been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of
- the men selected for shipkeepers--that is, those not appointed to the
- boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The
- sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed
- in their places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed,
- and the three boats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over
- high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand
- clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale.
- So look the long line of man-of-war's men about to throw themselves on
- board an enemy's ship.
- But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took
- every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was
- surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.
- CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.
- The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side
- of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the
- tackles and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always
- been deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the
- captain's, on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The
- figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white
- tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese
- jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers
- of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a
- glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled
- round and round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the companions of
- this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to
- some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas;--a race notorious for
- a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by some honest white mariners
- supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents on the
- water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose to be
- elsewhere.
- While yet the wondering ship's company were gazing upon these strangers,
- Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their head, "All ready
- there, Fedallah?"
- "Ready," was the half-hissed reply.
- "Lower away then; d'ye hear?" shouting across the deck. "Lower away
- there, I say."
- Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the men
- sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with a
- wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a dexterous,
- off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors,
- goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship's side into the tossed boats
- below.
- Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship's lee, when a fourth
- keel, coming from the windward side, pulled round under the stern, and
- showed the five strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern,
- loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely,
- so as to cover a large expanse of water. But with all their eyes again
- riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of the other
- boats obeyed not the command.
- "Captain Ahab?--" said Starbuck.
- "Spread yourselves," cried Ahab; "give way, all four boats. Thou, Flask,
- pull out more to leeward!"
- "Aye, aye, sir," cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round
- his great steering oar. "Lay back!" addressing his crew.
- "There!--there!--there again! There she blows right ahead, boys!--lay
- back!"
- "Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy."
- "Oh, I don't mind'em, sir," said Archy; "I knew it all before now.
- Didn't I hear 'em in the hold? And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it? What
- say ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask."
- "Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little
- ones," drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom
- still showed signs of uneasiness. "Why don't you break your backbones,
- my boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They
- are only five more hands come to help us--never mind from where--the
- more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone--devils
- are good fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that's the stroke
- for a thousand pounds; that's the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah
- for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men--all hearts
- alive! Easy, easy; don't be in a hurry--don't be in a hurry. Why don't
- you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so,
- then:--softly, softly! That's it--that's it! long and strong. Give way
- there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are
- all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull,
- can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes
- don't ye pull?--pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out!
- Here!" whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; "every mother's son
- of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That's
- it--that's it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits.
- Start her--start her, my silver-spoons! Start her, marling-spikes!"
- Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had
- rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in
- inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this
- specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions
- with his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted his chief
- peculiarity. He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a
- tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so
- calculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such
- queer invocations without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for
- the mere joke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easy and
- indolent himself, so loungingly managed his steering-oar, and so broadly
- gaped--open-mouthed at times--that the mere sight of such a yawning
- commander, by sheer force of contrast, acted like a charm upon the crew.
- Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort of humorists, whose jollity
- is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all inferiors on their
- guard in the matter of obeying them.
- In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely
- across Stubb's bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were
- pretty near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.
- "Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye
- please!"
- "Halloa!" returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he
- spoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set
- like a flint from Stubb's.
- "What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!"
- "Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,
- boys!)" in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: "A sad
- business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind,
- Mr. Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what
- will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There's hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr.
- Stubb, and that's what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm's the
- play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand."
- "Aye, aye, I thought as much," soliloquized Stubb, when the boats
- diverged, "as soon as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so. Aye, and that's
- what he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long
- suspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale's at the bottom
- of it. Well, well, so be it! Can't be helped! All right! Give way, men!
- It ain't the White Whale to-day! Give way!"
- Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant
- as the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably
- awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship's
- company; but Archy's fancied discovery having some time previous got
- abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in some
- small measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge
- of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb's confident way
- of accounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from
- superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room for
- all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise agency in the
- matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious
- shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket
- dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.
- Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the
- furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a
- circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger
- yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five
- trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which
- periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst
- boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen
- pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and
- displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the
- gunwale, clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery
- horizon; while at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a
- fencer's, thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance any
- tendency to trip; Ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar as in
- a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him. All at once
- the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained fixed,
- while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat and
- crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in the
- rear paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily
- down into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the
- movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it.
- "Every man look out along his oars!" cried Starbuck. "Thou, Queequeg,
- stand up!"
- Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage
- stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the
- spot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme
- stern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with
- the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing
- himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently
- eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.
- Not very far distant Flask's boat was also lying breathlessly still; its
- commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout
- sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the
- level of the stern platform. It is used for catching turns with the
- whale line. Its top is not more spacious than the palm of a man's hand,
- and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perched at the
- mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks. But little
- King-Post was small and short, and at the same time little King-Post was
- full of a large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead stand-point
- of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.
- "I can't see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to
- that."
- Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his
- way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty
- shoulders for a pedestal.
- "Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?"
- "That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you
- fifty feet taller."
- Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the
- boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to
- Flask's foot, and then putting Flask's hand on his hearse-plumed head
- and bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous
- fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was
- Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a
- breastband to lean against and steady himself by.
- At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous
- habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect
- posture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously
- perverse and cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily
- perched upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the
- sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious;
- for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of,
- barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously
- rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed
- a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly
- vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then
- stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to
- the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the
- living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her
- seasons for that.
- Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing
- solicitudes. The whales might have made one of their regular soundings,
- not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were the case,
- Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the
- languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband,
- where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and rammed
- home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his match
- across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer,
- whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly
- dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat, crying out in a
- quick phrensy of hurry, "Down, down all, and give way!--there they are!"
- To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been
- visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white
- water, and thin scattered puffs of vapour hovering over it, and
- suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white
- rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it
- were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath this
- atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin layer of
- water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the other
- indications, the puffs of vapour they spouted, seemed their forerunning
- couriers and detached flying outriders.
- All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled
- water and air. But it bade fair to outstrip them; it flew on and on,
- as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the
- hills.
- "Pull, pull, my good boys," said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but
- intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp fixed glance
- from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two
- visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much
- to his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to him. Only the
- silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his
- peculiar whispers, now harsh with command, now soft with entreaty.
- How different the loud little King-Post. "Sing out and say something,
- my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! Beach me, beach me on their
- black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I'll sign over to you my
- Martha's Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife and children, boys.
- Lay me on--lay me on! O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad!
- See! see that white water!" And so shouting, he pulled his hat from his
- head, and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up, flirted it far
- off upon the sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's
- stern like a crazed colt from the prairie.
- "Look at that chap now," philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his
- unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his teeth, at a
- short distance, followed after--"He's got fits, that Flask has. Fits?
- yes, give him fits--that's the very word--pitch fits into 'em. Merrily,
- merrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know;--merry's the word.
- Pull, babes--pull, sucklings--pull, all. But what the devil are you
- hurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only pull, and
- keep pulling; nothing more. Crack all your backbones, and bite your
- knives in two--that's all. Take it easy--why don't ye take it easy, I
- say, and burst all your livers and lungs!"
- But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of
- his--these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed
- light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious
- seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of
- red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.
- Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of
- Flask to "that whale," as he called the fictitious monster which
- he declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its
- tail--these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that
- they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look
- over the shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen
- must put out their eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usage
- pronouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and no limbs but
- arms, in these critical moments.
- It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the
- omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along
- the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green;
- the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on
- the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening
- to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and
- hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite
- hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side;--all these,
- with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps
- of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing
- down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her
- screaming brood;--all this was thrilling.
- Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever
- heat of his first battle; not the dead man's ghost encountering the
- first unknown phantom in the other world;--neither of these can feel
- stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first
- time finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the
- hunted sperm whale.
- The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and more
- visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows
- flung upon the sea. The jets of vapour no longer blended, but tilted
- everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes.
- The boats were pulled more apart; Starbuck giving chase to three whales
- running dead to leeward. Our sail was now set, and, with the still
- rising wind, we rushed along; the boat going with such madness through
- the water, that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to
- escape being torn from the row-locks.
- Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship
- nor boat to be seen.
- "Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet
- of his sail; "there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes.
- There's white water again!--close to! Spring!"
- Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted
- that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, when
- with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: "Stand up!" and
- Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.
- Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril
- so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance
- of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent
- instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of
- fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still
- booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like
- the erected crests of enraged serpents.
- "That's his hump. THERE, THERE, give it to him!" whispered Starbuck.
- A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of
- Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from
- astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail
- collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapour shot up near by;
- something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole
- crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the
- white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all
- blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.
- Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round
- it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale,
- tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the
- water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes
- the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom
- of the ocean.
- The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together;
- the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white
- fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal
- in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar
- to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those
- boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew
- darker with the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen.
- The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were
- useless as propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers.
- So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures
- Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching
- it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this
- forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in
- the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign
- and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the
- midst of despair.
- Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat,
- we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over
- the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat.
- Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear.
- We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by
- the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were dimly
- parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as
- the ship at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within a
- distance of not much more than its length.
- Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it
- tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at the base of a
- cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no
- more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed
- against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on
- board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from
- their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us
- up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of
- our perishing,--an oar or a lance pole.
- CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
- There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair
- we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical
- joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than
- suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However,
- nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts
- down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard
- things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of
- potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small
- difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of
- life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly,
- good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen
- and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking
- of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes
- in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might
- have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the
- general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this
- free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now
- regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its
- object.
- "Queequeg," said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck,
- and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water;
- "Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?"
- Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he gave me to
- understand that such things did often happen.
- "Mr. Stubb," said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his
- oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; "Mr. Stubb, I
- think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief
- mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose
- then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy
- squall is the height of a whaleman's discretion?"
- "Certain. I've lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape
- Horn."
- "Mr. Flask," said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing close
- by; "you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you tell
- me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an
- oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death's
- jaws?"
- "Can't you twist that smaller?" said Flask. "Yes, that's the law.
- I should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a whale face
- foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind
- that!"
- Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement
- of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings
- in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters
- of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the
- superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my
- life into the hands of him who steered the boat--oftentimes a fellow who
- at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling
- the craft with his own frantic stampings; considering that the
- particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to be imputed
- to Starbuck's driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall,
- and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his
- great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to this
- uncommonly prudent Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a
- devil's chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all
- things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and make a
- rough draft of my will. "Queequeg," said I, "come along, you shall be my
- lawyer, executor, and legatee."
- It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their
- last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more
- fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life
- that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon
- the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away
- from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good
- as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary
- clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might be. I survived
- myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest. I looked
- round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean
- conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault.
- Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock,
- here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the
- devil fetch the hindmost.
- CHAPTER 50. Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
- "Who would have thought it, Flask!" cried Stubb; "if I had but one leg
- you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole
- with my timber toe. Oh! he's a wonderful old man!"
- "I don't think it so strange, after all, on that account," said Flask.
- "If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing.
- That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other
- left, you know."
- "I don't know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel."
- Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering
- the paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is
- right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils
- of the chase. So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears in their
- eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the
- thickest of the fight.
- But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering
- that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger;
- considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and
- extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then
- comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any
- maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the
- joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.
- Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of
- his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of
- the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving
- his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually
- apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt--above all for
- Captain Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat's
- crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads
- of the owners of the Pequod. Therefore he had not solicited a boat's
- crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head.
- Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all
- that matter. Until Cabaco's published discovery, the sailors had little
- foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out
- of port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the
- whaleboats for service; when some time after this Ahab was now and then
- found bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his
- own hands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even
- solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the line is
- running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this was
- observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra
- coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better
- withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety
- he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is
- sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the
- knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed
- how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the
- semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter's chisel
- gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there; all these
- things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time. But
- almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness
- in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick;
- for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster
- in person. But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest
- suspicion as to any boat's crew being assigned to that boat.
- Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned
- away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such
- unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown
- nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of
- whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway
- creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck,
- oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that
- Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin
- to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable
- excitement in the forecastle.
- But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate
- phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were
- somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained
- a muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like
- this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be
- linked with Ahab's peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort
- of a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even
- authority over him; all this none knew. But one cannot sustain
- an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as
- civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
- dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide
- among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles
- to the east of the continent--those insulated, immemorial, unalterable
- countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the
- ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal generations, when the memory of
- the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants,
- unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of
- the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end; when though,
- according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of
- men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane
- amours.
- CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.
- Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
- swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the
- Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the
- Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality,
- southerly from St. Helena.
- It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
- moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;
- and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery
- silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen
- far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it
- looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from
- the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight
- nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a
- look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And yet,
- though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred
- would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what emotions,
- then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual
- hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But when, after
- spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights
- without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence, his
- unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every
- reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had
- lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. "There she blows!"
- Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet
- still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was a most
- unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously
- exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a
- lowering.
- Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
- t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The
- best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head
- manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange,
- upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows
- of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air
- beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic
- influences were struggling in her--one to mount direct to heaven, the
- other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched
- Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that in him also two
- different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes
- along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap.
- On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly
- sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot,
- yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he
- saw it once, but not a second time.
- This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days
- after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it
- was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it
- disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after
- night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously
- jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be;
- disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and somehow
- seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and
- further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.
- Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance
- with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested
- the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that
- whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however
- far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast
- by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. 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.
- These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous
- potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath
- all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as
- for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely
- mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed
- vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.
- But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling
- around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are
- there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and
- gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips,
- the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity
- of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.
- Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither
- before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And
- every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and
- spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp,
- as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing
- appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their
- homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the
- black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane
- soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had
- bred.
- Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoso, as called
- of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had
- attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea,
- where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed
- condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat
- that black air without any horizon. 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.
- During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for the
- time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck,
- manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever addressed
- his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and
- aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await
- the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists.
- So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one
- hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand
- gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow
- would all but congeal his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew
- driven from the forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that
- burstingly broke over its bows, stood in a line along the bulwarks in
- the waist; and the better to guard against the leaping waves, each man
- had slipped himself into a sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which
- he swung as in a loosened belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the
- silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore
- on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves.
- By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the
- ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still
- wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed
- demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never
- could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down
- into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw him with
- closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain
- and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before
- emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the
- table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and currents
- which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his tightly
- clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back so
- that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale
- that swung from a beam in the ceiling.*
- *The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the
- compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the
- course of the ship.
- Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this
- gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.
- CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.
- South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising
- ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross)
- by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the
- fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro
- in the far ocean fisheries--a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.
- As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
- skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral
- appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her
- spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over
- with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to
- see her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed
- clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had
- survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to
- the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when
- the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the air
- came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the
- mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking
- fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own
- look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.
- "Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?"
- But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the
- act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand
- into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make
- himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the
- distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod
- were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first
- mere mention of the White Whale's name to another ship, Ahab for a
- moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat
- to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking
- advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and
- knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and
- shortly bound home, he loudly hailed--"Ahoy there! This is the Pequod,
- bound round the 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 for
- ever 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 53. 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 the peculiar usages of whaling-vessels when
- meeting each other in foreign seas, and especially on a common
- cruising-ground.
- If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the
- equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering
- each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of
- them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment
- to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while
- and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon the
- illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling
- vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth--off lone
- Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how much more natural,
- I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not only
- interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and
- sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of
- course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose captains,
- officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each other;
- and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about.
- For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on
- board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a
- date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn
- files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would
- receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to
- which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And
- in degree, all this will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing
- each other's track on the cruising-ground itself, even though they
- are equally long absent from home. For one of them may have received a
- transfer of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel; and
- some of those letters may be for the people of the ship she now meets.
- Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable
- chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors,
- but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common
- pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils.
- Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference;
- that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case
- with Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number of
- English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they
- do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for your
- Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that
- sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers
- sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American
- whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript
- provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority
- in the English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say,
- seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than
- all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless
- little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does
- not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few
- foibles himself.
- So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the
- whalers have most reason to be sociable--and they are so. Whereas, some
- merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic, will
- oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition,
- mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in
- Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon
- each other's rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea,
- they first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such
- a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down
- hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As touching
- Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run
- away from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they
- chance to cross each other's cross-bones, the first hail is--"How many
- skulls?"--the same way that whalers hail--"How many barrels?" And that
- question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are
- infernal villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each
- other's villanous likenesses.
- But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
- free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another
- whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a "GAM," a thing so
- utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name
- even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and
- repeat gamesome stuff about "spouters" and "blubber-boilers," and such
- like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and also
- all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such
- a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be
- hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to
- know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about
- it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the
- gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has
- no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude,
- that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that
- assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on.
- But what is a GAM? You might wear out your index-finger running up and
- down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson
- never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's ark does not hold it.
- Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in
- constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly,
- it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With
- that view, let me learnedly define it.
- GAM. NOUN--A SOCIAL MEETING OF TWO (OR MORE) WHALESHIPS, GENERALLY ON A
- CRUISING-GROUND; WHEN, AFTER EXCHANGING HAILS, THEY EXCHANGE VISITS BY
- BOATS' CREWS; THE TWO CAPTAINS REMAINING, FOR THE TIME, ON BOARD OF ONE
- SHIP, AND THE TWO CHIEF MATES ON THE OTHER.
- There is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten
- here. All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so
- has the whale fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when
- the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern
- sheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often
- steers himself with a pretty little milliner's tiller decorated with
- gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa of
- that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. High times indeed, if whaling
- captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old aldermen
- in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of
- any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete boat's crew
- must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of
- the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and
- the captain, having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit
- all standing like a pine tree. And often you will notice that being
- conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from
- the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to the
- importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor is
- this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting
- steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the
- after-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus
- completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself
- sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent
- pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of
- foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a
- spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again,
- it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes, it would
- never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying
- himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with
- his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he
- generally carries his hands in his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps being
- generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast.
- Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones too,
- where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment or
- two, in a sudden squall say--to seize hold of the nearest oarsman's
- hair, and hold on there like grim death.
- CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho's Story.
- (AS TOLD AT THE GOLDEN INN)
- The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is
- much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet
- more travellers than in any other part.
- It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another
- homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned
- almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave
- us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White
- Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's
- story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain
- wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God
- which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance,
- with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the
- secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears
- of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was
- unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private
- property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it
- seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy,
- but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed
- so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well
- withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing
- have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of
- it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in
- this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never
- transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper
- place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the
- ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting
- record.
- *The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head,
- still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.
- For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated
- it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint's eve,
- smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those
- fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer
- terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally
- put, and which are duly answered at the time.
- "Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about
- rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket,
- was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' sail eastward
- from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the
- northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according to
- daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than
- common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the
- captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck
- awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit
- them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though,
- indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low down
- as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her
- cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals;
- but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was the leak yet
- undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking
- some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest
- harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.
- "Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance
- favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way,
- because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at
- them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free;
- never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the
- whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the
- Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port
- without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the
- brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly
- provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.
- "'Lakeman!--Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?'
- said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.
- "On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but--I crave your
- courtesy--may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now,
- gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as
- large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far
- Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet
- been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly
- connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate,
- those grand fresh-water seas of ours,--Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and
- Superior, and Michigan,--possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many
- of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of
- races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles,
- even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great
- contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime
- approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted
- all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon by batteries,
- and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the
- fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their
- beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out
- their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient
- and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines
- of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric
- beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes
- to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and
- Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the
- full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer,
- and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as
- direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are,
- for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many
- a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though
- an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured;
- as much of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his
- infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse
- at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long followed our
- austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as
- vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh
- from the latitudes of buck-horn handled bowie-knives. Yet was this
- Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a
- mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible
- firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition
- which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had
- long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved
- so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt--but,
- gentlemen, you shall hear.
- "It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing
- her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again
- increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps
- every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our
- Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their whole
- way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer of
- the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability
- would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on
- account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the
- solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it
- altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles in
- full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie
- along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat
- is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of
- the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that her
- captain begins to feel a little anxious.
- "Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found
- gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by
- several of her company; especially by Radney the mate. He commanded
- the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way
- expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a
- coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness
- touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or
- on sea that you can conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when
- he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the
- seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner in
- her. So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was on
- this head no small gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood
- with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water;
- clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen--that bubbling from the pumps
- ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee
- scupper-holes.
- "Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional
- world of ours--watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command
- over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his
- superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he
- conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a
- chance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and
- make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may,
- gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a
- head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings
- of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and
- a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he
- been born son to Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly
- as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love
- Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.
- "Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the
- rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with
- his gay banterings.
- "'Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one
- of ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell
- ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best cut away
- his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish
- only began the job; he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters,
- saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of 'em
- are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom; making
- improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump
- overboard and scatter 'em. They're playing the devil with his estate, I
- can tell him. But he's a simple old soul,--Rad, and a beauty too. Boys,
- they say the rest of his property is invested in looking-glasses. I
- wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the model of his nose.'
- "'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared Radney,
- pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. 'Thunder away at it!'
- "'Aye, aye, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively, boys,
- lively, now!' And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines;
- the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping
- of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life's
- utmost energies.
- "Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went
- forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face
- fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his
- brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney
- to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know
- not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate
- commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a
- shovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig
- to run at large.
- "Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household
- work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every
- evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually
- foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of
- sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom
- would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all
- vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys,
- if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho
- that had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being
- the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly
- assigned captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should have
- been freed from any trivial business not connected with truly nautical
- duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention all these
- particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood
- between the two men.
- "But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as
- plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat
- in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will
- understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully
- comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat still for
- a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's malignant eye and
- perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him and the slow-match
- silently burning along towards them; as he instinctively saw all
- this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper
- passionateness in any already ireful being--a repugnance most felt, when
- felt at all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved--this nameless
- phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.
- "Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily
- exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that sweeping
- the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And then, without
- at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customary
- sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done little or
- nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a most
- domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his
- command; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an
- uplifted cooper's club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by.
- "Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for
- all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt
- could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still
- smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained
- doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the
- hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do
- his bidding.
- "Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily
- followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated his
- intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had not
- the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his
- twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it was to
- no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the windlass;
- when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had
- now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on
- the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:
- "'Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to
- yourself.' But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where
- the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of
- his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions.
- Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye
- with the unflinching poniard of his glance, Steelkilt, clenching
- his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back, told his
- persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt) would
- murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter
- by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant
- the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch
- spouting blood like a whale.
- "Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays
- leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their
- mastheads. They were both Canallers.
- "'Canallers!' cried Don Pedro. 'We have seen many whale-ships in our
- harbours, but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon: who and what are
- they?'
- "'Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You
- must have heard of it.'
- "'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary
- land, we know but little of your vigorous North.'
- "'Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha's very fine; and
- ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such
- information may throw side-light upon my story.'
- "For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire
- breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and
- most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and
- affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room
- and bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman
- arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or
- broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk
- counties; and especially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires
- stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly
- corrupt and often lawless life. There's your true Ashantee, gentlemen;
- there howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you;
- under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronising lee of churches.
- For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan
- freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so
- sinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities.
- "'Is that a friar passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the
- crowded plazza, with humorous concern.
- "'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in
- Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian. 'Proceed, Senor.'
- "'A moment! Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of all
- us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by
- no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima
- for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look
- surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast--"Corrupt as
- Lima." It but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentiful than
- billiard-tables, and for ever open--and "Corrupt as Lima." So, too,
- Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St.
- Mark!--St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you
- pour out again.'
- "Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would make
- a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he. Like
- Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile,
- he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra,
- ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this
- effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly
- sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features.
- A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he
- floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities.
- Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of
- these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful;
- but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of
- violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger
- in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the
- wildness of this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this; that
- our wild whale-fishery contains so many of its most finished graduates,
- and that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney men, are so much
- distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish the
- curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and
- young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal
- furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian
- corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric
- seas.
- "'I see! I see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha
- upon his silvery ruffles. 'No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I
- had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold
- and holy as the hills.--But the story.'
- "I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly
- had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the
- four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the
- ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, and
- sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle. Others of the
- sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued;
- while standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down
- with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious
- scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran
- close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into
- the heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his
- resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them
- all; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily
- slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass,
- these sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade.
- "'Come out of that, ye pirates!' roared the captain, now menacing them
- with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. 'Come
- out of that, ye cut-throats!'
- "Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there,
- defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to
- understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt's) death would be the signal
- for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in his heart
- lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little desisted, but
- still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty.
- "'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their
- ringleader.
- "'Turn to! turn to!--I make no promise;--to your duty! Do you want to
- sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!' and he
- once more raised a pistol.
- "'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt. 'Aye, let her sink. Not a man of us
- turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say
- ye, men?' turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.
- "The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye
- on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:--'It's not our
- fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was
- boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to
- prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his
- cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there,
- men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to
- yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready
- to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but we won't be
- flogged.'
- "'Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!'
- "'Look ye, now,' cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him,
- 'there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped
- for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our
- discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's
- not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we
- won't be flogged.'
- "'Turn to!' roared the Captain.
- "Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:--'I tell you what
- it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby
- rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till
- you say the word about not flogging us, we don't do a hand's turn.'
- "'Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there till
- ye're sick of it. Down ye go.'
- "'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against
- it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down
- into their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave.
- "As the Lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks, the Captain
- and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide
- of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly called
- for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the
- companionway.
- "Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something
- down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them--ten in
- number--leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained
- neutral.
- "All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and
- aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which
- last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking
- through the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace;
- the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps,
- whose clinking and clanking at intervals through the dreary night
- dismally resounded through the ship.
- "At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck, summoned
- the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was then
- lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed
- after it; when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the
- Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days
- this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and
- then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and
- suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready
- to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united
- perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to
- surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his
- demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to
- stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth
- morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the
- desperate arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left.
- "'Better turn to, now?' said the Captain with a heartless jeer.
- "'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt.
- "'Oh certainly,' said the Captain, and the key clicked.
- "It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of seven
- of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last
- hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as
- the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two
- Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of
- their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their
- keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle
- at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any
- devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he
- would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was the
- last night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no
- opposition on the part of the other two; they swore they were ready for
- that, or for any other mad thing, for anything in short but a surrender.
- And what was more, they each insisted upon being the first man on deck,
- when the time to make the rush should come. But to this their leader as
- fiercely objected, reserving that priority for himself; particularly as
- his two comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter;
- and both of them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one
- man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants
- must come out.
- "Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own
- separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece
- of treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be
- the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; and
- thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit.
- But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to
- the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villany, mixed
- their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader
- fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three
- sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords;
- and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight.
- "Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and
- all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a
- few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still
- struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious
- allies, who at once claimed the honour of securing a man who had been
- fully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along
- the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the
- mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till
- morning. 'Damn ye,' cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them,
- 'the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!'
- "At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had rebelled
- from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former that
- he had a good mind to flog them all round--thought, upon the whole,
- he would do so--he ought to--justice demanded it; but for the present,
- considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with a
- reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.
- "'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to the three men in the
- rigging--'for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;' and,
- seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the
- two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads
- sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.
- "'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is still
- rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up. Take
- that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.'
- "For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his
- cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort
- of hiss, 'What I say is this--and mind it well--if you flog me, I murder
- you!'
- "'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'--and the Captain drew off with
- the rope to strike.
- "'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.
- "'But I must,'--and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.
- "Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Captain;
- who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck rapidly
- two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said, 'I
- won't do it--let him go--cut him down: d'ye hear?'
- "But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale man,
- with a bandaged head, arrested them--Radney the chief mate. Ever since
- the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the tumult
- on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole
- scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak;
- but mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the
- captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his
- pinioned foe.
- "'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman.
- "'So I am, but take that.' The mate was in the very act of striking,
- when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing
- no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat, whatever that
- might have been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned
- to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as
- before.
- "Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor
- was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up,
- besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.
- Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own
- instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still, no
- sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed,
- that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain
- the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the
- ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the
- speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing--namely,
- not to sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For,
- spite of her leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still
- maintained her mast-heads, and her captain was just as willing to
- lower for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the
- cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his
- berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the
- vital jaw of the whale.
- "But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
- passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all
- was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who
- had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the chief
- mate's watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than
- half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he insisted,
- against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the head
- of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other circumstances,
- Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.
- "During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
- bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of
- the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side.
- In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a
- considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between
- this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next
- trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the morning of the
- third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure,
- he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his
- watches below.
- "'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.
- "'What do you think? what does it look like?'
- "'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'
- "'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length
- before him; 'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough
- twine,--have you any?'
- "But there was none in the forecastle.
- "'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.
- "'You don't mean to go a begging to HIM!' said a sailor.
- "'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help himself
- in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at him
- quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given
- him--neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night
- an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the
- Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for
- a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm--nigh
- to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready dug to
- the seaman's hand--that fatal hour was then to come; and in the
- fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and
- stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.
- "But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody
- deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the
- avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in
- to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have
- done.
- "It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second
- day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man,
- drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she
- rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick.
- "'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do
- whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?'
- "'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;--but
- that would be too long a story.'
- "'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.
- "'Nay, Dons, Dons--nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more
- into the air, Sirs.'
- "'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend looks
- faint;--fill up his empty glass!'
- "No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.--Now, gentlemen,
- so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the
- ship--forgetful of the compact among the crew--in the excitement of the
- moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted
- his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been
- plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy.
- 'The White Whale--the White Whale!' was the cry from captain, mates,
- and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious
- to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed
- askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass,
- that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like
- a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality
- pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out
- before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the
- mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while
- Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken
- the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats were
- lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely with
- delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff
- pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to
- the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his
- bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing
- loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that
- blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as
- against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate.
- That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted,
- and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the
- sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray,
- and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to
- remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round
- in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing
- high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.
- "Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had
- slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly
- looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific,
- downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He
- cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose
- again, with some tatters of Radney's red woollen shirt, caught in the
- teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the
- whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.
- "In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port--a savage, solitary
- place--where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the
- Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted
- among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double
- war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.
- "The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called
- upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving
- down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over
- their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both
- by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent,
- that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such a
- weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so
- heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the
- ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon
- from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the
- Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with
- him, and setting the sail of his best whale-boat, steered straight
- before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a
- reinforcement to his crew.
- "On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed
- to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but
- the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt
- hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water. The captain
- presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes,
- the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so
- much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.
- "'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.
- "'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?' demanded Steelkilt;
- 'no lies.'
- "'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'
- "'Very good. Let me board you a moment--I come in peace.' With that he
- leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood
- face to face with the captain.
- "'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me.
- As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder
- island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightning strike
- me!'
- "'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman. 'Adios, Senor!' and leaping
- into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.
- "Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the
- roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time
- arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck befriended
- him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially
- in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They
- embarked; and so for ever got the start of their former captain, had he
- been at all minded to work them legal retribution.
- "Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived,
- and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized
- Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small
- native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all
- right there, again resumed his cruisings.
- "Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of
- Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses
- to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that
- destroyed him.
- "'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.
- "'I am, Don.'
- "'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,
- this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful!
- Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to
- press.'
- "'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don
- Sebastian's suit,' cried the company, with exceeding interest.
- "'Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?'
- "'Nay,' said Don Sebastian; 'but I know a worthy priest near by, who
- will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised?
- this may grow too serious.'
- "'Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?'
- "'Though there are no Auto-da-Fe's in Lima now,' said one of the company
- to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy.
- Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need of this.'
- "'Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg
- that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists
- you can.'
- "'This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,' said Don Sebastian,
- gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.
- "'Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light,
- and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.
- "'So help me Heaven, and on my honour the story I have told ye,
- gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be
- true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have
- seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.'"
- CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
- I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
- something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the
- eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored
- alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there.
- It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those
- curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day
- confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the
- world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
- wrong.
- It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
- be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For
- ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble
- panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,
- medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of
- chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St. George's; ever
- since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed, not
- only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific
- presentations of him.
- Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to
- be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta,
- in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of
- that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable
- avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came
- into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of
- whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale
- referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the
- incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the
- Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so
- as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is
- all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the
- broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes.
- But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter's
- portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian
- Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the
- sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a strange
- creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his
- own "Perseus Descending," make out one whit better. The huge corpulence
- of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing
- one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its
- distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be
- taken for the Traitors' Gate leading from the Thames by water into the
- Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and
- Jonah's whale, as depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of
- old primers. What shall be said of these? As for the book-binder's whale
- winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor--as
- stamped and gilded on the backs and title-pages of many books both
- old and new--that is a very picturesque but purely fabulous creature,
- imitated, I take it, from the like figures on antique vases.
- Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call this
- book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended
- when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old
- Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the Revival
- of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a comparatively
- late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a species of the
- Leviathan.
- In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you will
- at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all manner
- of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden,
- come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the
- original edition of the "Advancement of Learning" you will find some
- curious whales.
- But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those
- pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations,
- by those who know. In old Harris's collection of voyages there are some
- plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671,
- entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the
- Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master." In one of those plates the
- whales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among ice-isles,
- with white bears running over their living backs. In another plate, the
- prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendicular
- flukes.
- Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett,
- a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage round Cape Horn
- into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale
- Fisheries." In this book is an outline purporting to be a "Picture of
- a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from one killed on the
- coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on deck." I doubt not the
- captain had this veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines.
- To mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which
- applied, according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm
- whale, would make the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet
- long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out
- of that eye!
- Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for
- the benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of
- mistake. Look at that popular work "Goldsmith's Animated Nature." In the
- abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged "whale"
- and a "narwhale." I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly
- whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale, one
- glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century
- such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent
- public of schoolboys.
- Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede, a great
- naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
- several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these
- are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland
- whale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long
- experienced man as touching that species, declares not to have its
- counterpart in nature.
- But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
- reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous
- Baron. In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which he
- gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that
- picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your summary
- retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not
- a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had the benefit of
- a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he derived that
- picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor
- in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions; that
- is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the pencil
- those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers inform us.
- As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the
- shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally
- Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage; breakfasting
- on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners:
- their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.
- But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
- surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have
- been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a
- drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly represent
- the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars.
- Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the living Leviathan
- has never yet fairly floated himself for his portrait. The living whale,
- in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in
- unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight,
- like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a
- thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the
- air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations. And, not
- to speak of the highly presumable difference of contour between a young
- sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the
- case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such
- is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that
- his precise expression the devil himself could not catch.
- But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded
- whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all.
- For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that
- his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy
- Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of
- his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian
- old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading personal characteristics;
- yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan's
- articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton
- of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded
- animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes
- it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some
- part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously
- displayed in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to
- the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four
- regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But
- all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human
- fingers in an artificial covering. "However recklessly the whale may
- sometimes serve us," said humorous Stubb one day, "he can never be truly
- said to handle us without mittens."
- For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs
- conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world
- which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit
- the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very
- considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding
- out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in
- which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is
- by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of
- being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had
- best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.
- CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True
- Pictures of Whaling Scenes.
- In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly
- tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of
- them which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern,
- especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass
- that matter by.
- I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;
- Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's. In the previous
- chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins's is far
- better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best. All Beale's
- drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the
- picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second
- chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no
- doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is
- admirably correct and life-like in its general effect. Some of the Sperm
- Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they
- are wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though.
- Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they
- are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has
- but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because
- it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you can derive
- anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living
- hunters.
- But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details
- not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to
- be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed,
- and taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent
- attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble
- Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath
- the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the air
- upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of
- the boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon
- the monster's spine; and standing in that prow, for that one single
- incomputable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the
- incensed boiling spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping, as if
- from a precipice. The action of the whole thing is wonderfully good and
- true. The half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened sea; the wooden
- poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads of the
- swimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting expressions
- of affright; while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing down
- upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details
- of this whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I could not
- draw so good a one.
- In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside
- the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his black
- weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian
- cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so
- abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave
- supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the
- small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the
- Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while
- the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of
- tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock
- in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean
- steamer. Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; but behind, in
- admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the
- drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of
- a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture lazily
- hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole.
- Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he
- was either practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously
- tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for
- painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe, and
- where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion
- on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder
- fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles of
- France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the
- successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned
- centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these sea
- battle-pieces of Garnery.
- The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of
- things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings
- they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England's
- experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the
- Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only
- finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of
- the whale hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale
- draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline
- of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as
- picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching
- the profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right
- whaleman, after giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale,
- and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats
- us to a series of classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives,
- and grapnels; and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck
- submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of
- magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent
- voyager (I honour him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it
- was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a
- sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.
- In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other
- French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes himself
- "H. Durand." One of them, though not precisely adapted to our present
- purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet
- noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French whaler anchored,
- inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the loosened sails
- of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms in the background, both
- drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is very fine, when
- considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen under
- one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is
- quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the
- very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the
- vessel (in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a
- quay; and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is
- about giving chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and lances
- lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its
- hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands
- half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship, the
- smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke
- over a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up
- with earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the
- excited seamen.
- CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in
- Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.
- On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a
- crippled beggar (or KEDGER, as the sailors say) holding a painted board
- before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg.
- There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed
- to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being
- crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years,
- they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and exhibited that
- stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification has
- now come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in
- Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you
- will find in the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on
- that stump, never a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with
- downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating his own amputation.
- Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and
- Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and
- whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth,
- or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other
- like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little
- ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material,
- in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes
- of dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the
- skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with their
- jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor,
- they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner's
- fancy.
- Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man
- to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery.
- Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a
- savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready
- at any moment to rebel against him.
- Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic
- hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian
- war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of
- carving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon.
- For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark's tooth, that
- miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has
- cost steady years of steady application.
- As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the
- same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth, of
- his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not
- quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design,
- as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full of barbaric spirit
- and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert
- Durer.
- Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of
- the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles
- of American whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy.
- At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung
- by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is
- sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking
- whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some
- old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for
- weather-cocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all
- intents and purposes so labelled with "HANDS OFF!" you cannot examine
- them closely enough to decide upon their merit.
- In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
- cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the
- plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the
- Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against
- them in a surf of green surges.
- Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually
- girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky
- point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of
- whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough
- whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you wish
- to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact
- intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else
- so chance-like are such observations of the hills, that your precise,
- previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery; like the
- Soloma Islands, which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed
- Mendanna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them.
- Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out
- great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as
- when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies
- locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased
- Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright
- points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic
- skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the
- starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying
- Fish.
- With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for
- spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to
- see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie
- encamped beyond my mortal sight!
- CHAPTER 58. Brit.
- Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows
- of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale
- largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we
- seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat.
- On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from
- the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly
- swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that
- wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated
- from the water that escaped at the lip.
- As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance
- their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these
- monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving
- behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*
- *That part of the sea known among whalemen as the "Brazil Banks" does
- not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there
- being shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable
- meadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually
- floating in those latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.
- But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all
- reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they
- paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked
- more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in the
- great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance will
- sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing them
- to be such, taking them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil; even
- so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this species of the
- leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at last, their immense
- magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that such bulky masses
- of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort
- of life that lives in a dog or a horse.
- Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the
- deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though
- some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are
- of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of
- the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for
- example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to
- the sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any
- generic respect be said to bear comparative analogy to him.
- But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the
- seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and
- repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita,
- so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his
- one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific
- of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen
- tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters;
- though but a moment's consideration will teach, that however baby man
- may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering
- future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever,
- to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize
- the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the
- continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense
- of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.
- The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
- vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a widow.
- That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships
- of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided;
- two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
- Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a
- miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews,
- when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened
- and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in
- precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews.
- But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it
- is also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host who
- murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath
- spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her
- own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks,
- and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No
- mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad
- battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the
- globe.
- Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide
- under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden
- beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish
- brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the
- dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more,
- the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each
- other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
- Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile
- earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a
- strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean
- surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular
- Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the
- half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst
- never return!
- CHAPTER 59. Squid.
- Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her
- way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling
- her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering
- masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a
- plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely,
- alluring jet would be seen.
- But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural
- spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when
- the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid
- across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the slippered waves whispered
- together as they softly ran on; in this profound hush of the visible
- sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the main-mast-head.
- In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and
- higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before
- our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening
- for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose,
- and silently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick?
- thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on re-appearing once
- more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the
- negro yelled out--"There! there again! there she breaches! right ahead!
- The White Whale, the White Whale!"
- Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time the
- bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab stood on
- the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave
- his orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction
- indicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo.
- Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
- gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect the
- ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the particular
- whale he pursued; however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed
- him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly
- perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave
- orders for lowering.
- The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab's in advance, and all
- swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with
- oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same
- spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for
- the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous
- phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind.
- A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing
- cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating
- from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as
- if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible
- face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or
- instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless,
- chance-like apparition of life.
- As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still
- gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice
- exclaimed--"Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to
- have seen thee, thou white ghost!"
- "What was it, Sir?" said Flask.
- "The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and
- returned to their ports to tell of it."
- But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel;
- the rest as silently following.
- Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected with
- the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it being
- so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with
- portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of them
- declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few
- of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its true nature and
- form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to the sperm whale
- his only food. For though other species of whales find their food above
- water, and may be seen by man in the act of feeding, the spermaceti
- whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones below the surface; and
- only by inference is it that any one can tell of what, precisely, that
- food consists. At times, when closely pursued, he will disgorge what
- are supposed to be the detached arms of the squid; some of them thus
- exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet in length. They fancy that
- the monster to which these arms belonged ordinarily clings by them to
- the bed of the ocean; and that the sperm whale, unlike other species, is
- supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it.
- There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop
- Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in
- which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with
- some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond.
- But much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he
- assigns it.
- By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
- creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of cuttle-fish,
- to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would seem to belong,
- but only as the Anak of the tribe.
- CHAPTER 60. The Line.
- With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as
- for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented,
- I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.
- The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly
- vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary
- ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to
- the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the
- sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity
- too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must
- be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general
- by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it
- may give it compactness and gloss.
- Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
- entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not
- so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and
- I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things), is much more
- handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark
- fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian
- to behold.
- The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first
- sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment
- its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and
- twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal
- to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something
- over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally
- coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so
- as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or
- layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart,"
- or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least
- tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take
- somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used
- in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an
- entire morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then
- reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act
- of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and twists.
- In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line
- being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this;
- because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into the
- boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly
- three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky
- freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch in thickness; for
- the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up
- a considerable distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated
- one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the American line-tub,
- the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great
- wedding-cake to present to the whales.
- Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
- eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the
- tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything.
- This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First:
- In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a
- neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as
- to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to the
- harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug
- of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the
- first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This
- arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the
- lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the
- whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking
- minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed
- boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of
- the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.
- Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is
- taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again
- carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon
- the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs against his wrist
- in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at
- the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme
- pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a
- common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs
- in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat
- again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled
- upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a
- little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp--the rope
- which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that
- connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious
- to detail.
- Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
- twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the
- oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid
- eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest
- snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal
- woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies,
- and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any
- unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible
- contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus
- circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones
- to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit--strange thing! what
- cannot habit accomplish?--Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes,
- and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you
- will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus
- hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before
- King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death,
- with a halter around every neck, as you may say.
- Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for
- those repeated whaling disasters--some few of which are casually
- chronicled--of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the
- line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in
- the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings
- of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and
- wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the
- heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and
- you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning;
- and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of
- volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run
- away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.
- Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
- prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
- for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and
- contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal
- powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the
- line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought
- into actual play--this is a thing which carries more of true terror than
- any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men
- live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their
- necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death,
- that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.
- And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would
- not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before
- your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.
- CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
- If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to
- Queequeg it was quite a different object.
- "When you see him 'quid," said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow
- of his hoisted boat, "then you quick see him 'parm whale."
- The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special
- to engage them, the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep
- induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through
- which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground;
- that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish,
- and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the
- Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.
- It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders
- leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in
- what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that
- dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my
- body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long
- after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.
- Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen
- at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at last
- all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing
- that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman.
- The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the wide trance
- of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.
- Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my
- hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me;
- with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not forty
- fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the
- capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue,
- glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in
- the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury
- jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm
- afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some
- enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once
- started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts
- of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted
- forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted
- the sparkling brine into the air.
- "Clear away the boats! Luff!" cried Ahab. And obeying his own order, he
- dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.
- The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and ere
- the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the leeward,
- but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he
- swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave
- orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in
- whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats,
- we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the
- noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the
- monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and
- then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up.
- "There go flukes!" was the cry, an announcement immediately followed by
- Stubb's producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a respite was
- granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale
- rose again, and being now in advance of the smoker's boat, and much
- nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honour
- of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale had at length become
- aware of his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was therefore no
- longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And
- still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault.
- Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy,
- he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting from the mad
- yeast which he brewed.*
- *It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance
- the entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists. Though
- apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about
- him. So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does
- so when going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the
- upper part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water
- formation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he
- thereby may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish
- galliot into a sharppointed New York pilot-boat.
- "Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry yourselves; take plenty of
- time--but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all," cried
- Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. "Start her, now; give 'em
- the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy--start
- her, all; but keep cool, keep cool--cucumbers is the word--easy,
- easy--only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the
- buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys--that's all. Start
- her!"
- "Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!" screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some
- old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat
- involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke
- which the eager Indian gave.
- But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. "Kee-hee!
- Kee-hee!" yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat,
- like a pacing tiger in his cage.
- "Ka-la! Koo-loo!" howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a
- mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels
- cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still
- encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from
- his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the
- welcome cry was heard--"Stand up, Tashtego!--give it to him!" The
- harpoon was hurled. "Stern all!" The oarsmen backed water; the same
- moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists.
- It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two
- additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its
- increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled
- with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed round and
- round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that point, it
- blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's hands, from
- which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at
- these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy's
- sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving
- to wrest it out of your clutch.
- "Wet the line! wet the line!" cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated
- by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it.* More
- turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now
- flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego
- here changed places--stem for stern--a staggering business truly in that
- rocking commotion.
- *Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be
- stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the
- running line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or
- bailer, is set apart for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most
- convenient.
- From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of
- the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you would
- have thought the craft had two keels--one cleaving the water, the other
- the air--as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once.
- A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in
- her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little
- finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale
- into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging
- to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of
- Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring
- down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed
- as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened
- his flight.
- "Haul in--haul in!" cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round
- towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet
- the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly
- planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the
- flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning
- out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then ranging up for
- another fling.
- The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a
- hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled
- and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing
- upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every
- face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all
- the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the
- spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of
- the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked
- lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and
- again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again
- sent it into the whale.
- "Pull up--pull up!" he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale
- relaxed in his wrath. "Pull up!--close to!" and the boat ranged along
- the fish's flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned
- his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully
- churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold
- watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of
- breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the
- innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from
- his trance into that unspeakable thing called his "flurry," the monster
- horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable,
- mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping
- astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied
- twilight into the clear air of the day.
- And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view;
- surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his
- spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush
- after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red
- wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping
- down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!
- "He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo.
- "Yes; both pipes smoked out!" and withdrawing his own from his mouth,
- Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood
- thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.
- CHAPTER 62. The Dart.
- A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.
- According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes
- off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary
- steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost
- oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous
- arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in what is called
- a long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the distance of
- twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged and exhausting the chase,
- the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost;
- indeed, he is expected to set an example of superhuman activity to the
- rest, not only by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid
- exclamations; and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's
- compass, while all the other muscles are strained and half started--what
- that is none know but those who have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl
- very heartily and work very recklessly at one and the same time. In this
- straining, bawling state, then, with his back to the fish, all at once
- the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry--"Stand up, and give it
- to him!" He now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round on his
- centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little
- strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale. No
- wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty
- fair chances for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so many
- hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some
- of them actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that
- some sperm whalemen are absent four years with four barrels; no wonder
- that to many ship owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the
- harpooneer that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his
- body how can you expect to find it there when most wanted!
- Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant,
- that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and harpooneer
- likewise start to running fore and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of
- themselves and every one else. It is then they change places; and
- the headsman, the chief officer of the little craft, takes his proper
- station in the bows of the boat.
- Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish
- and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from first to
- last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing
- whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances obvious
- to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a slight loss
- of speed in the chase; but long experience in various whalemen of more
- than one nation has convinced me that in the vast majority of failures
- in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much the speed of the
- whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that has
- caused them.
- To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this
- world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of
- toil.
- CHAPTER 63. The Crotch.
- Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in
- productive subjects, grow the chapters.
- The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention.
- It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length, which
- is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow,
- for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the
- harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow.
- Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it
- up as readily from its rest as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from
- the wall. It is customary to have two harpoons reposing in the crotch,
- respectively called the first and second irons.
- But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with
- the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
- instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the coming
- drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It is a
- doubling of the chances. But it very often happens that owing to the
- instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale upon receiving
- the first iron, it becomes impossible for the harpooneer, however
- lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the second iron into him.
- Nevertheless, as the second iron is already connected with the line,
- and the line is running, hence that weapon must, at all events, be
- anticipatingly tossed out of the boat, somehow and somewhere; else the
- most terrible jeopardy would involve all hands. Tumbled into the water,
- it accordingly is in such cases; the spare coils of box line (mentioned
- in a preceding chapter) making this feat, in most instances, prudently
- practicable. But this critical act is not always unattended with the
- saddest and most fatal casualties.
- Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
- overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror,
- skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the lines,
- or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all directions.
- Nor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until the whale is
- fairly captured and a corpse.
- Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging
- one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these
- qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of
- such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be
- simultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is supplied
- with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the first one
- be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these particulars are
- faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to elucidate several
- most important, however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be
- painted.
- CHAPTER 64. Stubb's Supper.
- Stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was
- a calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow
- business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men
- with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers,
- slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse in the
- sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long intervals;
- good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass we
- moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever they call
- it, in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will draw a bulky
- freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but this grand argosy we
- towed heavily forged along, as if laden with pig-lead in bulk.
- Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod's
- main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab
- dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing
- the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual orders for securing
- it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman, went his way
- into the cabin, and did not come forward again until morning.
- Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had
- evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the creature
- was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed
- working in him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that
- Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand other whales were
- brought to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his grand,
- monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought from the sound on
- the Pequod's decks, that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in
- the deep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck, and thrust
- rattling out of the port-holes. But by those clanking links, the vast
- corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied by the head to the
- stern, and by the tail to the bows, the whale now lies with its black
- hull close to the vessel's and seen through the darkness of the night,
- which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the two--ship and whale,
- seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines while
- the other remains standing.*
- *A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
- reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside,
- is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part
- is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its
- flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so
- that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to
- put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a
- small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end, and
- a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to the ship. By
- adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side
- of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily
- made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last locked
- fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with
- its broad flukes or lobes.
- If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known
- on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an
- unusual but still good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was
- he in that the staid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned
- to him for the time the sole management of affairs. One small, helping
- cause of all this liveliness in Stubb, was soon made strangely manifest.
- Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale
- as a flavorish thing to his palate.
- "A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut
- me one from his small!"
- Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a general
- thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy defray
- the current expenses of the war (at least before realizing the proceeds
- of the voyage), yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers
- who have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm Whale
- designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering extremity of the body.
- About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two
- lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper
- at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb
- the only banqueter on whale's flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings
- with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming
- round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness. The few
- sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping
- of their tails against the hull, within a few inches of the sleepers'
- hearts. Peering over the side you could just see them (as before you
- heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and turning over on
- their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the
- bigness of a human head. This particular feat of the shark seems all
- but miraculous. How at such an apparently unassailable surface, they
- contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the
- universal problem of all things. The mark they thus leave on the whale,
- may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking
- for a screw.
- Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks
- will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs
- round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down
- every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant
- butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's
- live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks,
- also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away
- under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole
- affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that
- is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and
- though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships
- crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in
- case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently
- buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down,
- touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most
- socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no
- conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless
- numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm
- whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never
- seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of
- devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.
- But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was
- going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his
- own epicurean lips.
- "Cook, cook!--where's that old Fleece?" he cried at length, widening
- his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper;
- and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing
- with his lance; "cook, you cook!--sail this way, cook!"
- The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously
- roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling
- along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something
- the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like
- his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and
- limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy
- fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops; this old Ebony floundered
- along, and in obedience to the word of command, came to a dead stop on
- the opposite side of Stubb's sideboard; when, with both hands folded
- before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back
- still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as
- to bring his best ear into play.
- "Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his
- mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone? You've been
- beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender. Don't I always say
- that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks
- now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a
- shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are
- welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must
- keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and
- deliver my message. Here, take this lantern," snatching one from his
- sideboard; "now then, go and preach to 'em!"
- Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck
- to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low over the
- sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand
- he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a
- mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling
- behind, overheard all that was said.
- "Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam
- noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lips! Massa Stubb say
- dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you
- must stop dat dam racket!"
- "Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden slap
- on the shoulder,--"Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear that way
- when you're preaching. That's no way to convert sinners, cook!"
- "Who dat? Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turning to go.
- "No, cook; go on, go on."
- "Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:"--
- "Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to it; try that," and
- Fleece continued.
- "Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you,
- fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness--'top dat dam slappin' ob de
- tail! How you tink to hear, spose you keep up such a dam slappin' and
- bitin' dare?"
- "Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have that swearing. Talk to
- 'em gentlemanly."
- Once more the sermon proceeded.
- "Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for; dat
- is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de
- pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den
- you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned.
- Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping
- yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber out your
- neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat
- whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale
- belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger
- dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat
- de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid, but to bit off de blubber
- for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge to help
- demselves."
- "Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on."
- "No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scougin' and slappin' each
- oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word; no use a-preaching to
- such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is full, and dare
- bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get 'em full, dey wont hear you
- den; for den dey sink in the sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and
- can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber."
- "Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction,
- Fleece, and I'll away to my supper."
- Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his
- shrill voice, and cried--
- "Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill
- your dam bellies 'till dey bust--and den die."
- "Now, cook," said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; "stand
- just where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular
- attention."
- "All 'dention," said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the
- desired position.
- "Well," said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; "I shall now go
- back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you,
- cook?"
- "What dat do wid de 'teak," said the old black, testily.
- "Silence! How old are you, cook?"
- "'Bout ninety, dey say," he gloomily muttered.
- "And you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, cook,
- and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak?" rapidly bolting another
- mouthful at the last word, so that morsel seemed a continuation of the
- question. "Where were you born, cook?"
- "'Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roanoke."
- "Born in a ferry-boat! That's queer, too. But I want to know what
- country you were born in, cook!"
- "Didn't I say de Roanoke country?" he cried sharply.
- "No, you didn't, cook; but I'll tell you what I'm coming to, cook.
- You must go home and be born over again; you don't know how to cook a
- whale-steak yet."
- "Bress my soul, if I cook noder one," he growled, angrily, turning round
- to depart.
- "Come back here, cook;--here, hand me those tongs;--now take that bit of
- steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be?
- Take it, I say"--holding the tongs towards him--"take it, and taste it."
- Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old negro
- muttered, "Best cooked 'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy."
- "Cook," said Stubb, squaring himself once more; "do you belong to the
- church?"
- "Passed one once in Cape-Down," said the old man sullenly.
- "And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town, where
- you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his
- beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here, and
- tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?" said Stubb. "Where
- do you expect to go to, cook?"
- "Go to bed berry soon," he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.
- "Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It's an awful question. Now
- what's your answer?"
- "When dis old brack man dies," said the negro slowly, changing his whole
- air and demeanor, "he hisself won't go nowhere; but some bressed angel
- will come and fetch him."
- "Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah? And fetch
- him where?"
- "Up dere," said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and
- keeping it there very solemnly.
- "So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook, when you
- are dead? But don't you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets?
- Main-top, eh?"
- "Didn't say dat t'all," said Fleece, again in the sulks.
- "You said up there, didn't you? and now look yourself, and see where
- your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by
- crawling through the lubber's hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you don't
- get there, except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It's a
- ticklish business, but must be done, or else it's no go. But none of
- us are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my orders. Do ye
- hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t'other a'top of your heart,
- when I'm giving my orders, cook. What! that your heart, there?--that's
- your gizzard! Aloft! aloft!--that's it--now you have it. Hold it there
- now, and pay attention."
- "All 'dention," said the old black, with both hands placed as desired,
- vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at
- one and the same time.
- "Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad,
- that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that, don't
- you? Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for my
- private table here, the capstan, I'll tell you what to do so as not to
- spoil it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live coal
- to it with the other; that done, dish it; d'ye hear? And now to-morrow,
- cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure you stand by to get
- the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle. As for the ends of the
- flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now ye may go."
- But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.
- "Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch.
- D'ye hear? away you sail, then.--Halloa! stop! make a bow before you
- go.--Avast heaving again! Whale-balls for breakfast--don't forget."
- "Wish, by gor! whale eat him, 'stead of him eat whale. I'm bressed if
- he ain't more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself," muttered the old man,
- limping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.
- CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish.
- That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and,
- like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so
- outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and
- philosophy of it.
- It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right
- Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large
- prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a certain cook of the
- court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be
- eaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of
- whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating. The
- meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being well
- seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls.
- The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a great
- porpoise grant from the crown.
- The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all
- hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but
- when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet
- long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men
- like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not
- so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have rare
- old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous
- doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly
- juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain Englishmen, who
- long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel--that
- these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of
- whales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among
- the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called "fritters"; which, indeed,
- they greatly resemble, being brown and crisp, and smelling something
- like old Amsterdam housewives' dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They
- have such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can hardly
- keep his hands off.
- But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his
- exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be
- delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as
- the buffalo's (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid
- pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that
- is; like the transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the
- third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for
- butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into
- some other substance, and then partaking of it. In the long try
- watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip their
- ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile. Many
- a good supper have I thus made.
- In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish.
- The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump,
- whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings),
- they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess,
- in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish among
- some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the
- epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to
- have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a
- calf's head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon
- discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with an
- intelligent looking calf's head before him, is somehow one of the
- saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at
- him, with an "Et tu Brute!" expression.
- It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
- unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence;
- that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before
- mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea,
- and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever
- murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if
- he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and
- he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market
- of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the
- long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of
- the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will
- be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in
- his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that
- provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized
- and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest
- on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.
- But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is
- adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my
- civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is
- that handle made of?--what but the bones of the brother of the very ox
- you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring
- that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did
- the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders
- formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two
- that that society passed a resolution to patronise nothing but steel
- pens.
- CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.
- When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and
- weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general
- thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting
- him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very
- soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the
- common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a'lee; and then send
- every one below to his hammock till daylight, with the reservation that,
- until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept; that is, two and two for
- an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see
- that all goes well.
- But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will
- not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather
- round the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a
- stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning.
- In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so
- largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably
- diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades,
- a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to
- tickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the
- present case with the Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man
- unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night,
- would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and
- those sharks the maggots in it.
- Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was
- concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman
- came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for
- immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering
- three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid
- sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an
- incessant murdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deep
- into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy
- confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not
- always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the
- incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each
- other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit
- their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by
- the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was
- this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these
- creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in
- their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual
- life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin,
- one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried
- to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.
- *The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel;
- is about the bigness of a man's spread hand; and in general shape,
- corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its
- sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than
- the lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when
- being used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a
- stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.
- "Queequeg no care what god made him shark," said the savage, agonizingly
- lifting his hand up and down; "wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de
- god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."
- CHAPTER 67. Cutting In.
- It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio
- professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was
- turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would
- have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.
- In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous
- things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and which
- no single man can possibly lift--this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up
- to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the strongest
- point anywhere above a ship's deck. The end of the hawser-like rope
- winding through these intricacies, was then conducted to the windlass,
- and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over the whale; to
- this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds, was
- attached. And now suspended in stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb,
- the mates, armed with their long spades, began cutting a hole in the
- body for the insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two
- side-fins. This done, a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole,
- the hook is inserted, and the main body of the crew striking up a wild
- chorus, now commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When
- instantly, the entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in
- her starts like the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she
- trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More
- and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the
- windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last,
- a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls
- upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises
- into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the
- first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely
- as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the body
- precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For the
- strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps the whale
- rolling over and over in the water, and as the blubber in one strip
- uniformly peels off along the line called the "scarf," simultaneously
- cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates; and just as fast as
- it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the
- time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the
- main-top; the men at the windlass then cease heaving, and for a moment
- or two the prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let
- down from the sky, and every one present must take good heed to dodge
- it when it swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him headlong
- overboard.
- One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen weapon
- called a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously slices
- out a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into this
- hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked
- so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for what
- follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman, warning all hands to
- stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a few
- sidelong, desperate, lunging slicings, severs it completely in twain;
- so that while the short lower part is still fast, the long upper strip,
- called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready for lowering.
- The heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one tackle is
- peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other is slowly
- slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway
- right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room. Into
- this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long
- blanket-piece as if it were a great live mass of plaited serpents.
- And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and lowering
- simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing,
- the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship
- straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the
- general friction.
- CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.
- I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of
- the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen
- afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains
- unchanged; but it is only an opinion.
- The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you
- know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence
- of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and
- ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.
- Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's
- skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point
- of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption; because you
- cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but
- that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if
- reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin? True, from the unmarred
- dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with your hand an infinitely
- thin, transparent substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds
- of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is,
- previous to being dried, when it not only contracts and thickens, but
- becomes rather hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits, which
- I use for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before;
- and being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself
- with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any rate, it is
- pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you may
- say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same infinitely thin,
- isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the
- whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as
- the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say,
- that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender
- than the skin of a new-born child. But no more of this.
- Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin,
- as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one
- hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity, or
- rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths,
- and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had
- of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere
- integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels
- to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters
- of the stuff of the whale's skin.
- In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among
- the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely
- crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array,
- something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these
- marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above
- mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved
- upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick,
- observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but
- afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical;
- that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids
- hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present
- connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm
- Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old
- Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on
- the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the
- mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian
- rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other phenomena which
- the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the
- back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the
- regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches,
- altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those New
- England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks
- of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs--I should say,
- that those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this
- particular. It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are
- probably made by hostile contact with other whales; for I have most
- remarked them in the large, full-grown bulls of the species.
- A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of
- the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long
- pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very
- happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber
- as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho
- slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this
- cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself
- comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would
- become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the
- North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are
- found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it
- observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies
- are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of
- an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire;
- whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood,
- and he dies. How wonderful is it then--except after explanation--that
- this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it
- is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed
- to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall
- overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly
- frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued
- in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by
- experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a
- Borneo negro in summer.
- It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong
- individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare
- virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after
- the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in
- this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood
- fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the
- great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.
- But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections,
- how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the
- whale!
- CHAPTER 69. The Funeral.
- Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!
- The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the
- beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue,
- it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal.
- Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and
- splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious
- flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting
- poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats further
- and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem
- square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous
- din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous
- sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair
- face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass
- of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.
- There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in
- pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled.
- In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if
- peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they
- most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not
- the mightiest whale is free.
- Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
- survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or
- blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the
- swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in
- the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the
- whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the
- log--SHOALS, ROCKS, AND BREAKERS HEREABOUTS: BEWARE! And for years
- afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly
- sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there
- when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's your
- utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of
- old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in
- the air! There's orthodoxy!
- Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror
- to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a
- world.
- Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than
- the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in
- them.
- CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.
- It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping
- the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the
- Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced
- whale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.
- Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck;
- on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that
- very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the
- surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening
- between him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a
- discoloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear
- in mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many
- feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without so
- much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus
- made, he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts,
- and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion
- into the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb's boast, that he
- demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?
- When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable
- till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale
- it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full
- grown leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm whale's head embraces
- nearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a
- burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this were as
- vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers' scales.
- The Pequod's whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head was
- hoisted against the ship's side--about half way out of the sea, so that
- it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And there
- with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the
- enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm
- on that side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that
- blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod's waist like the giant
- Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith.
- When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went
- below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but
- now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow
- lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon
- the sea.
- A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
- from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to
- gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he
- took Stubb's long spade--still remaining there after the whale's
- Decapitation--and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended
- mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood
- leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.
- It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
- intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. "Speak, thou vast
- and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a
- beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head,
- and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast
- dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has
- moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies
- rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this
- frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there,
- in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast
- been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side,
- where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou
- saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart
- to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when
- heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed
- by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper
- midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on
- unharmed--while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that
- would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O
- head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of
- Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!"
- "Sail ho!" cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.
- "Aye? Well, now, that's cheering," cried Ahab, suddenly erecting
- himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow.
- "That lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better
- man.--Where away?"
- "Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to
- us!
- "Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way,
- and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man!
- how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest
- atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind."
- CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam's Story.
- Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than
- the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.
- By and by, through the glass the stranger's boats and manned mast-heads
- proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and shooting
- by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the Pequod could
- not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what response would
- be made.
- Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships of
- the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which signals
- being collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels
- attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale
- commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at
- considerable distances and with no small facility.
- The Pequod's signal was at last responded to by the stranger's setting
- her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring
- her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under the Pequod's lee, and
- lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was being
- rigged by Starbuck's order to accommodate the visiting captain, the
- stranger in question waved his hand from his boat's stern in token
- of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that
- the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her
- captain, was fearful of infecting the Pequod's company. For, though
- himself and boat's crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half
- a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing
- between; yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the
- land, he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the
- Pequod.
- But this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an
- interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam's
- boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to the
- Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this time it blew
- very fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times by
- the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed some
- way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings
- again. Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now and then, a
- conversation was sustained between the two parties; but at intervals not
- without still another interruption of a very different sort.
- Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a singular
- appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities
- make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled
- all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair. A
- long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped
- him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists. A
- deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.
- So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had
- exclaimed--"That's he! that's he!--the long-togged scaramouch the
- Town-Ho's company told us of!" Stubb here alluded to a strange story
- told of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time
- previous when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account
- and what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in
- question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the
- Jeroboam. His story was this:
- He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna
- Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret
- meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of a
- trap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he
- carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing gunpowder,
- was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange, apostolic whim
- having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket, where, with
- that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady, common-sense
- exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the
- Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway upon
- the ship's getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a
- freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded
- the captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby
- he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and
- vicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he
- declared these things;--the dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited
- imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united
- to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant
- crew, with an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of
- him. As such a man, however, was not of much practical use in the ship,
- especially as he refused to work except when he pleased, the incredulous
- captain would fain have been rid of him; but apprised that that
- individual's intention was to land him in the first convenient port, the
- archangel forthwith opened all his seals and vials--devoting the ship
- and all hands to unconditional perdition, in case this intention was
- carried out. So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the crew,
- that at last in a body they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel
- was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain. He was therefore
- forced to relinquish his plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any
- way maltreated, say or do what he would; so that it came to pass that
- Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship. The consequence of all
- this was, that the archangel cared little or nothing for the captain and
- mates; and since the epidemic had broken out, he carried a higher hand
- than ever; declaring that the plague, as he called it, was at his sole
- command; nor should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure.
- The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before
- him; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal
- homage, as to a god. Such things may seem incredible; but, however
- wondrous, they are true. Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking
- in respect to the measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as
- his measureless power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But
- it is time to return to the Pequod.
- "I fear not thy epidemic, man," said Ahab from the bulwarks, to Captain
- Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern; "come on board."
- But now Gabriel started to his feet.
- "Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the horrible
- plague!"
- "Gabriel! Gabriel!" cried Captain Mayhew; "thou must either--" But
- that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its seethings
- drowned all speech.
- "Hast thou seen the White Whale?" demanded Ahab, when the boat drifted
- back.
- "Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the horrible
- tail!"
- "I tell thee again, Gabriel, that--" But again the boat tore ahead as if
- dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a succession
- of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional caprices
- of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted sperm
- whale's head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was seen eyeing
- it with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to
- warrant.
- When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story
- concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from
- Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed
- leagued with him.
- It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking
- a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby
- Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence,
- Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the White
- Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering insanity,
- pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God
- incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some year or two
- afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey, the
- chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him; and the captain himself
- being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all
- the archangel's denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in
- persuading five men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after
- much weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last
- succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to
- the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and
- hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants
- of his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his
- boat's bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting
- his wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance
- for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its
- quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies
- of the oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious
- life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his
- descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a
- chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman's head; but the
- mate for ever sank.
- It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the
- Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.
- Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated;
- oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the
- headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body. But
- strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one,
- when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is
- discernible; the man being stark dead.
- The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly descried
- from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek--"The vial! the vial!" Gabriel
- called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of the
- whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with added influence;
- because his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically
- fore-announced it, instead of only making a general prophecy, which any
- one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one of many marks in the
- wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror to the ship.
- Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions to
- him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he
- intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which
- Ahab answered--"Aye." Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started
- to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with
- downward pointed finger--"Think, think of the blasphemer--dead, and down
- there!--beware of the blasphemer's end!"
- Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, "Captain, I have
- just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy
- officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag."
- Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various ships,
- whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed, depends
- upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans. Thus,
- most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received after
- attaining an age of two or three years or more.
- Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely tumbled,
- damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in consequence
- of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death
- himself might well have been the post-boy.
- "Can'st not read it?" cried Ahab. "Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it's but
- a dim scrawl;--what's this?" As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a
- long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to
- insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without
- its coming any closer to the ship.
- Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, "Mr. Har--yes, Mr.
- Harry--(a woman's pinny hand,--the man's wife, I'll wager)--Aye--Mr.
- Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam;--why it's Macey, and he's dead!"
- "Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife," sighed Mayhew; "but let
- me have it."
- "Nay, keep it thyself," cried Gabriel to Ahab; "thou art soon going that
- way."
- "Curses throttle thee!" yelled Ahab. "Captain Mayhew, stand by now to
- receive it"; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck's hands, he
- caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the boat.
- But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat
- drifted a little towards the ship's stern; so that, as if by magic, the
- letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel's eager hand. He clutched it
- in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the letter on it,
- sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at Ahab's feet. Then
- Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in
- that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod.
- As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket
- of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild
- affair.
- CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.
- In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there
- is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are
- wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying
- in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done
- everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description
- of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned
- that upon first breaking ground in the whale's back, the blubber-hook
- was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the
- mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook
- get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend
- Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the
- monster's back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many
- cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the
- whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. The
- whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the
- immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the
- level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the
- whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill
- beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the
- Highland costume--a shirt and socks--in which to my eyes, at least,
- he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to
- observe him, as will presently be seen.
- Being the savage's bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar
- in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to
- attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead
- whale's back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by
- a long cord. Just so, from the ship's steep side, did I hold Queequeg
- down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery
- a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his
- waist.
- It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we
- proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at
- both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow
- leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were
- wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage
- and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag
- me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us.
- Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get
- rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.
- So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that
- while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive
- that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of
- two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another's
- mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster
- and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in
- Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an
- injustice. And yet still further pondering--while I jerked him now
- and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam
- him--still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine
- was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most
- cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality
- of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by
- mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say
- that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the
- multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg's
- monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came
- very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I
- would, I only had the management of one end of it.*
- *The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod
- that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This improvement
- upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb,
- in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible
- guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder.
- I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the
- whale and the ship--where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant
- rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy
- he was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the
- night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent
- blood which began to flow from the carcass--the rabid creatures swarmed
- round it like bees in a beehive.
- And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them
- aside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were
- it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise
- miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.
- Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a
- ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them.
- Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then jerked
- the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed
- a peculiarly ferocious shark--he was provided with still another
- protection. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tashtego
- and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of keen
- whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could
- reach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterested and
- benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg's best happiness, I admit; but
- in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that both
- he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water,
- those indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg
- than a tail. But poor Queequeg, I suppose, straining and gasping there
- with that great iron hook--poor Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his
- Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands of his gods.
- Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in
- and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea--what matters
- it, after all? Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men
- in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those
- sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks
- and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.
- But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg. For now, as
- with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last climbs
- up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling over
- the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent, consolatory
- glance hands him--what? Some hot Cognac? No! hands him, ye gods! hands
- him a cup of tepid ginger and water!
- "Ginger? Do I smell ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb, coming near.
- "Yes, this must be ginger," peering into the as yet untasted cup. Then
- standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards the
- astonished steward slowly saying, "Ginger? ginger? and will you have
- the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of ginger?
- Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to kindle a fire
- in this shivering cannibal? Ginger!--what the devil is ginger?
- Sea-coal? firewood?--lucifer matches?--tinder?--gunpowder?--what the
- devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg
- here."
- "There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this
- business," he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just
- come from forward. "Will you look at that kannakin, sir; smell of it,
- if you please." Then watching the mate's countenance, he added, "The
- steward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap
- to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the steward an
- apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters by
- which he blows back the life into a half-drowned man?"
- "I trust not," said Starbuck, "it is poor stuff enough."
- "Aye, aye, steward," cried Stubb, "we'll teach you to drug a
- harpooneer; none of your apothecary's medicine here; you want to poison
- us, do ye? You have got out insurances on our lives and want to murder
- us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?"
- "It was not me," cried Dough-Boy, "it was Aunt Charity that brought the
- ginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits, but
- only this ginger-jub--so she called it."
- "Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with ye
- to the lockers, and get something better. I hope I do no wrong, Mr.
- Starbuck. It is the captain's orders--grog for the harpooneer on a
- whale."
- "Enough," replied Starbuck, "only don't hit him again, but--"
- "Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something of
- that sort; and this fellow's a weazel. What were you about saying, sir?"
- "Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself."
- When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and a sort
- of tea-caddy in the other. The first contained strong spirits, and was
- handed to Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity's gift, and that was
- freely given to the waves.
- CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk
- Over Him.
- It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale's
- prodigious head hanging to the Pequod's side. But we must let it
- continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to it.
- For the present other matters press, and the best we can do now for the
- head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold.
- Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually
- drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit,
- gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the
- Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking
- anywhere near. And though all hands commonly disdained the capture of
- those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not commissioned to
- cruise for them at all, and though she had passed numbers of them near
- the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale
- had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the
- announcement was made that a Right Whale should be captured that day, if
- opportunity offered.
- Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two
- boats, Stubb's and Flask's, were detached in pursuit. Pulling further
- and further away, they at last became almost invisible to the men at
- the mast-head. But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap of
- tumultuous white water, and soon after news came from aloft that one or
- both the boats must be fast. An interval passed and the boats were in
- plain sight, in the act of being dragged right towards the ship by the
- towing whale. So close did the monster come to the hull, that at
- first it seemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly going down in a
- maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he wholly disappeared from
- view, as if diving under the keel. "Cut, cut!" was the cry from the
- ship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on the point of being
- brought with a deadly dash against the vessel's side. But having plenty
- of line yet in the tubs, and the whale not sounding very rapidly, they
- paid out abundance of rope, and at the same time pulled with all their
- might so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few minutes the struggle was
- intensely critical; for while they still slacked out the tightened line
- in one direction, and still plied their oars in another, the contending
- strain threatened to take them under. But it was only a few feet advance
- they sought to gain. And they stuck to it till they did gain it; when
- instantly, a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the
- keel, as the strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose
- to view under her bows, snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its
- drippings, that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water,
- while the whale beyond also rose to sight, and once more the boats were
- free to fly. But the fagged whale abated his speed, and blindly altering
- his course, went round the stern of the ship towing the two boats after
- him, so that they performed a complete circuit.
- Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close
- flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for
- lance; and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while the
- multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm Whale's body,
- rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking at every
- new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fountains that
- poured from the smitten rock.
- At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he
- turned upon his back a corpse.
- While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his flukes,
- and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing, some
- conversation ensued between them.
- "I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard," said
- Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so
- ignoble a leviathan.
- "Wants with it?" said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat's bow,
- "did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm Whale's
- head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a Right Whale's
- on the larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never
- afterwards capsize?"
- "Why not?
- "I don't know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so,
- and he seems to know all about ships' charms. But I sometimes think
- he'll charm the ship to no good at last. I don't half like that chap,
- Stubb. Did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into
- a snake's head, Stubb?"
- "Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of a
- dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by; look
- down there, Flask"--pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of
- both hands--"Aye, will I! Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in
- disguise. Do you believe that cock and bull story about his having been
- stowed away on board ship? He's the devil, I say. The reason why you
- don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight; he carries
- it coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now that I think of
- it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots."
- "He sleeps in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've
- seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging."
- "No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye
- see, in the eye of the rigging."
- "What's the old man have so much to do with him for?"
- "Striking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose."
- "Bargain?--about what?"
- "Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and
- the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away
- his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then he'll
- surrender Moby Dick."
- "Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?"
- "I don't know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked
- one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the
- old flag-ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and
- gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at home. Well, he
- was at home, and asked the devil what he wanted. The devil, switching
- his hoofs, up and says, 'I want John.' 'What for?' says the old
- governor. 'What business is that of yours,' says the devil, getting
- mad,--'I want to use him.' 'Take him,' says the governor--and by the
- Lord, Flask, if the devil didn't give John the Asiatic cholera before
- he got through with him, I'll eat this whale in one mouthful. But look
- sharp--ain't you all ready there? Well, then, pull ahead, and let's get
- the whale alongside."
- "I think I remember some such story as you were telling," said Flask,
- when at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden
- towards the ship, "but I can't remember where."
- "Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three bloody-minded soladoes? Did
- ye read it there, Flask? I guess ye did?"
- "No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell me,
- Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now, was
- the same you say is now on board the Pequod?"
- "Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn't the devil live
- for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see
- any parson a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a
- latch-key to get into the admiral's cabin, don't you suppose he can
- crawl into a porthole? Tell me that, Mr. Flask?"
- "How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?"
- "Do you see that mainmast there?" pointing to the ship; "well, that's
- the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod's hold, and string
- along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you see; well, that
- wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's age. Nor all the coopers in creation
- couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts enough."
- "But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that you
- meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance. Now, if
- he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is going
- to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him overboard--tell me
- that?
- "Give him a good ducking, anyhow."
- "But he'd crawl back."
- "Duck him again; and keep ducking him."
- "Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though--yes, and
- drown you--what then?"
- "I should like to see him try it; I'd give him such a pair of black eyes
- that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's cabin again for
- a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he lives, and
- hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil,
- Flask; so you suppose I'm afraid of the devil? Who's afraid of
- him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him and put him in
- double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping
- people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people the devil
- kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor!"
- "Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?"
- "Do I suppose it? You'll know it before long, Flask. But I am going now
- to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything very suspicious
- going on, I'll just take him by the nape of his neck, and say--Look
- here, Beelzebub, you don't do it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord
- I'll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan,
- and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail will come short
- off at the stump--do you see; and then, I rather guess when he finds
- himself docked in that queer fashion, he'll sneak off without the poor
- satisfaction of feeling his tail between his legs."
- "And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?"
- "Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;--what else?"
- "Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along, Stubb?"
- "Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship."
- The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side, where
- fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing
- him.
- "Didn't I tell you so?" said Flask; "yes, you'll soon see this right
- whale's head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti's."
- In good time, Flask's saying proved true. As before, the Pequod steeply
- leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the counterpoise of
- both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may
- well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go
- over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come
- back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep
- trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard,
- and then you will float light and right.
- In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the
- ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the
- case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is cut off
- whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately removed and
- hoisted on deck, with all the well known black bone attached to what is
- called the crown-piece. But nothing like this, in the present case,
- had been done. The carcases of both whales had dropped astern; and
- the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule carrying a pair of
- overburdening panniers.
- Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever
- and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own
- hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow;
- while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only to
- blend with, and lengthen Ahab's. As the crew toiled on, Laplandish
- speculations were bandied among them, concerning all these passing
- things.
- CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale's Head--Contrasted View.
- Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us
- join them, and lay together our own.
- Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right
- Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly
- hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all
- the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between
- them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this
- moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we may freely go from one
- to the other, by merely stepping across the deck:--where, I should like
- to know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology
- than here?
- In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these
- heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain
- mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the Right Whale's sadly
- lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale's head. As you behold
- it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point
- of pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is
- heightened by the pepper and salt colour of his head at the summit,
- giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short, he is what
- the fishermen technically call a "grey-headed whale."
- Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads--namely, the two
- most important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side of
- the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale's jaw, if you
- narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would
- fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it to the
- magnitude of the head.
- Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes, it is
- plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more
- than he can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the whale's
- eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy, for
- yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects
- through your ears. You would find that you could only command some
- thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-line of sight;
- and about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking
- straight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not
- be able to see him, any more than if he were stealing upon you from
- behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so to speak; but, at the
- same time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for what is it that makes the
- front of a man--what, indeed, but his eyes?
- Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes
- are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to
- produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of
- the whale's eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of
- solid head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating
- two lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate the
- impressions which each independent organ imparts. The whale, therefore,
- must see one distinct picture on this side, and another distinct
- picture on that side; while all between must be profound darkness and
- nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look out on the world
- from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window. But with the
- whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two distinct
- windows, but sadly impairing the view. This peculiarity of the whale's
- eyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be
- remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes.
- A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this
- visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with a
- hint. So long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing
- is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing
- whatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one's experience
- will teach him, that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of
- things at one glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively,
- and completely, to examine any two things--however large or however
- small--at one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side
- by side and touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two
- objects, and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in
- order to see one of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to
- bear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary
- consciousness. How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes,
- in themselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more
- comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same
- moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one
- side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he
- can, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able
- simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems
- in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in this
- comparison.
- It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
- extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
- beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer
- frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly
- proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their
- divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.
- But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an
- entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads
- for hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf
- whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so
- wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With
- respect to their ears, this important difference is to be observed
- between the sperm whale and the right. While the ear of the former has
- an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered
- over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from without.
- Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the
- world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which
- is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of
- Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of
- cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of
- hearing? Not at all.--Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind?
- Subtilize it.
- Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant
- over the sperm whale's head, that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending
- by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and were it not
- that the body is now completely separated from it, with a lantern we
- might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach. But
- let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us where we are. What
- a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling,
- lined, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as
- bridal satins.
- But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems
- like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one
- end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead,
- and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such,
- alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these
- spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to behold,
- when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, floating there
- suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging
- straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a
- ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of
- sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his
- jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a
- reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon
- him.
- In most cases this lower jaw--being easily unhinged by a practised
- artist--is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting
- the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone
- with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles,
- including canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.
- With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an
- anchor; and when the proper time comes--some few days after the other
- work--Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists,
- are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances
- the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being
- rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag
- stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two
- teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled
- after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and
- piled away like joists for building houses.
- CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale's Head--Contrasted View.
- Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right Whale's
- head.
- As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a
- Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded);
- so, at a broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather inelegant
- resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago an
- old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker's last. And
- in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale, with
- the swarming brood, might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her
- progeny.
- But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different
- aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit and
- look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take the whole head
- for an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in its
- sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange,
- crested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass--this green,
- barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the "crown," and the
- Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes
- solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak,
- with a bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those live
- crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost
- sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the
- technical term "crown" also bestowed upon it; in which case you will
- take great interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a
- diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for
- him in this marvellous manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a very
- sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip!
- what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's
- measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout
- that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.
- A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.
- The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an
- important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes
- caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold,
- we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should
- take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the
- road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a
- pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while
- these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, half
- vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a
- side, which depending from the upper part of the head or crown
- bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily
- mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres,
- through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose
- intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through
- the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of bone, as they
- stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks, curves,
- hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the creature's age,
- as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of this
- criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical
- probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater
- age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.
- In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
- concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous
- "whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth;* another, "hogs' bristles"; a
- third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language:
- "There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his
- upper CHOP, which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth."
- *This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or
- rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the
- upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these
- tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn
- countenance.
- As every one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers,"
- "blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and
- other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has
- long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time that the bone was
- in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those
- ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as
- you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do we
- nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a
- tent spread over the same bone.
- But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, standing
- in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing all these
- colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think
- you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its
- thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest
- Turkey--the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor of the
- mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting
- it on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I
- should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that
- amount of oil.
- Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started
- with--that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely
- different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no great
- well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a
- lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any
- of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a
- tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm
- Whale only one.
- Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie
- together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will
- not be very long in following.
- Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same
- he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem
- now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like
- placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the
- other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident
- against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not
- this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in
- facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm
- Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.
- CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.
- Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale's head, I would have
- you, as a sensible physiologist, simply--particularly remark its front
- aspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you investigate
- it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated,
- intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged
- there. Here is a vital point; for you must either satisfactorily settle
- this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an infidel as to one of
- the most appalling, but not the less true events, perhaps anywhere to be
- found in all recorded history.
- You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm Whale,
- the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the
- water; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably
- backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which
- receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that the mouth is entirely
- under the head, much in the same way, indeed, as though your own mouth
- were entirely under your chin. Moreover you observe that the whale has
- no external nose; and that what nose he has--his spout hole--is on the
- top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides
- of his head, nearly one third of his entire length from the front.
- Wherefore, you must now have perceived that the front of the Sperm
- Whale's head is a dead, blind wall, without a single organ or tender
- prominence of any sort whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider
- that only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the front of
- the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you
- get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial
- development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad.
- Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise
- the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of
- the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy.
- In some previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the
- body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head;
- but with this difference: about the head this envelope, though not so
- thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not
- handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by
- the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though
- the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses' hoofs. I do not
- think that any sensation lurks in it.
- Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded Indiamen
- chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, what do the
- sailors do? They do not suspend between them, at the point of coming
- contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood. No, they hold
- there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the thickest
- and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which
- would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By
- itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But
- supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that
- as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them,
- capable, at will, of distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale,
- as far as I know, has no such provision in him; considering, too,
- the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head
- altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out
- of the water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope;
- considering the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically
- occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs there
- may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with
- the outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and
- contraction. If this be so, fancy the irresistibleness of that might, to
- which the most impalpable and destructive of all elements contributes.
- Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable
- wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a
- mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood
- is--by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest
- insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the
- specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this
- expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable
- braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all ignorant
- incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the Sperm Whale
- stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic
- with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow. For
- unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist
- in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to
- encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then? What befell
- the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil at Lais?
- CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
- Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must
- know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated
- upon.
- Regarding the Sperm Whale's head as a solid oblong, you may, on an
- inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower
- is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an
- unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the
- expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of the
- forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two
- almost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an internal
- wall of a thick tendinous substance.
- *Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical
- mathematics. I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a
- solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the
- steep inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both
- sides.
- The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb
- of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand
- infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole
- extent. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the great
- Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous great tierce is
- mystically carved in front, so the whale's vast plaited forehead forms
- innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his
- wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished
- with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun
- of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages;
- namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid,
- and odoriferous state. Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed
- in any other part of the creature. Though in life it remains perfectly
- fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to
- concrete; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when the
- first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. A large whale's
- case generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm, though from
- unavoidable circumstances, considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and
- dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business
- of securing what you can.
- I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun
- was coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could not
- possibly have compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like the
- lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm Whale's
- case.
- It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale
- embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head; and since--as
- has been elsewhere set forth--the head embraces one third of the whole
- length of the creature, then setting that length down at eighty feet for
- a good sized whale, you have more than twenty-six feet for the depth
- of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and down against a ship's
- side.
- As in decapitating the whale, the operator's instrument is brought close
- to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the spermaceti
- magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest a careless,
- untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out its
- invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the head, also, which
- is at last elevated out of the water, and retained in that position by
- the enormous cutting tackles, whose hempen combinations, on one side,
- make quite a wilderness of ropes in that quarter.
- Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous and--in
- this particular instance--almost fatal operation whereby the Sperm
- Whale's great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.
- CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.
- Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect
- posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the
- part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried
- with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts,
- travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that
- it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it
- is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down
- the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he
- lands on the summit of the head. There--still high elevated above the
- rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries--he seems some Turkish
- Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A
- short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches
- for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business
- he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house,
- sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time
- this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like
- a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other
- end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three
- alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian,
- to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this
- pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun,
- till it entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the
- whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail
- of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the full-freighted
- vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large
- tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through the same round until
- the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to
- ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun,
- until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down.
- Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;
- several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once a
- queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian,
- was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one-handed
- hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or whether the
- place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil
- One himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular
- reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden,
- as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up--my God! poor
- Tashtego--like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well,
- dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with
- a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!
- "Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first
- came to his senses. "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting one foot
- into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip
- itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost
- before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime,
- there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before
- lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea,
- as if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only
- the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous
- depth to which he had sunk.
- At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing
- the whip--which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles--a
- sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all,
- one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with
- a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship
- reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook,
- upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be
- on the point of giving way; an event still more likely from the violent
- motions of the head.
- "Come down, come down!" yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand
- holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he
- would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line,
- rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the
- buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.
- "In heaven's name, man," cried Stubb, "are you ramming home a cartridge
- there?--Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on
- top of his head? Avast, will ye!"
- "Stand clear of the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting of a
- rocket.
- Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass
- dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the
- suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering
- copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging--now over the
- sailors' heads, and now over the water--Daggoo, through a thick mist of
- spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor,
- buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea!
- But hardly had the blinding vapour cleared away, when a naked figure
- with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen
- hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my
- brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the
- side, and every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment, and
- no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now
- jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.
- "Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch
- overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust
- upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust
- forth from the grass over a grave.
- "Both! both!--it is both!"--cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and
- soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and
- with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the
- waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was
- long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.
- Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after
- the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made
- side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then
- dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards,
- and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first
- thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that
- was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;--he had
- thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a
- somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in
- the good old way--head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was
- doing as well as could be expected.
- And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg,
- the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully
- accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently
- hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten.
- Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing,
- riding and rowing.
- I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be sure to
- seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have either
- seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern ashore; an accident
- which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than the
- Indian's, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the
- Sperm Whale's well.
- But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought
- the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and
- most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of
- a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at
- all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had been
- nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but the dense
- tendinous wall of the well--a double welded, hammered substance, as I
- have before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a lump of which
- sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking in this
- substance was in the present instance materially counteracted by the
- other parts of the head remaining undetached from it, so that it sank
- very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance
- for performing his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it
- was a running delivery, so it was.
- Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
- perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant
- spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber
- and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be
- recalled--the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey
- in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that
- leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed.
- How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and
- sweetly perished there?
- CHAPTER 79. The Prairie.
- To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
- Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as
- yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as for
- Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar,
- or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome of the
- Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only treats
- of the various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces
- of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail upon the
- modifications of expression discernible therein. Nor have Gall and
- his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the
- phrenological characteristics of other beings than man. Therefore,
- though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the application of these
- two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my endeavor. I try all things;
- I achieve what I can.
- Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature.
- He has no proper nose. And since the nose is the central and most
- conspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most modifies and
- finally controls their combined expression; hence it would seem that its
- entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely affect
- the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire,
- cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable
- to the completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in
- keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the nose
- from Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder! Nevertheless,
- Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so
- stately, that the same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were
- hideous, in him is no blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A
- nose to the whale would have been impertinent. As on your physiognomical
- voyage you sail round his vast head in your jolly-boat, your noble
- conceptions of him are never insulted by the reflection that he has a
- nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit, which so often will insist upon
- obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne.
- In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to
- be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head. This
- aspect is sublime.
- In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the
- morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has a
- touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the
- elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as
- that great golden seal affixed by the German Emperors to their decrees.
- It signifies--"God: done this day by my hand." But in most creatures,
- nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine
- land lying along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like
- Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so high, and descend so low, that the
- eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and all
- above them in the forehead's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered
- thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the
- snow prints of the deer. But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and
- mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified,
- that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the
- dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living
- nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is
- revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper;
- nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with
- riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men.
- Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way
- viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you
- plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the
- forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of genius.
- But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written
- a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his
- doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his
- pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale
- been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by
- their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile,
- because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no
- tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of
- protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure
- back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly
- enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted
- hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale
- shall lord it.
- Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is
- no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's
- face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing
- fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could
- not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle
- meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of
- the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you
- can.
- CHAPTER 80. The Nut.
- If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his
- brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square.
- In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet
- in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as
- the side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level
- base. But in life--as we have elsewhere seen--this inclined plane is
- angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent
- mass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skull forms a crater to
- bed that part of the mass; while under the long floor of this crater--in
- another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length and as many in
- depth--reposes the mere handful of this monster's brain. The brain is at
- least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hidden
- away behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within the
- amplified fortifications of Quebec. So like a choice casket is it
- secreted in him, that I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny
- that the Sperm Whale has any other brain than that palpable semblance
- of one formed by the cubic-yards of his sperm magazine. Lying in strange
- folds, courses, and convolutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more
- in keeping with the idea of his general might to regard that mystic part
- of him as the seat of his intelligence.
- It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in
- the creature's living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his
- true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The
- whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common
- world.
- If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view
- of its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its
- resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from
- the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down
- to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and you would
- involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions on
- one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say--This
- man had no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by those negations,
- considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and
- power, you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the most
- exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is.
- But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper brain, you
- deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another idea
- for you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped's spine,
- you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung
- necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the
- skull proper. It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely
- undeveloped skulls. But the curious external resemblance, I take it
- the Germans were not the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once
- pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with
- the vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a sort of basso-relievo, the
- beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the phrenologists have
- omitted an important thing in not pushing their investigations from the
- cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe that much of a man's
- character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel
- your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine
- never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the
- firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.
- Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His cranial
- cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in that vertebra
- the bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches across, being
- eight in height, and of a triangular figure with the base downwards. As
- it passes through the remaining vertebrae the canal tapers in size, but
- for a considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now, of course,
- this canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance--the
- spinal cord--as the brain; and directly communicates with the brain.
- And what is still more, for many feet after emerging from the brain's
- cavity, the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost
- equal to that of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be
- unreasonable to survey and map out the whale's spine phrenologically?
- For, viewed in this light, the wonderful comparative smallness of his
- brain proper is more than compensated by the wonderful comparative
- magnitude of his spinal cord.
- But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I
- would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to the
- Sperm Whale's hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one
- of the larger vertebrae, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer
- convex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should call this
- high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the Sperm Whale.
- And that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason to
- know.
- CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
- The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick
- De Deer, master, of Bremen.
- At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and
- Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide
- intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with
- their flag in the Pacific.
- For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects.
- While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping a
- boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in the
- bows instead of the stern.
- "What has he in his hand there?" cried Starbuck, pointing to something
- wavingly held by the German. "Impossible!--a lamp-feeder!"
- "Not that," said Stubb, "no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he's
- coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see that big
- tin can there alongside of him?--that's his boiling water. Oh! he's all
- right, is the Yarman."
- "Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.
- He's out of oil, and has come a-begging."
- However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the
- whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old
- proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing
- really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did
- indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.
- As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all
- heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German
- soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately
- turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some
- remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in
- profound darkness--his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a
- single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding
- by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically
- called a CLEAN one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name of
- Jungfrau or the Virgin.
- His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his
- ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the
- mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that
- without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed
- round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.
- Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German
- boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod's
- keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger,
- they were going all abreast with great speed straight before the wind,
- rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in harness.
- They left a great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a great
- wide parchment upon the sea.
- Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,
- humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as
- by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted
- with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged
- to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for
- such venerable leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck
- to their wake, though indeed their back water must have retarded him,
- because the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one,
- like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet. His spout was
- short, slow, and laborious; coming forth with a choking sort of gush,
- and spending itself in torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean
- commotions in him, which seemed to have egress at his other buried
- extremity, causing the waters behind him to upbubble.
- "Who's got some paregoric?" said Stubb, "he has the stomach-ache, I'm
- afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse
- winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It's the first foul wind
- I ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so before?
- it must be, he's lost his tiller."
- As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck
- load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her
- way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly
- turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious
- wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost
- that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were hard to say.
- "Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that wounded
- arm," cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.
- "Mind he don't sling thee with it," cried Starbuck. "Give way, or the
- German will have him."
- With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this
- one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most
- valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were
- going with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit
- for the time. At this juncture the Pequod's keels had shot by the three
- German boats last lowered; but from the great start he had had, Derick's
- boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by his foreign
- rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being already so
- nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron before they
- could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quite
- confident that this would be the case, and occasionally with a deriding
- gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats.
- "The ungracious and ungrateful dog!" cried Starbuck; "he mocks and dares
- me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes ago!"--then
- in his old intense whisper--"Give way, greyhounds! Dog to it!"
- "I tell ye what it is, men"--cried Stubb to his crew--"it's against
- my religion to get mad; but I'd like to eat that villainous
- Yarman--Pull--won't ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do
- ye love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come,
- why don't some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who's that been dropping an
- anchor overboard--we don't budge an inch--we're becalmed. Halloo, here's
- grass growing in the boat's bottom--and by the Lord, the mast there's
- budding. This won't do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short and long of
- it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?"
- "Oh! see the suds he makes!" cried Flask, dancing up and down--"What
- a hump--Oh, DO pile on the beef--lays like a log! Oh! my lads, DO
- spring--slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads--baked
- clams and muffins--oh, DO, DO, spring,--he's a hundred barreller--don't
- lose him now--don't oh, DON'T!--see that Yarman--Oh, won't ye pull for
- your duff, my lads--such a sog! such a sogger! Don't ye love sperm?
- There goes three thousand dollars, men!--a bank!--a whole bank! The bank
- of England!--Oh, DO, DO, DO!--What's that Yarman about now?"
- At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the
- advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double view
- of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same time economically
- accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.
- "The unmannerly Dutch dogger!" cried Stubb. "Pull now, men, like fifty
- thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d'ye say,
- Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces
- for the honour of old Gayhead? What d'ye say?"
- "I say, pull like god-dam,"--cried the Indian.
- Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the Pequod's
- three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed,
- momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of
- the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up
- proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry
- of, "There she slides, now! Hurrah for the white-ash breeze! Down with
- the Yarman! Sail over him!"
- But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all
- their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not
- a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the blade
- of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to free
- his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick's boat was nigh to
- capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage;--that was
- a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout, they took a
- mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German's quarter.
- An instant more, and all four boats were diagonically in the whale's
- immediate wake, while stretching from them, on both sides, was the
- foaming swell that he made.
- It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was
- now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual
- tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of
- fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight,
- and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the
- sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So have I
- seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted broken circles in the
- air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird has a
- voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the fear
- of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him;
- he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his spiracle,
- and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his
- amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to
- appal the stoutest man who so pitied.
- Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod's
- boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick
- chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart,
- ere the last chance would for ever escape.
- But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all three
- tigers--Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo--instinctively sprang to their feet,
- and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their barbs; and
- darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three Nantucket
- irons entered the whale. Blinding vapours of foam and white-fire! The
- three boats, in the first fury of the whale's headlong rush, bumped
- the German's aside with such force, that both Derick and his baffled
- harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.
- "Don't be afraid, my butter-boxes," cried Stubb, casting a passing
- glance upon them as he shot by; "ye'll be picked up presently--all
- right--I saw some sharks astern--St. Bernard's dogs, you know--relieve
- distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel a
- sunbeam! Hurrah!--Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad
- cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on
- a plain--makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that
- way; and there's danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a
- hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he's going to Davy
- Jones--all a rush down an endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this whale
- carries the everlasting mail!"
- But the monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he
- tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew round
- the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them;
- while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would
- soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they
- caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at
- last--owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-lined chocks of
- the boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue--the
- gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water, while the three
- sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound,
- for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of expending more
- line, though the position was a little ticklish. But though boats have
- been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this "holding on," as it
- is called; this hooking up by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from
- the back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan into soon rising
- again to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril
- of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is always the
- best; for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken
- whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the
- enormous surface of him--in a full grown sperm whale something less than
- 2000 square feet--the pressure of the water is immense. We all know
- what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even
- here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale,
- bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at
- least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated
- it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships, with all their guns,
- and stores, and men on board.
- As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down
- into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any
- sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths;
- what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and
- placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in
- agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows.
- Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan
- was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and
- to what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was
- once so triumphantly said--"Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons?
- or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot
- hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as
- straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble;
- he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!" This the creature? this he? Oh!
- that unfulfilments should follow the prophets. For with the strength
- of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the
- mountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod's fish-spears!
- In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats
- sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad
- enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the
- wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!
- "Stand by, men; he stirs," cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly
- vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by
- magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every
- oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in great part
- from the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce
- upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are
- scared from it into the sea.
- "Haul in! Haul in!" cried Starbuck again; "he's rising."
- The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand's breadth
- could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all
- dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two
- ship's lengths of the hunters.
- His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land animals
- there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins, whereby
- when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off in
- certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities
- it is to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so
- that when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly
- drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial system; and when this is
- heightened by the extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance
- below the surface, his life may be said to pour from him in incessant
- streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant
- and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and
- bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will
- flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible
- hills. Even now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously
- drew over his swaying flukes, and the lances were darted into him,
- they were followed by steady jets from the new made wound, which kept
- continually playing, while the natural spout-hole in his head was only
- at intervals, however rapid, sending its affrighted moisture into the
- air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of him
- had thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, was
- untouched.
- As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part of
- his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly
- revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were
- beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the
- noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's eyes
- had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see.
- But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his
- blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the
- gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the
- solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.
- Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially disclosed a strangely
- discoloured bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel, low down on the
- flank.
- "A nice spot," cried Flask; "just let me prick him there once."
- "Avast!" cried Starbuck, "there's no need of that!"
- But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an
- ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more than
- sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with swift fury
- blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying crews
- all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat and marring the
- bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he by
- loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had
- made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin,
- then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up
- the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most
- piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water
- is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled
- melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the
- ground--so the last long dying spout of the whale.
- Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body
- showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled. Immediately,
- by Starbuck's orders, lines were secured to it at different points, so
- that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken whale being suspended a
- few inches beneath them by the cords. By very heedful management, when
- the ship drew nigh, the whale was transferred to her side, and was
- strongly secured there by the stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain
- that unless artificially upheld, the body would at once sink to the
- bottom.
- It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade,
- the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh,
- on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of
- harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales,
- with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence of any
- kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have been
- some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for
- the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a
- lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron,
- the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And
- when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long before
- America was discovered.
- What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous
- cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further
- discoveries, by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways
- to the sea, owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink.
- However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to the
- last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the ship
- would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with the
- body; then, when the command was given to break clear from it, such was
- the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and
- cables were fastened, that it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime
- everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the
- deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship
- groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and
- cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation.
- In vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable
- fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low
- had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all
- approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to
- the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going over.
- "Hold on, hold on, won't ye?" cried Stubb to the body, "don't be in such
- a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do something or go
- for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes, and run
- one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains."
- "Knife? Aye, aye," cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter's heavy
- hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing
- at the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were
- given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific
- snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the carcase sank.
- Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm
- Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately
- accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great
- buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the
- surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and
- broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their
- bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that
- this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so
- sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it
- is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with
- noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of
- life, with all their panting lard about them; even these brawny, buoyant
- heroes do sometimes sink.
- Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this
- accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty
- Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in
- no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale;
- his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this
- incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are instances
- where, after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale
- again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this
- is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious
- magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship could
- hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among
- the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they
- fasten buoys to him, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone
- down, they know where to look for it when it shall have ascended again.
- It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from
- the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering
- her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back,
- belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of its
- incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is so
- similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful fishermen it is often
- mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were now in
- valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail,
- made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to
- leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.
- Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.
- CHAPTER 82. The Honour and Glory of Whaling.
- There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true
- method.
- The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up
- to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its
- great honourableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many
- great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other
- have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection
- that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a
- fraternity.
- The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and
- to the eternal honour of our calling be it said, that the first whale
- attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those
- were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to
- succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every one
- knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda,
- the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as
- Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince
- of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered
- and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, rarely
- achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this
- Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt this
- Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast,
- in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton
- of a whale, which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to
- be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans
- took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What
- seems most singular and suggestively important in this story, is this:
- it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
- Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda--indeed, by some supposed
- to be indirectly derived from it--is that famous story of St. George and
- the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many
- old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and
- often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a
- dragon of the sea," saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale;
- in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it
- would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but
- encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle
- with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a
- Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly
- up to a whale.
- Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though
- the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely
- represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted
- on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance
- of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists;
- and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's whale might have
- crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal
- ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse;
- bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible
- with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to
- hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself. In
- fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will
- fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by
- name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and
- both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or
- fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even
- a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we
- harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order
- of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that honourable
- company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do with a
- whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer with
- disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we are
- much better entitled to St. George's decoration than they.
- Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long
- remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that
- antique Crockett and Kit Carson--that brawny doer of rejoicing good
- deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether
- that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere
- appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed,
- from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary
- whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I
- claim him for one of our clan.
- But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of
- Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more
- ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly
- they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the prophet?
- Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole
- roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal
- kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity in nothing
- short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now
- to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one
- of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine
- Vishnoo himself for our Lord;--Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten
- earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale.
- When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate
- the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to
- Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books,
- whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before
- beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained
- something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these
- Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became
- incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths,
- rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even
- as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?
- Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll
- for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?
- CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
- Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the
- preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical
- story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks
- and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times,
- equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the
- dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those
- traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.
- One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's chief reason for questioning the Hebrew
- story was this:--He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles,
- embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented
- Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head--a peculiarity only true
- with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the
- varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this
- saying, "A penny roll would choke him"; his swallow is so very small.
- But, to this, Bishop Jebb's anticipative answer is ready. It is not
- necessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the
- whale's belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And
- this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the
- Right Whale's mouth would accommodate a couple of whist-tables, and
- comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have
- ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right
- Whale is toothless.
- Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his
- want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely in
- reference to his incarcerated body and the whale's gastric juices. But
- this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist
- supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a
- DEAD whale--even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned
- their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them. Besides, it has
- been divined by other continental commentators, that when Jonah was
- thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his escape
- to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a figure-head;
- and, I would add, possibly called "The Whale," as some craft are
- nowadays christened the "Shark," the "Gull," the "Eagle." Nor have there
- been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned
- in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver--an inflated bag
- of wind--which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a
- watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But
- he had still another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I
- remember right: Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean
- Sea, and after three days he was vomited up somewhere within three days'
- journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very much more than three
- days' journey across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast.
- How is that?
- But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within that
- short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him round by the
- way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak of the passage through
- the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another passage up the
- Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would involve the complete
- circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to speak of the Tigris
- waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any whale to
- swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape of Good Hope
- at so early a day would wrest the honour of the discovery of that great
- headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and so make
- modern history a liar.
- But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his
- foolish pride of reason--a thing still more reprehensible in him, seeing
- that he had but little learning except what he had picked up from the
- sun and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and
- abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a
- Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah's going to Nineveh
- via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal magnification of
- the general miracle. And so it was. Besides, to this day, the highly
- enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah. And
- some three centuries ago, an English traveller in old Harris's Voyages,
- speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honour of Jonah, in which Mosque was
- a miraculous lamp that burnt without any oil.
- CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling.
- To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are
- anointed; and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an
- analogous operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it
- to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly
- be of no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and water are
- hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to
- make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in anointing
- his boat, and one morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau
- disappeared, took more than customary pains in that occupation; crawling
- under its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in the
- unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair from
- the craft's bald keel. He seemed to be working in obedience to some
- particular presentiment. Nor did it remain unwarranted by the event.
- Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down to
- them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered flight,
- as of Cleopatra's barges from Actium.
- Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb's was foremost. By great
- exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but the
- stricken whale, without at all sounding, still continued his horizontal
- flight, with added fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the
- planted iron must sooner or later inevitably extract it. It became
- imperative to lance the flying whale, or be content to lose him. But
- to haul the boat up to his flank was impossible, he swam so fast and
- furious. What then remained?
- Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and
- countless subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced,
- none exceed that fine manoeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small
- sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts nothing like it. It
- is only indispensable with an inveterate running whale; its grand
- fact and feature is the wonderful distance to which the long lance is
- accurately darted from a violently rocking, jerking boat, under extreme
- headway. Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some ten or twelve
- feet in length; the staff is much slighter than that of the harpoon,
- and also of a lighter material--pine. It is furnished with a small rope
- called a warp, of considerable length, by which it can be hauled back to
- the hand after darting.
- But before going further, it is important to mention here, that though
- the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance, yet it
- is seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently successful,
- on account of the greater weight and inferior length of the harpoon as
- compared with the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks. As a
- general thing, therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before any
- pitchpoling comes into play.
- Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and
- equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel
- in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the
- flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead.
- Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its
- length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers up
- the coil of the warp in one hand, so as to secure its free end in his
- grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then holding the lance full before
- his waistband's middle, he levels it at the whale; when, covering
- him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand, thereby
- elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his
- palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler,
- balancing a long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless
- impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming
- distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale. Instead of
- sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.
- "That drove the spigot out of him!" cried Stubb. "'Tis July's immortal
- Fourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were old
- Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then,
- Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we'd drink
- round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew choice punch in the
- spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff the
- living stuff."
- Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated,
- the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful
- leash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is
- slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and
- mutely watches the monster die.
- CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.
- That for six thousand years--and no one knows how many millions of ages
- before--the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea,
- and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so
- many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back,
- thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the
- whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings--that all this should
- be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter
- minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D.
- 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings
- are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapour--this is surely a
- noteworthy thing.
- Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items
- contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their
- gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is
- combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or a cod
- might live a century, and never once raise its head above the surface.
- But owing to his marked internal structure which gives him regular
- lungs, like a human being's, the whale can only live by inhaling the
- disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for
- his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any degree
- breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary attitude, the Sperm
- Whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface; and
- what is still more, his windpipe has no connexion with his mouth. No, he
- breathes through his spiracle alone; and this is on the top of his head.
- If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function
- indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a
- certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with the
- blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I
- shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific words.
- Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in a man could be
- aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils and not
- fetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, he would then
- live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is precisely the
- case with the whale, who systematically lives, by intervals, his full
- hour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing a single breath, or
- so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air; for, remember, he has
- no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and on each side of his spine
- he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth of
- vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are
- completely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or more,
- a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of vitality in
- him, just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus
- supply of drink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs.
- The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable; and that the
- supposition founded upon it is reasonable and true, seems the more
- cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of
- that leviathan in HAVING HIS SPOUTINGS OUT, as the fishermen phrase
- it. This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the
- Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform
- with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and
- jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he
- rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to
- a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so that
- he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his regular
- allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told, will he
- finally go down to stay out his full term below. Remark, however, that
- in different individuals these rates are different; but in any one
- they are alike. Now, why should the whale thus insist upon having his
- spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere
- descending for good? How obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the
- whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For
- not by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing
- a thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O
- hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to thee!
- In man, breathing is incessantly going on--one breath only serving
- for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to
- attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But the
- Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.
- It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole; if
- it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water, then
- I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell
- seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at all
- answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged
- with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power of
- smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout--whether it be water or
- whether it be vapour--no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on
- this head. Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper
- olfactories. But what does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no
- Cologne-water in the sea.
- Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting
- canal, and as that long canal--like the grand Erie Canal--is furnished
- with a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the downward retention of
- air or the upward exclusion of water, therefore the whale has no voice;
- unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles,
- he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say?
- Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to
- this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a
- living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!
- Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it
- is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along,
- horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little
- to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down
- in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether this
- gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout of the
- Sperm Whale is the mere vapour of the exhaled breath, or whether that
- exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth, and
- discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that the mouth indirectly
- communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that this
- is for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle. Because
- the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be, when in feeding he
- accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale's food is far beneath
- the surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would. Besides, if
- you regard him very closely, and time him with your watch, you will find
- that when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods
- of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration.
- But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak out!
- You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you not
- tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to
- settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the
- knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand in
- it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.
- The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping
- it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from it,
- when, always, when you are close enough to a whale to get a close view
- of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading
- all around him. And if at such times you should think that you really
- perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know that they are
- not merely condensed from its vapour; or how do you know that they
- are not those identical drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole
- fissure, which is countersunk into the summit of the whale's head? For
- even when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a calm, with
- his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary's in the desert; even then,
- the whale always carries a small basin of water on his head, as under
- a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with
- rain.
- Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching the
- precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be peering
- into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to
- this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when coming into
- slight contact with the outer, vapoury shreds of the jet, which will
- often happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from the acridness of
- the thing so touching it. And I know one, who coming into still closer
- contact with the spout, whether with some scientific object in view,
- or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm.
- Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is deemed poisonous; they try to
- evade it. Another thing; I have heard it said, and I do not much doubt
- it, that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes, it will blind you.
- The wisest thing the investigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let
- this deadly spout alone.
- Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My
- hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides
- other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations
- touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale;
- I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed
- fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other
- whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am
- convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as
- Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes
- up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep
- thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the
- curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected there,
- a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my
- head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought,
- after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon;
- this seems an additional argument for the above supposition.
- And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to
- behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild
- head overhung by a canopy of vapour, engendered by his incommunicable
- contemplations, and that vapour--as you will sometimes see it--glorified
- by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts.
- For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate
- vapour. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my
- mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a
- heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny;
- but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts
- of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this
- combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who
- regards them both with equal eye.
- CHAPTER 86. The Tail.
- Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope,
- and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial, I
- celebrate a tail.
- Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale's tail to begin at that point of
- the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises
- upon its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet. The
- compact round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat palms
- or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in thickness.
- At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly overlap, then sideways
- recede from each other like wings, leaving a wide vacancy between. In
- no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined than in
- the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the
- full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across.
- The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut
- into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:--upper,
- middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are
- long and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running
- crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as
- anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the student of old Roman
- walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin
- course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful
- relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the
- great strength of the masonry.
- But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough,
- the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of
- muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins
- and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and
- largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluent
- measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point.
- Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it.
- Nor does this--its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful
- flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through
- a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their most
- appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony,
- but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful,
- strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that
- all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved Hercules, and its
- charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the
- naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the
- man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God
- the Father in human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever
- they may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled,
- hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most
- successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are of all
- brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine
- one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form
- the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.
- Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether
- wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood it
- be in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein no
- fairy's arm can transcend it.
- Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for
- progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping;
- Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.
- First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in
- a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never
- wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the
- whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled
- forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this
- which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster when
- furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer by.
- Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only
- fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in his
- conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In
- striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the
- blow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed
- air, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke is then simply
- irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can withstand it. Your only
- salvation lies in eluding it; but if it comes sideways through the
- opposing water, then partly owing to the light buoyancy of the whale
- boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib or a dashed
- plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the most
- serious result. These submerged side blows are so often received in the
- fishery, that they are accounted mere child's play. Some one strips off
- a frock, and the hole is stopped.
- Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the whale
- the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this respect
- there is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the
- elephant's trunk. This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of
- sweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft
- slowness moves his immense flukes from side to side upon the surface
- of the sea; and if he feel but a sailor's whisker, woe to that sailor,
- whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch!
- Had this tail any prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me of
- Darmonodes' elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and with
- low salutations presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed their
- zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale does not
- possess this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard of yet
- another elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round his trunk
- and extracted the dart.
- Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the
- middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence
- of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a
- hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of
- his tail are flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the
- thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would almost think a great
- gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of vapour
- from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that that was
- the smoke from the touch-hole.
- Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes
- lie considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely
- out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into
- the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are
- tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they
- downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime BREACH--somewhere
- else to be described--this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the
- grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless
- profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the
- highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth
- his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in
- gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in
- the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the
- archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that
- crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the east,
- all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with
- peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment
- of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of
- the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African
- elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout
- of all beings. For according to King Juba, the military elephants of
- antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the
- profoundest silence.
- The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the
- elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk
- of the other are concerned, should not tend to place those two
- opposite organs on an equality, much less the creatures to which they
- respectively belong. For as the mightiest elephant is but a terrier
- to Leviathan, so, compared with Leviathan's tail, his trunk is but the
- stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant's trunk were as
- the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush and crash
- of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes, which in repeated instances have
- one after the other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews
- into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls.*
- *Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale
- and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the
- elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to
- the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of curious
- similitude; among these is the spout. It is well known that the elephant
- will often draw up water or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it,
- jet it forth in a stream.
- The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability
- to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they
- would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an
- extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures,
- that I have heard hunters who have declared them akin to Free-Mason
- signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by these methods
- intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wanting other
- motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness, and
- unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how I may,
- then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know
- not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more,
- how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back
- parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I
- cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about
- his face, I say again he has no face.
- CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.
- The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward from
- the territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of all Asia.
- In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of
- Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, form a
- vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia,
- and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the thickly studded
- oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced by several sally-ports
- for the convenience of ships and whales; conspicuous among which are the
- straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of Sunda, chiefly, vessels
- bound to China from the west, emerge into the China seas.
- Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing
- midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green
- promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little correspond
- to the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire: and
- considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks, and jewels,
- and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of that oriental
- sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of nature, that such
- treasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least bear the
- appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping
- western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied
- with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the
- Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these
- Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from
- the endless procession of ships before the wind, which for centuries
- past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra
- and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east. But while
- they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by no means renounce
- their claim to more solid tribute.
- Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among
- the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the
- vessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the
- point of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they
- have received at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of these
- corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the present
- day, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which, in
- those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged.
- With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these
- straits; Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea, and
- thence, cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented here and
- there by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, and
- gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whaling season there.
- By these means, the circumnavigating Pequod would sweep almost all the
- known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the world, previous to descending
- upon the Line in the Pacific; where Ahab, though everywhere else foiled
- in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle to Moby Dick, in the
- sea he was most known to frequent; and at a season when he might most
- reasonably be presumed to be haunting it.
- But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does his crew
- drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time, now,
- the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs
- no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the
- whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be
- transferred to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship carries
- no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons and their wants. She has a
- whole lake's contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with
- utilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She
- carries years' water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket water; which,
- when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to
- drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks, from
- the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may
- have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at a score
- of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted
- one grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like
- themselves. So that did you carry them the news that another flood had
- come; they would only answer--"Well, boys, here's the ark!"
- Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western coast of
- Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda; indeed, as most of
- the ground, roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen as an
- excellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained more
- and more upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and
- admonished to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs of the
- land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils
- the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was
- descried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game
- hereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when the
- customary cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle of
- singular magnificence saluted us.
- But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity with which
- of late they have been hunted over all four oceans, the Sperm Whales,
- instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached companies, as in
- former times, are now frequently met with in extensive herds, sometimes
- embracing so great a multitude, that it would almost seem as if
- numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and covenant for mutual
- assistance and protection. To this aggregation of the Sperm Whale into
- such immense caravans, may be imputed the circumstance that even in the
- best cruising grounds, you may now sometimes sail for weeks and months
- together, without being greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly
- saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands.
- Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and
- forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon,
- a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the
- noon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right
- Whale, which, dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like the cleft
- drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting spout of the
- Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist, continually
- rising and falling away to leeward.
- Seen from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill of
- the sea, this host of vapoury spouts, individually curling up into the
- air, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze, showed
- like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis, descried
- of a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.
- As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains,
- accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in
- their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain;
- even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through
- the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle, and
- swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.
- Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers
- handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads of their
- yet suspended boats. If the wind only held, little doubt had they, that
- chased through these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy
- into the Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their
- number. And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan, Moby
- Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming, like the worshipped
- white-elephant in the coronation procession of the Siamese! So with
- stun-sail piled on stun-sail, we sailed along, driving these leviathans
- before us; when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego was heard, loudly
- directing attention to something in our wake.
- Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in our rear.
- It seemed formed of detached white vapours, rising and falling something
- like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so completely come and
- go; for they constantly hovered, without finally disappearing. Levelling
- his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly revolved in his pivot-hole,
- crying, "Aloft there, and rig whips and buckets to wet the
- sails;--Malays, sir, and after us!"
- As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should
- fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot
- pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay. But when the swift
- Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was herself in hot chase; how very
- kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her on to
- her own chosen pursuit,--mere riding-whips and rowels to her, that they
- were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the deck; in his
- forward turn beholding the monsters he chased, and in the after one the
- bloodthirsty pirates chasing him; some such fancy as the above seemed
- his. And when he glanced upon the green walls of the watery defile in
- which the ship was then sailing, and bethought him that through that
- gate lay the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how that through that
- same gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end;
- and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates and
- inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him on with their
- curses;--when all these conceits had passed through his brain, Ahab's
- brow was left gaunt and ribbed, like the black sand beach after some
- stormy tide has been gnawing it, without being able to drag the firm
- thing from its place.
- But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and
- when, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the
- Pequod at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra
- side, emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the
- harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining
- upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained
- upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake of the whales, at
- length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship neared them;
- and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the boats. But
- no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the Sperm
- Whale, become notified of the three keels that were after them,--though
- as yet a mile in their rear,--than they rallied again, and forming
- in close ranks and battalions, so that their spouts all looked like
- flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.
- Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and
- after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase,
- when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating
- token that they were now at last under the influence of that strange
- perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive
- it in the whale, they say he is gallied. The compact martial columns
- in which they had been hitherto rapidly and steadily swimming, were now
- broken up in one measureless rout; and like King Porus' elephants in the
- Indian battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with consternation.
- In all directions expanding in vast irregular circles, and aimlessly
- swimming hither and thither, by their short thick spoutings, they
- plainly betrayed their distraction of panic. This was still more
- strangely evinced by those of their number, who, completely paralysed
- as it were, helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the
- sea. Had these Leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep, pursued over
- the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not possibly have evinced
- such excessive dismay. But this occasional timidity is characteristic
- of almost all herding creatures. Though banding together in tens of
- thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes of the West have fled before a
- solitary horseman. Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded
- together in the sheepfold of a theatre's pit, they will, at the
- slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding,
- trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best,
- therefore, withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales
- before us, for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not
- infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
- Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,
- yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced nor
- retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is customary in
- those cases, the boats at once separated, each making for some one
- lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three minutes' time,
- Queequeg's harpoon was flung; the stricken fish darted blinding spray
- in our faces, and then running away with us like light, steered straight
- for the heart of the herd. Though such a movement on the part of the
- whale struck under such circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented; and
- indeed is almost always more or less anticipated; yet does it present
- one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. For as the swift
- monster drags you deeper and deeper into the frantic shoal, you bid
- adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a delirious throb.
- As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of
- speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we
- thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by
- the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was
- like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer
- through their complicated channels and straits, knowing not at what
- moment it may be locked in and crushed.
- But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering off
- from this monster directly across our route in advance; now edging away
- from that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while all the
- time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand, pricking out of our
- way whatever whales he could reach by short darts, for there was no time
- to make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted
- duty was now altogether dispensed with. They chiefly attended to the
- shouting part of the business. "Out of the way, Commodore!" cried one,
- to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the surface,
- and for an instant threatened to swamp us. "Hard down with your tail,
- there!" cried a second to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed
- calmly cooling himself with his own fan-like extremity.
- All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented
- by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares of wood
- of equal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they cross each
- other's grain at right angles; a line of considerable length is then
- attached to the middle of this block, and the other end of the line
- being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly
- among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For then, more whales
- are close round you than you can possibly chase at one time. But sperm
- whales are not every day encountered; while you may, then, you must
- kill all you can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, you must wing
- them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it
- is, that at times like these the drugg, comes into requisition. Our boat
- was furnished with three of them. The first and second were successfully
- darted, and we saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered by the
- enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg. They were cramped like
- malefactors with the chain and ball. But upon flinging the third, in the
- act of tossing overboard the clumsy wooden block, it caught under one
- of the seats of the boat, and in an instant tore it out and carried it
- away, dropping the oarsman in the boat's bottom as the seat slid from
- under him. On both sides the sea came in at the wounded planks, but we
- stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in, and so stopped the leaks for
- the time.
- It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were
- it not that as we advanced into the herd, our whale's way greatly
- diminished; moreover, that as we went still further and further from the
- circumference of commotion, the direful disorders seemed waning. So that
- when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing whale sideways
- vanished; then, with the tapering force of his parting momentum, we
- glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if
- from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here
- the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard
- but not felt. In this central expanse the sea presented that smooth
- satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced by the subtle moisture
- thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now
- in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every
- commotion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of
- the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight
- or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of
- horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic
- circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle ones, and so have
- gone round on their backs. Owing to the density of the crowd of reposing
- whales, more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd, no
- possible chance of escape was at present afforded us. We must watch for
- a breach in the living wall that hemmed us in; the wall that had only
- admitted us in order to shut us up. Keeping at the centre of the lake,
- we were occasionally visited by small tame cows and calves; the women
- and children of this routed host.
- Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving
- outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in
- any one of those circles, the entire area at this juncture, embraced by
- the whole multitude, must have contained at least two or three square
- miles. At any rate--though indeed such a test at such a time might be
- deceptive--spoutings might be discovered from our low boat that
- seemed playing up almost from the rim of the horizon. I mention this
- circumstance, because, as if the cows and calves had been purposely
- locked up in this innermost fold; and as if the wide extent of the
- herd had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause of its
- stopping; or, possibly, being so young, unsophisticated, and every way
- innocent and inexperienced; however it may have been, these smaller
- whales--now and then visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the
- lake--evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or else a still
- becharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvel at. Like household
- dogs they came snuffling round us, right up to our gunwales, and
- touching them; till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly
- domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched
- their backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the
- time refrained from darting it.
- But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still
- stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended
- in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the
- whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to
- become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth
- exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly
- and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different
- lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still
- spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;--even so did the
- young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if
- we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their
- sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little
- infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might
- have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in
- girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet
- recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the
- maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final
- spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate
- side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the
- plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign
- parts.
- "Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; "him fast! him
- fast!--Who line him! Who struck?--Two whale; one big, one little!"
- "What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck.
- "Look-e here," said Queequeg, pointing down.
- As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of
- fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows
- the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the
- air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame
- Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam. Not
- seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural line, with
- the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen one, so that
- the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas
- seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan
- amours in the deep.*
- *The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but unlike
- most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a gestation
- which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a
- time; though in some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and
- Jacob:--a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously
- situated, one on each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves
- extend upwards from that. When by chance these precious parts in a
- nursing whale are cut by the hunter's lance, the mother's pouring milk
- and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The milk is very sweet
- and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries.
- When overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales salute MORE HOMINUM.
- And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations
- and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and
- fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled
- in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of
- my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and
- while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and
- deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
- Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic
- spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats,
- still engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host; or
- possibly carrying on the war within the first circle, where abundance of
- room and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But the sight
- of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to and fro
- across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes. It is
- sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful
- and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or
- maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handled
- cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again.
- A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned) in this part, but not
- effectually, as it seemed, had broken away from the boat, carrying along
- with him half of the harpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony of
- the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the lone
- mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay
- wherever he went.
- But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle
- enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to
- inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first the
- intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we perceived that
- by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this whale had
- become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed; he had also run
- away with the cutting-spade in him; and while the free end of the rope
- attached to that weapon, had permanently caught in the coils of the
- harpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose
- from his flesh. So that tormented to madness, he was now churning
- through the water, violently flailing with his flexible tail, and
- tossing the keen spade about him, wounding and murdering his own
- comrades.
- This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
- stationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake
- began to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted
- by half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly to
- heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished;
- in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central
- circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was
- departing. A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the
- tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in
- Spring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner centre,
- as if to pile themselves up in one common mountain. Instantly Starbuck
- and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck taking the stern.
- "Oars! Oars!" he intensely whispered, seizing the helm--"gripe your
- oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off,
- you Queequeg--the whale there!--prick him!--hit him! Stand up--stand
- up, and stay so! Spring, men--pull, men; never mind their backs--scrape
- them!--scrape away!"
- The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, leaving a
- narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate endeavor
- we at last shot into a temporary opening; then giving way rapidly,
- and at the same time earnestly watching for another outlet. After many
- similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last swiftly glided into what had
- just been one of the outer circles, but now crossed by random whales,
- all violently making for one centre. This lucky salvation was cheaply
- purchased by the loss of Queequeg's hat, who, while standing in the bows
- to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean from his head by
- the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad flukes close
- by.
- Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon
- resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having
- clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their
- onward flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless; but
- the boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged whales
- might be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one which Flask had
- killed and waifed. The waif is a pennoned pole, two or three of which
- are carried by every boat; and which, when additional game is at hand,
- are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale, both to
- mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior possession, should
- the boats of any other ship draw near.
- The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious
- saying in the Fishery,--the more whales the less fish. Of all the
- drugged whales only one was captured. The rest contrived to escape for
- the time, but only to be taken, as will hereafter be seen, by some other
- craft than the Pequod.
- CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
- The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm
- Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those
- vast aggregations.
- Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must
- have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are
- occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each.
- Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts; those
- composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but young
- vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated.
- In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a
- male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm, evinces
- his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of his
- ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about
- over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces
- and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this Ottoman and
- his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of the largest
- leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not
- more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They are
- comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen
- yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the
- whole they are hereditarily entitled to EMBONPOINT.
- It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent
- ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in leisurely
- search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time for the full flower
- of the Equatorial feeding season, having just returned, perhaps, from
- spending the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating summer of all
- unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time they have lounged up and
- down the promenade of the Equator awhile, they start for the Oriental
- waters in anticipation of the cool season there, and so evade the other
- excessive temperature of the year.
- When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange
- suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
- interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming
- that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies,
- with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away!
- High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be
- permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the
- Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his bed;
- for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the
- most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales,
- who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with
- their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving
- for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not
- a few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters,--furrowed
- heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and
- dislocated mouths.
- But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at
- the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to watch
- that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and
- revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario,
- like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines.
- Granting other whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give
- chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish
- of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the
- sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must
- take care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help. For
- like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my Lord
- Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for the bower; and so,
- being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the
- world; every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as the ardour
- of youth declines; as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends
- her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated
- Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens; our
- Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life,
- forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old
- soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels saying his
- prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his amorous errors.
- Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so
- is the lord and master of that school technically known as the
- schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict character, however admirably
- satirical, that after going to school himself, he should then go abroad
- inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of it. His title,
- schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from the name bestowed
- upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that the man who first
- thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of
- Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that
- famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was the nature of
- those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils.
- The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale
- betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm
- Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale--as a solitary Leviathan is
- called--proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone,
- he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to
- wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is, though
- she keeps so many moody secrets.
- The schools composing none but young and vigorous males, previously
- mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while
- those female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or
- forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious
- of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter;
- excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met,
- and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.
- The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like
- a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness,
- tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no
- prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous
- lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence though,
- and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and separately go about in
- quest of settlements, that is, harems.
- Another point of difference between the male and female schools is
- still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a
- Forty-barrel-bull--poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike
- a member of the harem school, and her companions swim around her with
- every token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as
- themselves to fall a prey.
- CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
- The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter but one,
- necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale
- fishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.
- It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company,
- a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally killed
- and captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised
- many minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature. For
- example,--after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale,
- the body may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent storm; and
- drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who, in a
- calm, snugly tows it alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus
- the most vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between
- the fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, universal,
- undisputed law applicable to all cases.
- Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative
- enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General in
- A.D. 1695. But though no other nation has ever had any written whaling
- law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and
- lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse
- comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of
- the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's
- Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne's farthing,
- or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they.
- I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
- II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.
- But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable
- brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to
- expound it.
- First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast,
- when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all
- controllable by the occupant or occupants,--a mast, an oar, a nine-inch
- cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same.
- Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, or any other
- recognised symbol of possession; so long as the party waifing it plainly
- evince their ability at any time to take it alongside, as well as their
- intention so to do.
- These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen
- themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks--the
- Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright and
- honourable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases,
- where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim
- possession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party. But
- others are by no means so scrupulous.
- Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated
- in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of
- a whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had
- succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last, through peril of
- their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat
- itself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of another ship) came up
- with the whale, struck, killed, seized, and finally appropriated it
- before the very eyes of the plaintiffs. And when those defendants were
- remonstrated with, their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs'
- teeth, and assured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had done,
- he would now retain their line, harpoons, and boat, which had remained
- attached to the whale at the time of the seizure. Wherefore the
- plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the value of their whale, line,
- harpoons, and boat.
- Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; Lord Ellenborough was
- the judge. In the course of the defence, the witty Erskine went on
- to illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con.
- case, wherein a gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife's
- viciousness, had at last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in
- the course of years, repenting of that step, he instituted an action to
- recover possession of her. Erskine was on the other side; and he
- then supported it by saying, that though the gentleman had originally
- harpooned the lady, and had once had her fast, and only by reason of the
- great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last abandoned her; yet
- abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish; and therefore
- when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady then became that
- subsequent gentleman's property, along with whatever harpoon might have
- been found sticking in her.
- Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the whale
- and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other.
- These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the very
- learned Judge in set terms decided, to wit,--That as for the boat, he
- awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it
- to save their lives; but that with regard to the controverted whale,
- harpoons, and line, they belonged to the defendants; the whale, because
- it was a Loose-Fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons
- and line because when the fish made off with them, it (the fish)
- acquired a property in those articles; and hence anybody who afterwards
- took the fish had a right to them. Now the defendants afterwards took
- the fish; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs.
- A common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge, might
- possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the
- matter, the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws
- previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in
- the above cited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish,
- I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human
- jurisprudence; for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture,
- the Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the Philistines, has but two
- props to stand on.
- Is it not a saying in every one's mouth, Possession is half of the law:
- that is, regardless of how the thing came into possession? But often
- possession is the whole of the law. What are the sinews and souls of
- Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession is
- the whole of the law? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow's last
- mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected villain's marble mansion
- with a door-plate for a waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the
- ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor Woebegone,
- the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family from starvation;
- what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop of
- Savesoul's income of L100,000 seized from the scant bread and cheese
- of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven
- without any of Savesoul's help) what is that globular L100,000 but a
- Fast-Fish? What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets
- but Fast-Fish? What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor
- Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother
- Jonathan, is Texas but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these, is not
- Possession the whole of the law?
- But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable,
- the kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is
- internationally and universally applicable.
- What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the
- Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress?
- What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India
- to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All
- Loose-Fish.
- What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but
- Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is
- the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to
- the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but
- Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what
- are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?
- CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.
- "De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam."
- BRACTON, L. 3, C. 3.
- Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with the
- context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of
- that land, the King, as Honourary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head,
- and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division which,
- in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is no intermediate
- remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form, is to this day in
- force in England; and as it offers in various respects a strange anomaly
- touching the general law of Fast and Loose-Fish, it is here treated of
- in a separate chapter, on the same courteous principle that prompts
- the English railways to be at the expense of a separate car, specially
- reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In the first place, in
- curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned law is still in
- force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance that happened within
- the last two years.
- It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some one
- of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and
- beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off from
- the shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under the
- jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden.
- Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal
- emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment
- his. By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so.
- Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his
- perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of
- them.
- Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with their
- trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled their fat
- fish high and dry, promising themselves a good L150 from the precious
- oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good
- ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares; up
- steps a very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, with
- a copy of Blackstone under his arm; and laying it upon the whale's head,
- he says--"Hands off! this fish, my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it
- as the Lord Warden's." Upon this the poor mariners in their respectful
- consternation--so truly English--knowing not what to say, fall to
- vigorously scratching their heads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing
- from the whale to the stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter,
- or at all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy
- of Blackstone. At length one of them, after long scratching about for
- his ideas, made bold to speak,
- "Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?"
- "The Duke."
- "But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?"
- "It is his."
- "We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is
- all that to go to the Duke's benefit; we getting nothing at all for our
- pains but our blisters?"
- "It is his."
- "Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of
- getting a livelihood?"
- "It is his."
- "I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of
- this whale."
- "It is his."
- "Won't the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?"
- "It is his."
- In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of
- Wellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular
- lights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be
- deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman
- of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to
- take the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To
- which my Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published)
- that he had already done so, and received the money, and would be
- obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend
- gentleman) would decline meddling with other people's business. Is
- this the still militant old man, standing at the corners of the three
- kingdoms, on all hands coercing alms of beggars?
- It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the
- Duke to the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs
- inquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested with
- that right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives
- us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs to
- the King and Queen, "because of its superior excellence." And by the
- soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in such
- matters.
- But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A reason
- for that, ye lawyers!
- In his treatise on "Queen-Gold," or Queen-pinmoney, an old King's Bench
- author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: "Ye tail is ye Queen's,
- that ye Queen's wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone." Now this
- was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or
- Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone
- is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for
- a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be
- presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here.
- There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers--the whale
- and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and
- nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary revenue.
- I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by
- inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same
- way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head
- peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be
- humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there
- seems a reason in all things, even in law.
- CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
- "In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan,
- insufferable fetor denying not inquiry." SIR T. BROWNE, V.E.
- It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when we
- were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapoury, mid-day sea, that the many
- noses on the Pequod's deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the
- three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was
- smelt in the sea.
- "I will bet something now," said Stubb, "that somewhere hereabouts are
- some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day. I thought they
- would keel up before long."
- Presently, the vapours in advance slid aside; and there in the distance
- lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be
- alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed French colours from
- his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and
- hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the whale alongside
- must be what the fishermen call a blasted whale, that is, a whale that
- has died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an unappropriated corpse.
- It may well be conceived, what an unsavory odor such a mass must
- exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when the living are
- incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded
- by some, that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it.
- Yet are there those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that
- the oil obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and
- by no means of the nature of attar-of-rose.
- Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the Frenchman
- had a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed even more
- of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of
- those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort
- of prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies
- almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless, in the
- proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever turn
- up his nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun blasted
- whales in general.
- The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Stubb vowed
- he recognised his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that were
- knotted round the tail of one of these whales.
- "There's a pretty fellow, now," he banteringly laughed, standing in the
- ship's bows, "there's a jackal for ye! I well know that these Crappoes
- of Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering
- their boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes,
- and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes of
- tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing that all the oil they
- will get won't be enough to dip the Captain's wick into; aye, we all
- know these things; but look ye, here's a Crappo that is content with our
- leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean; aye, and is content too with
- scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there. Poor
- devil! I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let's make him a present
- of a little oil for dear charity's sake. For what oil he'll get from
- that drugged whale there, wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail; no, not
- in a condemned cell. And as for the other whale, why, I'll agree to get
- more oil by chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours, than
- he'll get from that bundle of bones; though, now that I think of it, it
- may contain something worth a good deal more than oil; yes, ambergris.
- I wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It's worth trying. Yes,
- I'm for it;" and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.
- By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that whether
- or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell, with no hope of
- escaping except by its breezing up again. Issuing from the cabin, Stubb
- now called his boat's crew, and pulled off for the stranger. Drawing
- across her bow, he perceived that in accordance with the fanciful French
- taste, the upper part of her stem-piece was carved in the likeness of a
- huge drooping stalk, was painted green, and for thorns had copper
- spikes projecting from it here and there; the whole terminating in a
- symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red colour. Upon her head boards, in
- large gilt letters, he read "Bouton de Rose,"--Rose-button, or Rose-bud;
- and this was the romantic name of this aromatic ship.
- Though Stubb did not understand the BOUTON part of the inscription, yet
- the word ROSE, and the bulbous figure-head put together, sufficiently
- explained the whole to him.
- "A wooden rose-bud, eh?" he cried with his hand to his nose, "that will
- do very well; but how like all creation it smells!"
- Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck, he
- had to pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come close to
- the blasted whale; and so talk over it.
- Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he
- bawled--"Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses that
- speak English?"
- "Yes," rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who turned out to be
- the chief-mate.
- "Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the White Whale?"
- "WHAT whale?"
- "The WHITE Whale--a Sperm Whale--Moby Dick, have ye seen him?
- "Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale--no."
- "Very good, then; good bye now, and I'll call again in a minute."
- Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab leaning
- over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his two hands
- into a trumpet and shouted--"No, Sir! No!" Upon which Ahab retired, and
- Stubb returned to the Frenchman.
- He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the
- chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of
- bag.
- "What's the matter with your nose, there?" said Stubb. "Broke it?"
- "I wish it was broken, or that I didn't have any nose at all!" answered
- the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relish the job he was at very
- much. "But what are you holding YOURS for?"
- "Oh, nothing! It's a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, ain't it?
- Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies, will ye,
- Bouton-de-Rose?"
- "What in the devil's name do you want here?" roared the Guernseyman,
- flying into a sudden passion.
- "Oh! keep cool--cool? yes, that's the word! why don't you pack those
- whales in ice while you're working at 'em? But joking aside, though; do
- you know, Rose-bud, that it's all nonsense trying to get any oil out of
- such whales? As for that dried up one, there, he hasn't a gill in his
- whole carcase."
- "I know that well enough; but, d'ye see, the Captain here won't believe
- it; this is his first voyage; he was a Cologne manufacturer before. But
- come aboard, and mayhap he'll believe you, if he won't me; and so I'll
- get out of this dirty scrape."
- "Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow," rejoined Stubb,
- and with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer scene presented
- itself. The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted, were getting the
- heavy tackles in readiness for the whales. But they worked rather slow
- and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good humor. All their
- noses upwardly projected from their faces like so many jib-booms.
- Now and then pairs of them would drop their work, and run up to the
- mast-head to get some fresh air. Some thinking they would catch the
- plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held it to their
- nostrils. Others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short
- off at the bowl, were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so that it
- constantly filled their olfactories.
- Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding from
- the Captain's round-house abaft; and looking in that direction saw a
- fiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar from within.
- This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrating
- against the proceedings of the day, had betaken himself to the Captain's
- round-house (CABINET he called it) to avoid the pest; but still, could
- not help yelling out his entreaties and indignations at times.
- Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the
- Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate
- expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus,
- who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle.
- Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man
- had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore
- held his peace on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and
- confidential with him, so that the two quickly concocted a little plan
- for both circumventing and satirizing the Captain, without his at all
- dreaming of distrusting their sincerity. According to this little plan
- of theirs, the Guernsey-man, under cover of an interpreter's office, was
- to tell the Captain what he pleased, but as coming from Stubb; and as
- for Stubb, he was to utter any nonsense that should come uppermost in
- him during the interview.
- By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He was a
- small and dark, but rather delicate looking man for a sea-captain, with
- large whiskers and moustache, however; and wore a red cotton velvet vest
- with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb was now politely
- introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at once ostentatiously put on the
- aspect of interpreting between them.
- "What shall I say to him first?" said he.
- "Why," said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals, "you
- may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me,
- though I don't pretend to be a judge."
- "He says, Monsieur," said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to his
- captain, "that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain
- and chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever caught from a
- blasted whale they had brought alongside."
- Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.
- "What now?" said the Guernsey-man to Stubb.
- "Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him
- carefully, I'm quite certain that he's no more fit to command a
- whale-ship than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he's a
- baboon."
- "He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one, is
- far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he conjures us,
- as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish."
- Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his
- crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast loose
- the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.
- "What now?" said the Guernsey-man, when the Captain had returned to
- them.
- "Why, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him now that--that--in
- fact, tell him I've diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhaps somebody
- else."
- "He says, Monsieur, that he's very happy to have been of any service to
- us."
- Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties
- (meaning himself and mate) and concluded by inviting Stubb down into his
- cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux.
- "He wants you to take a glass of wine with him," said the interpreter.
- "Thank him heartily; but tell him it's against my principles to drink
- with the man I've diddled. In fact, tell him I must go."
- "He says, Monsieur, that his principles won't admit of his drinking; but
- that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then Monsieur had
- best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these whales, for
- it's so calm they won't drift."
- By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into his boat, hailed
- the Guernsey-man to this effect,--that having a long tow-line in his
- boat, he would do what he could to help them, by pulling out the lighter
- whale of the two from the ship's side. While the Frenchman's boats,
- then, were engaged in towing the ship one way, Stubb benevolently towed
- away at his whale the other way, ostentatiously slacking out a most
- unusually long tow-line.
- Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the whale;
- hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance, while the
- Pequod slid in between him and Stubb's whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly
- pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give notice of
- his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous
- cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an excavation in the
- body, a little behind the side fin. You would almost have thought he was
- digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struck
- against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old Roman tiles and
- pottery buried in fat English loam. His boat's crew were all in high
- excitement, eagerly helping their chief, and looking as anxious as
- gold-hunters.
- And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and
- screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning
- to look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when
- suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a faint
- stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells without
- being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into and then along with
- another, without at all blending with it for a time.
- "I have it, I have it," cried Stubb, with delight, striking something in
- the subterranean regions, "a purse! a purse!"
- Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls
- of something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old
- cheese; very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with
- your thumb; it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour. And this, good
- friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist.
- Some six handfuls were obtained; but more was unavoidably lost in the
- sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured were it not for
- impatient Ahab's loud command to Stubb to desist, and come on board,
- else the ship would bid them good bye.
- CHAPTER 92. Ambergris.
- Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as
- an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain
- Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that
- subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day,
- the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem
- to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for
- grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though
- at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland
- soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea. Besides,
- amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance, used for
- mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft,
- waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in
- perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum.
- The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same
- purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine
- merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.
- Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale
- themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick
- whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and
- by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such
- a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four
- boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as
- laborers do in blasting rocks.
- I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain
- hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors'
- trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing
- more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.
- Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be
- found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that
- saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption;
- how that we are sown in dishonour, but raised in glory. And likewise
- call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh
- the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of
- ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the
- worst.
- I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot,
- owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen,
- and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be
- considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of
- the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous
- aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout
- a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They
- hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma
- originate?
- I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the
- Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because
- those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as
- the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in
- small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and carry
- it home in that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas,
- and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding
- any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold,
- and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a
- savor is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an
- old city grave-yard, for the foundations of a Lying-in-Hospital.
- I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be
- likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former
- times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which
- latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great
- work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer,
- fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a
- place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without
- being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of
- furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full
- operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But all this is
- quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four
- years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not,
- perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in the
- state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that
- living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by
- no means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the
- people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by
- the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant,
- when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance
- of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the
- open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water
- dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a
- warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance,
- considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous elephant, with
- jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian
- town to do honour to Alexander the Great?
- CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.
- It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most
- significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew; an
- event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes
- madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying
- prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own.
- Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. Some
- few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work
- the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing,
- these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats'
- crews. But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous
- wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper. It
- was so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by
- abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember
- his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.
- In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony and a
- white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour, driven in
- one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and
- torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom
- very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to
- his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with
- finer, freer relish than any other race. For blacks, the year's calendar
- should show naught but three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and
- New Year's Days. Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was
- brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous
- ebony, panelled in king's cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all life's
- peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he
- had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his
- brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily
- subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by
- strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the
- natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut,
- he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green; and at
- melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon
- into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the clear air of day,
- suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop
- will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you
- the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy
- ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural
- gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then
- the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies,
- looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell. But let us to
- the story.
- It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's after-oarsman
- chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed;
- and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.
- The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness;
- but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and
- therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing
- him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness
- to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.
- Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as
- the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which
- happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat. The
- involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in
- hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale
- line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as
- to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water. That
- instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly
- straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks
- of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken
- several turns around his chest and neck.
- Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He
- hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath,
- he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb,
- exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?" Meantime Pip's blue, choked face
- plainly looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash. In less than
- half a minute, this entire thing happened.
- "Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was
- saved.
- So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed
- by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these
- irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like,
- but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done,
- unofficially gave him much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never
- jump from a boat, Pip, except--but all the rest was indefinite, as the
- soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, STICK TO THE BOAT, is your
- true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when LEAP FROM
- THE BOAT, is still better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he
- should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving
- him too wide a margin to jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped
- all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, "Stick to the boat,
- Pip, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. We
- can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for
- thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and
- don't jump any more." Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that
- though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which
- propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
- But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It was
- under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this time
- he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale started to
- run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller's trunk.
- Alas! Stubb was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful, bounteous,
- blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away,
- all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater's skin hammered out to the
- extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip's ebon head showed
- like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly
- astern. Stubb's inexorable back was turned upon him; and the whale was
- winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between
- Pip and Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his
- crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though
- the loftiest and the brightest.
- Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the
- practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful
- lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the
- middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how
- when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea--mark how closely they
- hug their ship and only coast along her sides.
- But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No; he
- did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake,
- and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very
- quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards
- oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested
- by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances not
- unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so
- called, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to
- military navies and armies.
- But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly
- spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and
- Stubb's boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent
- upon his fish, that Pip's ringed horizon began to expand around him
- miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but
- from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at
- least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body
- up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though.
- Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of
- the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;
- and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the
- joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,
- God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters
- heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the
- loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's
- insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man
- comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and
- frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his
- God.
- For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that
- fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what
- like abandonment befell myself.
- CHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.
- That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to
- the Pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations
- previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of
- the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.
- While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed
- in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and
- when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated
- ere going to the try-works, of which anon.
- It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several
- others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I found
- it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the
- liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid.
- A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this sperm was
- such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a
- softener! such a delicious molifier! After having my hands in it for
- only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to
- serpentine and spiralise.
- As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter
- exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under
- indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among
- those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within
- the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their
- opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that
- uncontaminated aroma,--literally and truly, like the smell of spring
- violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky
- meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible
- sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit
- the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying
- the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from
- all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
- Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm
- till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a
- strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly
- squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the
- gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving
- feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually
- squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as
- much as to say,--Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish
- any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come;
- let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into
- each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and
- sperm of kindness.
- Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by
- many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases
- man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable
- felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in
- the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the
- country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case
- eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of
- angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.
- Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things
- akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the
- try-works.
- First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering
- part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It
- is tough with congealed tendons--a wad of muscle--but still contains
- some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first
- cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like
- blocks of Berkshire marble.
- Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the
- whale's flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and
- often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is
- a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name
- imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked
- snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and
- purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason,
- it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole
- behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive
- a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted,
- supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison
- season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an
- unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
- There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in
- the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling
- adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation
- original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance.
- It is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the
- tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting.
- I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case,
- coalescing.
- Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but
- sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the
- dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland
- or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those inferior
- souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.
- Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's vocabulary.
- But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's nipper is
- a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of
- Leviathan's tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is
- about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the
- oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless
- blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.
- But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at once
- to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its inmates.
- This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the
- blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper
- time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a scene of
- terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one side, lit by a dull
- lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. They generally
- go in pairs,--a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. The whaling-pike is
- similar to a frigate's boarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is
- something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a
- sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship
- pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet
- itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This
- spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless;
- the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from
- him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his
- assistants', would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among
- veteran blubber-room men.
- CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.
- Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this
- post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the
- windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small
- curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen
- there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous
- cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower
- jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so
- surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,--longer than
- a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black
- as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or,
- rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that found in
- the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for worshipping which,
- King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it
- for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th
- chapter of the First Book of Kings.
- Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and assisted
- by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners call it,
- and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier
- carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the forecastle
- deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an
- African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside
- out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to
- double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging,
- to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some three feet of it,
- towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes
- at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer
- now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.
- Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately
- protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.
- That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the
- pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted
- endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into
- which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator's
- desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent
- on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric, what a lad for a
- Pope were this mincer!*
- *Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates
- to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as
- thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of
- boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably
- increased, besides perhaps improving it in quality.
- CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.
- Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished
- by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the most solid
- masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship.
- It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to her
- planks.
- The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most
- roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength,
- fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and
- mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The
- foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly
- secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all
- sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased
- with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened
- hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in
- number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When not in use, they are
- kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone
- and sand, till they shine within like silver punch-bowls. During the
- night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil
- themselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them--one
- man in each pot, side by side--many confidential communications
- are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound
- mathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod,
- with the soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first
- indirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies
- gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend from
- any point in precisely the same time.
- Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare
- masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of
- the furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted
- with heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented
- from communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir
- extending under the entire inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel
- inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished with water as
- fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open direct
- from the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment.
- It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's try-works were
- first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee
- the business.
- "All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the
- works." This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting his
- shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said that
- in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a
- time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick
- ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the
- crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains
- considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames.
- Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once
- ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.
- Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to
- inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in
- it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such
- as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left
- wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.
- By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the
- carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean
- darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce
- flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and
- illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek
- fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to
- some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the
- bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad
- sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and
- folded them in conflagrations.
- The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth
- in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the
- pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge pronged
- poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or
- stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out
- of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen
- heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil,
- which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth
- of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the
- windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not
- otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their
- eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all
- begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting
- barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in
- the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other
- their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth;
- as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the
- flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers
- wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the
- wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and
- yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness
- of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in
- her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing
- Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning
- a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the
- material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.
- So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently
- guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval,
- in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the
- ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before
- me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred
- visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable
- drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm.
- But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable)
- thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was
- horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote
- my side, which leaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails,
- just beginning to shake in the wind; I thought my eyes were open; I
- was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically
- stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all this, I could see
- no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed but a minute since I
- had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it.
- Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by
- flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift,
- rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as
- rushing from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered feeling, as of
- death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with
- the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way,
- inverted. My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief
- sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship's stern, with
- my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I faced back, just
- in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, and very
- probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief from this
- unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of being
- brought by the lee!
- Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy
- hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first
- hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its
- redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun,
- the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking
- flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the
- glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp--all others but liars!
- Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's
- accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of
- deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean,
- which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this
- earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow
- in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped. With
- books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the
- truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered
- steel of woe. "All is vanity." ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold
- of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and
- jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of
- operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all
- of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as
- passing wise, and therefore jolly;--not that man is fitted to sit
- down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably
- wondrous Solomon.
- But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way
- of understanding shall remain" (I.E., even while living) "in the
- congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it
- invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom
- that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill
- eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges,
- and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces.
- And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the
- mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still
- higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
- CHAPTER 97. The Lamp.
- Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the Pequod's
- forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single
- moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some
- illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay
- in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a
- score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
- In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of
- queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in
- darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he
- seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an
- Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night
- the ship's black hull still houses an illumination.
- See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of
- lamps--often but old bottles and vials, though--to the copper cooler at
- the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He
- burns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore,
- unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral
- contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He
- goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and
- genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own
- supper of game.
- CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
- Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off
- descried from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors, and
- slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside
- and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman of
- old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great padded
- surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due time, he
- is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his
- spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through the fire;--but now it
- remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the description by
- rehearsing--singing, if I may--the romantic proceeding of decanting off
- his oil into the casks and striking them down into the hold, where
- once again leviathan returns to his native profundities, sliding along
- beneath the surface as before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow.
- While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the
- six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling
- this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed
- round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot
- across the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at last
- man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops, rap,
- rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, EX OFFICIO,
- every sailor is a cooper.
- At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great
- hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and down
- go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches are
- replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.
- In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable
- incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream with
- freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of
- the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as
- in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the
- bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire
- ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is
- deafening.
- But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this
- self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works,
- you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a
- most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses
- a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the decks never
- look so white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides,
- from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent lye is
- readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale
- remains clinging to the side, that lye quickly exterminates it. Hands
- go diligently along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags
- restore them to their full tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower
- rigging. All the numerous implements which have been in use are likewise
- faithfully cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed
- upon the try-works, completely hiding the pots; every cask is out of
- sight; all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined
- and simultaneous industry of almost the entire ship's company, the
- whole of this conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew
- themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to
- toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as
- bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.
- Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and
- humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;
- propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not
- to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to
- such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short
- of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and
- bring us napkins!
- But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent
- on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again
- soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot
- somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest
- uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through
- for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their
- wrists with all day rowing on the Line,--they only step to the deck to
- carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea,
- and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined
- fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the
- heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the
- ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor
- fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by
- the cry of "There she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale,
- and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this
- is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long
- toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable
- sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its
- defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul;
- hardly is this done, when--THERE SHE BLOWS!--the ghost is spouted up,
- and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's
- old routine again.
- Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two
- thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with
- thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage--and, foolish as I am, taught
- thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!
- CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.
- Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck,
- taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but
- in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been
- added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood,
- he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely
- eyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the
- binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass,
- that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his
- purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast,
- then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin
- there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed
- with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.
- But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly
- attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as
- though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in
- some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some
- certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little
- worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by
- the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in
- the Milky Way.
- Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of the
- heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands, the
- head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst all
- the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, yet,
- untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its Quito
- glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed
- by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick
- darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every
- sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was
- set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton
- in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white
- whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by
- night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever
- live to spend it.
- Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun
- and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun's disks
- and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are in
- luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to
- derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by passing through
- those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
- It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example
- of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL
- ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the
- middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it;
- and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that
- knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three
- Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a
- crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned
- zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the
- keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.
- Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now
- pausing.
- "There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and
- all other grand and lofty things; look here,--three peaks as proud as
- Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the
- courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all
- are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe,
- which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but
- mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those
- who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now
- this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign
- of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a
- former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in
- throes, 'tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be
- it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then."
- "No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws must
- have left their mouldings there since yesterday," murmured Starbuck
- to himself, leaning against the bulwarks. "The old man seems to read
- Belshazzar's awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly.
- He goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three mighty,
- heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint
- earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over
- all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a
- hope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil;
- but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer.
- Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain
- snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain! This coin
- speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. I will quit it,
- lest Truth shake me falsely."
- "There now's the old Mogul," soliloquized Stubb by the try-works, "he's
- been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with
- faces which I should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long.
- And all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I have it now on
- Negro Hill or in Corlaer's Hook, I'd not look at it very long ere
- spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I regard this as
- queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings; your doubloons
- of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, your
- doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; with plenty of gold
- moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter joes. What
- then should there be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing
- wonderful? By Golconda! let me read it once. Halloa! here's signs and
- wonders truly! That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the
- zodiac, and what my almanac below calls ditto. I'll get the almanac and
- as I have heard devils can be raised with Daboll's arithmetic, I'll try
- my hand at raising a meaning out of these queer curvicues here with
- the Massachusetts calendar. Here's the book. Let's see now. Signs and
- wonders; and the sun, he's always among 'em. Hem, hem, hem; here they
- are--here they go--all alive:--Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull
- and Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he
- wheels among 'em. Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the threshold
- between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there;
- the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the
- bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts. That's my
- small experience, so far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch's
- navigator, and Daboll's arithmetic go. Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if
- there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders! There's
- a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark! By Jove, I have it! Look you,
- Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter;
- and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To
- begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous dog, he begets us; then,
- Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the
- Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes
- Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo,
- a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly
- dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our
- first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes
- Libra, or the Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we
- are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the
- Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang
- come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing
- himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the
- battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing,
- and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours
- out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the
- Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the
- sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and
- hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and
- so, alow here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye! Adieu,
- Doubloon! But stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round the
- try-works, now, and let's hear what he'll have to say. There; he's
- before it; he'll out with something presently. So, so; he's beginning."
- "I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises
- a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what's all this
- staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true; and at
- two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won't smoke
- dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here's nine hundred and
- sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em out."
- "Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a
- foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort
- of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman--the old
- hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea. He
- luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the other side
- of the mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and now he's
- back again; what does that mean? Hark! he's muttering--voice like an old
- worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!"
- "If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when
- the sun stands in some one of these signs. I've studied signs, and know
- their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the old witch
- in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe
- sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what's the
- horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign--the roaring and
- devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee."
- "There's another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men
- in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg--all
- tattooing--looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the
- Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone;
- thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I
- suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the back country.
- And by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of his thigh--I
- guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don't know what to make
- of the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers.
- But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out
- of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual. What does he
- say, with that look of his? Ah, only makes a sign to the sign and bows
- himself; there is a sun on the coin--fire worshipper, depend upon it.
- Ho! more and more. This way comes Pip--poor boy! would he had died,
- or I; he's half horrible to me. He too has been watching all of these
- interpreters--myself included--and look now, he comes to read, with that
- unearthly idiot face. Stand away again and hear him. Hark!"
- "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
- "Upon my soul, he's been studying Murray's Grammar! Improving his mind,
- poor fellow! But what's that he says now--hist!"
- "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
- "Why, he's getting it by heart--hist! again."
- "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
- "Well, that's funny."
- "And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a crow,
- especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw!
- caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow? There he
- stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked
- into the sleeves of an old jacket."
- "Wonder if he means me?--complimentary!--poor lad!--I could go hang
- myself. Any way, for the present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity. I can stand
- the rest, for they have plain wits; but he's too crazy-witty for my
- sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering."
- "Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire
- to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what's the consequence? Then
- again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught's nailed to
- the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab!
- the White Whale; he'll nail ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in old
- Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver ring grown
- over in it; some old darkey's wedding ring. How did it get there? And
- so they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish up this old
- mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the
- shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious, gold! the green
- miser'll hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes 'mong the worlds
- blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey,
- hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!"
- CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm.
- The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.
- "Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?"
- So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours, bearing
- down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his
- hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger
- captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow. He was
- a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or
- thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in
- festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed
- behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar's surcoat.
- "Hast seen the White Whale!"
- "See you this?" and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it,
- he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head
- like a mallet.
- "Man my boat!" cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near
- him--"Stand by to lower!"
- In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his
- crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger.
- But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the
- moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never
- once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was
- always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to
- the Pequod, and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other
- vessel at a moment's warning. Now, it is no very easy matter
- for anybody--except those who are almost hourly used to it, like
- whalemen--to clamber up a ship's side from a boat on the open sea; for
- the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks, and
- then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. So, deprived
- of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied
- with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced to a
- clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height
- he could hardly hope to attain.
- It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward
- circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his
- luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And
- in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the
- two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the
- perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a
- pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem
- to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to
- use their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute,
- because the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood,
- cried out, "I see, I see!--avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing
- over the cutting-tackle."
- As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two
- previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive curved
- blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This
- was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his
- solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the
- fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the
- word, held himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his
- own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of
- the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and
- gently landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust
- forth in welcome, the other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his
- ivory leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades)
- cried out in his walrus way, "Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones
- together!--an arm and a leg!--an arm that never can shrink, d'ye
- see; and a leg that never can run. Where did'st thou see the White
- Whale?--how long ago?"
- "The White Whale," said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm towards
- the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a
- telescope; "there I saw him, on the Line, last season."
- "And he took that arm off, did he?" asked Ahab, now sliding down from
- the capstan, and resting on the Englishman's shoulder, as he did so.
- "Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?"
- "Spin me the yarn," said Ahab; "how was it?"
- "It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,"
- began the Englishman. "I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time.
- Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat
- fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went
- milling and milling round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish,
- by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches
- from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white
- head and hump, all crows' feet and wrinkles."
- "It was he, it was he!" cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended
- breath.
- "And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin."
- "Aye, aye--they were mine--MY irons," cried Ahab, exultingly--"but on!"
- "Give me a chance, then," said the Englishman, good-humoredly. "Well,
- this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam
- into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!
- "Aye, I see!--wanted to part it; free the fast-fish--an old trick--I
- know him."
- "How it was exactly," continued the one-armed commander, "I do not know;
- but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow;
- but we didn't know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the
- line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other whale's;
- that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters stood, and
- what a noble great whale it was--the noblest and biggest I ever saw,
- sir, in my life--I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling rage
- he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or
- the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat's
- crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped
- into my first mate's boat--Mr. Mounttop's here (by the way,
- Captain--Mounttop; Mounttop--the captain);--as I was saying, I jumped
- into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale
- with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old
- great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir--hearts and souls
- alive, man--the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat--both
- eyes out--all befogged and bedeadened with black foam--the whale's tail
- looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble
- steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, with
- a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after the
- second iron, to toss it overboard--down comes the tail like a Lima
- tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and,
- flukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was
- all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I seized
- hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that
- like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same
- instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like a
- flash; and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near me
- caught me here" (clapping his hand just below his shoulder); "yes,
- caught me just here, I say, and bore me down to Hell's flames, I was
- thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the good God, the barb ript
- its way along the flesh--clear along the whole length of my arm--came
- out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;--and that gentleman there will tell
- you the rest (by the way, captain--Dr. Bunger, ship's surgeon: Bunger,
- my lad,--the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the yarn."
- The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all the
- time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote his
- gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but sober
- one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched
- trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between a
- marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other,
- occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two
- crippled captains. But, at his superior's introduction of him to Ahab,
- he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding.
- "It was a shocking bad wound," began the whale-surgeon; "and, taking my
- advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy--"
- "Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship," interrupted the one-armed
- captain, addressing Ahab; "go on, boy."
- "Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot
- weather there on the Line. But it was no use--I did all I could; sat up
- with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet--"
- "Oh, very severe!" chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly altering
- his voice, "Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he
- couldn't see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seas
- over, about three o'clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up with
- me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great watcher, and very
- dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why
- don't ye? You know you're a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead,
- boy, I'd rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other man."
- "My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir"--said the
- imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab--"is apt to
- be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort. But
- I may as well say--en passant, as the French remark--that I myself--that
- is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy--am a strict total
- abstinence man; I never drink--"
- "Water!" cried the captain; "he never drinks it; it's a sort of fits to
- him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on--go on with
- the arm story."
- "Yes, I may as well," said the surgeon, coolly. "I was about observing,
- sir, before Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my
- best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the
- truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more
- than two feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead line.
- In short, it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came.
- But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is
- against all rule"--pointing at it with the marlingspike--"that is the
- captain's work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had
- that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one's brains
- out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical
- passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir"--removing his hat, and
- brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull,
- but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever
- having been a wound--"Well, the captain there will tell you how that
- came here; he knows."
- "No, I don't," said the captain, "but his mother did; he was born with
- it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you--you Bunger! was there ever such another
- Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in
- pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal."
- "What became of the White Whale?" now cried Ahab, who thus far had been
- impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen.
- "Oh!" cried the one-armed captain, "oh, yes! Well; after he sounded,
- we didn't see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I
- didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till
- some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby
- Dick--as some call him--and then I knew it was he."
- "Did'st thou cross his wake again?"
- "Twice."
- "But could not fasten?"
- "Didn't want to try to: ain't one limb enough? What should I do without
- this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he
- swallows."
- "Well, then," interrupted Bunger, "give him your left arm for bait to
- get the right. Do you know, gentlemen"--very gravely and mathematically
- bowing to each Captain in succession--"Do you know, gentlemen, that the
- digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine
- Providence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest
- even a man's arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the
- White Whale's malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means
- to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But
- sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine
- in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let
- one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth
- or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks,
- d'ye see. No possible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully
- incorporate it into his general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if
- you are quick enough about it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for the
- sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to the other, why in that
- case the arm is yours; only let the whale have another chance at you
- shortly, that's all."
- "No, thank ye, Bunger," said the English Captain, "he's welcome to the
- arm he has, since I can't help it, and didn't know him then; but not to
- another one. No more White Whales for me; I've lowered for him once, and
- that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know
- that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye,
- he's best let alone; don't you think so, Captain?"--glancing at the
- ivory leg.
- "He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let
- alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He's all a
- magnet! How long since thou saw'st him last? Which way heading?"
- "Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend's," cried Bunger, stoopingly
- walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; "this man's
- blood--bring the thermometer!--it's at the boiling point!--his pulse
- makes these planks beat!--sir!"--taking a lancet from his pocket, and
- drawing near to Ahab's arm.
- "Avast!" roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks--"Man the boat!
- Which way heading?"
- "Good God!" cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put.
- "What's the matter? He was heading east, I think.--Is your Captain
- crazy?" whispering Fedallah.
- But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to
- take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle
- towards him, commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower.
- In a moment he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men
- were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him.
- With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own,
- Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.
- CHAPTER 101. The Decanter.
- Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that
- she hailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby,
- merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of
- Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman's opinion, comes not
- far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point
- of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our
- Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous
- fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted
- out the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale;
- though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant
- Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets
- pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic: not
- elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were
- the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the great Sperm
- Whale; and that for half a century they were the only people of the
- whole globe who so harpooned him.
- In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,
- and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape
- Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any
- sort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one;
- and returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm, the
- Amelia's example was soon followed by other ships, English and American,
- and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were thrown open.
- But not content with this good deed, the indefatigable house again
- bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons--how many, their mother only
- knows--and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I think, at their
- expense, the British government was induced to send the sloop-of-war
- Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded
- by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and
- did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In
- 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to
- go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship--well
- called the "Syren"--made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus
- that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known.
- The Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a
- Nantucketer.
- All honour to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to
- the present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have
- slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world.
- The ship named after him was worthy of the honour, being a very fast
- sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight
- somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the
- forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps--every
- soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine
- gam I had--long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his
- ivory heel--it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that
- ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever
- lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it
- at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it's
- squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands--visitors and all--were
- called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each
- other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our
- jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the
- howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts
- did not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that we
- had to pass the flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting down
- the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it to my
- taste.
- The beef was fine--tough, but with body in it. They said it was
- bull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for
- certain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial,
- symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that you
- could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were swallowed.
- If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching out
- of you like billiard-balls. The bread--but that couldn't be helped;
- besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread contained the
- only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it
- was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all
- in all, taking her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the
- cook's boilers, including his own live parchment boilers; fore and aft,
- I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty;
- fine flip and strong; crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to
- hat-band.
- But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other
- English whalers I know of--not all though--were such famous, hospitable
- ships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the
- joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing?
- I will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers
- is matter for historical research. Nor have I been at all sparing of
- historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.
- The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders,
- Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant
- in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions,
- touching plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English
- merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence, in
- the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normal and natural,
- but incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have some special
- origin, which is here pointed out, and will be still further elucidated.
- During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an
- ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I
- knew must be about whalers. The title was, "Dan Coopman," wherefore I
- concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam
- cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was
- reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one
- "Fitz Swackhammer." But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man,
- professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus and
- St. Pott's, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box
- of sperm candles for his trouble--this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he
- spied the book, assured me that "Dan Coopman" did not mean "The Cooper,"
- but "The Merchant." In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book
- treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other subjects, contained
- a very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in this chapter it
- was, headed, "Smeer," or "Fat," that I found a long detailed list of the
- outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from
- which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:
- 400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock
- fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins
- of butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese
- (probably an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of
- beer.
- Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in
- the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes,
- barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.
- At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all
- this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were
- incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic
- application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my
- own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by
- every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen
- whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and
- Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their
- naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the
- nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game
- in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country
- where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.
- The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as those
- polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that
- climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen,
- including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not much
- exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet
- of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I say,
- we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks'
- allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin.
- Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might
- fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in
- a boat's head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem
- somewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But
- this was very far North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with
- the constitution; upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would
- be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his
- boat; and grievous loss might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford.
- But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers
- of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English
- whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they, when
- cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the
- world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the
- decanter.
- CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
- Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly
- dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail
- upon some few interior structural features. But to a large and thorough
- sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still
- further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters,
- and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost
- bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his
- unconditional skeleton.
- But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the
- fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the
- whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures
- on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a
- specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can you land
- a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook dishes a
- roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been,
- Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone;
- the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters,
- ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of
- leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and
- cheeseries in his bowels.
- I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far
- beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed
- with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged
- to, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his
- poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the
- heads of the lances. Think you I let that chance go, without using my
- boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the
- contents of that young cub?
- And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their
- gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted
- to my late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides.
- For being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey
- of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with
- the lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side
- glen not very far distant from what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his
- capital.
- Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted
- with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought
- together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his
- people could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices,
- chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes;
- and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the
- wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.
- Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an
- unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his
- head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings
- seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped of
- its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun,
- then the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a
- grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.
- The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved with
- Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests
- kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head
- again sent forth its vapoury spout; while, suspended from a bough, the
- terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung
- sword that so affrighted Damocles.
- It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy
- Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the
- industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous carpet
- on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and
- the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden
- branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying
- air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the
- leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied
- verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!--pause!--one word!--whither
- flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless
- toilings? Speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!--but one single word with
- thee! Nay--the shuttle flies--the figures float from forth the loom; the
- freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves;
- and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and
- by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only
- when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through
- it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that
- are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly
- heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby
- have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in
- all this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be
- overheard afar.
- Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the
- great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging--a gigantic idler! Yet,
- as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around
- him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven
- over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but
- himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim
- god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.
- Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the
- skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real
- jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as
- an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests
- should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced
- before this skeleton--brushed the vines aside--broke through the
- ribs--and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid
- its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbours. But soon my line was
- out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered.
- I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.
- Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the skeleton.
- From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the
- altitude of the final rib, "How now!" they shouted; "Dar'st thou measure
- this our god! That's for us." "Aye, priests--well, how long do ye make
- him, then?" But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them, concerning
- feet and inches; they cracked each other's sconces with their
- yard-sticks--the great skull echoed--and seizing that lucky chance, I
- quickly concluded my own admeasurements.
- These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be
- it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied
- measurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can
- refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell
- me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where
- they have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, I
- have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have
- what the proprietors call "the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or
- River Whale in the United States." Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire,
- England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable has
- in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size,
- by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's.
- In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons
- belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar
- grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir
- Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir
- Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a
- great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony
- cavities--spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan--and swing all day
- upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and
- shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of
- keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at
- the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo
- in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view
- from his forehead.
- The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied
- verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild
- wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving
- such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished
- the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was
- then composing--at least, what untattooed parts might remain--I did not
- trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all
- enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.
- CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton.
- In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain
- statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we
- are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.
- According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base
- upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of seventy tons for the largest
- sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful
- calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between
- eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty
- feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least
- ninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would
- considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one
- thousand one hundred inhabitants.
- Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this
- leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman's imagination?
- Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole,
- jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now
- simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his
- unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large
- a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far the
- most complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated concerning it in
- this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your mind, or under your
- arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete notion of the
- general structure we are about to view.
- In length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two
- Feet; so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have
- been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one
- fifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet,
- his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of
- plain back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, for something less than a
- third of its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once
- enclosed his vitals.
- To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine,
- extending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled
- the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty
- of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the
- time, but a long, disconnected timber.
- The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck,
- was nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each
- successively longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one
- of the middle ribs, which measured eight feet and some inches. From
- that part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only
- spanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness, they all bore
- a seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribs were the most
- arched. In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay
- footpath bridges over small streams.
- In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the
- circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of
- the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest of
- the Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the fish
- which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest depth of the
- invested body of this particular whale must have been at least sixteen
- feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured but little more than eight
- feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion of the
- living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I now saw
- but a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of
- added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the
- ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered joints; and in place of the
- weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank!
- How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try
- to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead
- attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the
- heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry
- flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale
- be truly and livingly found out.
- But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a
- crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now
- it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar.
- There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are
- not locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on
- a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest,
- a middle one, is in width something less than three feet, and in depth
- more than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the
- tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white
- billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but they
- had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children,
- who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the
- spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple
- child's play.
- CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.
- From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon
- to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not
- compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial
- folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail,
- and the yards he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic
- involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great
- cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a
- line-of-battle-ship.
- Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me
- to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not
- overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him
- out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him
- in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it
- now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and
- antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the
- Leviathan--to an ant or a flea--such portly terms might justly be deemed
- unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is
- altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest
- words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been
- convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have
- invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased
- for that purpose; because that famous lexicographer's uncommon personal
- bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author
- like me.
- One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,
- though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing
- of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard
- capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an
- inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my
- thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their
- outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole
- circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and
- mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas
- of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its
- suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal
- theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose
- a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the
- flea, though many there be who have tried it.
- Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my credentials
- as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I have been
- a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and wells,
- wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by way of
- preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the earlier
- geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now almost
- completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are called
- the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate intercepted
- links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose remote
- posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil Whales
- hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the last
- preceding the superficial formations. And though none of them
- precisely answer to any known species of the present time, they are yet
- sufficiently akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking
- rank as Cetacean fossils.
- Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their bones
- and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals, been
- found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in
- Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
- Among the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, which in the
- year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street
- opening almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; and bones
- disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's
- time. Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some utterly
- unknown Leviathanic species.
- But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost
- complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842, on
- the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous
- slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen
- angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed
- upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being
- taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned out
- that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed species. A
- significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this
- book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the
- shape of his fully invested body. So Owen rechristened the monster
- Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the London Geological Society,
- pronounced it, in substance, one of the most extraordinary creatures
- which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence.
- When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks,
- jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to
- the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on
- the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical
- Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back
- to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun;
- for time began with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and I
- obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged
- bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in
- all the 25,000 miles of this world's circumference, not an inhabitable
- hand's breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the
- whale's; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines
- of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan?
- Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems
- a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck
- at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of
- the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs exist after
- all humane ages are over.
- But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the
- stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his
- ancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim
- for them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable
- print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah,
- some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a
- sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins, and
- dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the
- moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was there
- swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled.
- Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity
- of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by
- the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.
- "Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams
- of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are
- oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine, that
- by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the temple, no Whale can pass it
- without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is, that on either
- side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into the Sea,
- and wound the Whales when they light upon 'em. They keep a Whale's Rib
- of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the Ground with
- its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be
- reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back. This Rib (says John Leo) is said
- to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historians
- affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy'd of Mahomet, came from this Temple,
- and some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth
- by the Whale at the Base of the Temple."
- In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a
- Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.
- CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?--Will He Perish?
- Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from
- the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether,
- in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the
- original bulk of his sires.
- But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the
- present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are
- found in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological period
- prior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those
- belonging to its latter formations exceed in size those of its earlier
- ones.
- Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the largest is the
- Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less than
- seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already seen,
- that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a large
- sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen's authority, that
- Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet long at the time of
- capture.
- But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an
- advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may
- it not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated?
- Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of such
- gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For Pliny
- tells us of Whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus
- of others which measured eight hundred feet in length--Rope Walks and
- Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of Banks and Solander,
- Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish member of the Academy of Sciences
- setting down certain Iceland Whales (reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies)
- at one hundred and twenty yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet.
- And Lacepede, the French naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales,
- in the very beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at
- one hundred metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet. And this work
- was published so late as A.D. 1825.
- But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day is
- as big as his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where Pliny
- is, I, a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell him so.
- Because I cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies
- that were buried thousands of years before even Pliny was born, do not
- measure so much in their coffins as a modern Kentuckian in his socks;
- and while the cattle and other animals sculptured on the oldest Egyptian
- and Nineveh tablets, by the relative proportions in which they are
- drawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred, stall-fed, prize cattle
- of Smithfield, not only equal, but far exceed in magnitude the fattest
- of Pharaoh's fat kine; in the face of all this, I will not admit that of
- all animals the whale alone should have degenerated.
- But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more
- recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient look-outs
- at the mast-heads of the whaleships, now penetrating even through
- Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers
- of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all
- continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure
- so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last
- be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man,
- smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.
- Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo,
- which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the prairies
- of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and scowled with
- their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals,
- where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch; in such
- a comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished, to show that
- the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction.
- But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a
- period ago--not a good lifetime--the census of the buffalo in Illinois
- exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present day
- not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region; and though the
- cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man; yet the far
- different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an
- end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales for
- forty-eight months think they have done extremely well, and thank God,
- if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the days
- of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the West, when
- the far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and
- a virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of
- months, mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain
- not forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need
- were, could be statistically stated.
- Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the
- gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former years
- (the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in
- small pods, were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in
- consequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more
- remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales,
- influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense
- caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and
- pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely
- separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally fallacious seems
- the conceit, that because the so-called whale-bone whales no longer
- haunt many grounds in former years abounding with them, hence that
- species also is declining. For they are only being driven from
- promontory to cape; and if one coast is no longer enlivened with
- their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has been very
- recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle.
- Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have two
- firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever remain
- impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty Swiss
- have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the savannas and
- glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at last resort to
- their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate glassy barriers and
- walls there, come up among icy fields and floes; and in a charmed circle
- of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit from man.
- But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one
- cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this
- positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions.
- But though for some time past a number of these whales, not less than
- 13,000, have been annually slain on the nor'-west coast by the Americans
- alone; yet there are considerations which render even this circumstance
- of little or no account as an opposing argument in this matter.
- Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the populousness
- of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall we say to
- Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one hunting the
- King of Siam took 4,000 elephants; that in those regions elephants are
- numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes. And there seems no
- reason to doubt that if these elephants, which have now been hunted for
- thousands of years, by Semiramis, by Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the
- successive monarchs of the East--if they still survive there in great
- numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all hunting, since he
- has a pasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as large as all
- Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles
- of the sea combined.
- Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity
- of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more,
- therefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult generations
- must be contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain some idea
- of, by imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and family vaults of
- creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, and children
- who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this countless host to
- the present human population of the globe.
- Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his
- species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas
- before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the
- Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he
- despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like
- the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still
- survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood,
- spout his frothed defiance to the skies.
- CHAPTER 106. Ahab's Leg.
- The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel
- Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence to
- his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his
- boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And
- when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so
- vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman (it
- was, as ever, something about his not steering inflexibly enough); then,
- the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench,
- that though it still remained entire, and to all appearances lusty, yet
- Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy.
- And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his
- pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the
- condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not
- been very long prior to the Pequod's sailing from Nantucket, that he
- had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible;
- by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his
- ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise
- smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme
- difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured.
- Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all
- the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a
- former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous
- reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest
- songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable
- events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought
- Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the
- ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it is
- an inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural
- enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world,
- but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of
- all hell's despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still
- fertilely beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs
- beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an
- inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while
- even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying
- pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic
- significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their
- diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the
- genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the
- sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the
- glad, hay-making suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must
- needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad.
- The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of
- sorrow in the signers.
- Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more
- properly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other
- particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some,
- why it was, that for a certain period, both before and after the sailing
- of the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such Grand-Lama-like
- exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought speechless refuge, as
- it were, among the marble senate of the dead. Captain Peleg's bruited
- reason for this thing appeared by no means adequate; though, indeed,
- as touching all Ahab's deeper part, every revelation partook more of
- significant darkness than of explanatory light. But, in the end, it all
- came out; this one matter did, at least. That direful mishap was at
- the bottom of his temporary recluseness. And not only this, but to that
- ever-contracting, dropping circle ashore, who, for any reason, possessed
- the privilege of a less banned approach to him; to that timid circle the
- above hinted casualty--remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by
- Ahab--invested itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the land
- of spirits and of wails. So that, through their zeal for him, they had
- all conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up the knowledge of
- this thing from others; and hence it was, that not till a considerable
- interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the Pequod's decks.
- But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air,
- or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not
- with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain
- practical procedures;--he called the carpenter.
- And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without delay
- set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him supplied
- with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which had thus
- far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful selection
- of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured. This done, the
- carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that night; and to
- provide all the fittings for it, independent of those pertaining to
- the distrusted one in use. Moreover, the ship's forge was ordered to be
- hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and, to accelerate
- the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at once to the
- forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.
- CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.
- Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high
- abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But
- from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they
- seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
- But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of
- the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod's carpenter was no duplicate;
- hence, he now comes in person on this stage.
- Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging
- to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical extent,
- alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own;
- the carpenter's pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all
- those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an
- auxiliary material. But, besides the application to him of the generic
- remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in
- those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually recurring
- in a large ship, upon a three or four years' voyage, in uncivilized
- and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readiness in ordinary
- duties:--repairing stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the shape of
- clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull's eyes in the deck, or new tree-nails
- in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more directly
- pertaining to his special business; he was moreover unhesitatingly
- expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both useful and
- capricious.
- The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold,
- was his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished with several
- vices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all times
- except when whales were alongside, this bench was securely lashed
- athwartships against the rear of the Try-works.
- A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole:
- the carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and straightway
- files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board,
- and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of right-whale bone, and
- cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes a pagoda-looking
- cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist: the carpenter concocts a
- soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermillion stars to be painted upon
- the blade of his every oar; screwing each oar in his big vice of wood,
- the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. A sailor takes
- a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the carpenter drills his ears.
- Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers, and clapping
- one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there; but the poor fellow
- unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the
- handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in
- that, if he would have him draw the tooth.
- Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent
- and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he
- deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. But
- while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with such
- liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to argue some
- uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For nothing was
- this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal stolidity as
- it were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the surrounding
- infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity
- discernible in the whole visible world; which while pauselessly active
- in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace, and ignores you,
- though you dig foundations for cathedrals. Yet was this half-horrible
- stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an all-ramifying
- heartlessness;--yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old,
- crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked now
- and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have served
- to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle
- of Noah's ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long
- wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss;
- but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings
- might have originally pertained to him? He was a stript abstract; an
- unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born babe; living without
- premeditated reference to this world or the next. You might almost
- say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of
- unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so
- much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to
- it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven; but merely by
- a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure
- manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early
- oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of
- those unreasoning but still highly useful, MULTUM IN PARVO, Sheffield
- contrivances, assuming the exterior--though a little swelled--of a
- common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of various sizes,
- but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers,
- nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted to use the
- carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do was to open that part
- of him, and the screw was fast: or if for tweezers, take him up by the
- legs, and there they were.
- Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,
- was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a
- common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously
- did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few
- drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was; and there it
- had abided for now some sixty years or more. And this it was, this same
- unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him; this it was, that kept
- him a great part of the time soliloquizing; but only like an unreasoning
- wheel, which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was a
- sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the
- time to keep himself awake.
- CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
- The Deck--First Night Watch.
- (CARPENTER STANDING BEFORE HIS VICE-BENCH, AND BY THE LIGHT OF TWO
- LANTERNS BUSILY FILING THE IVORY JOIST FOR THE LEG, WHICH JOIST IS
- FIRMLY FIXED IN THE VICE. SLABS OF IVORY, LEATHER STRAPS, PADS, SCREWS,
- AND VARIOUS TOOLS OF ALL SORTS LYING ABOUT THE BENCH. FORWARD, THE RED
- FLAME OF THE FORGE IS SEEN, WHERE THE BLACKSMITH IS AT WORK.)
- Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should be soft,
- and that is soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and
- shinbones. Let's try another. Aye, now, this works better (SNEEZES).
- Halloa, this bone dust is (SNEEZES)--why it's (SNEEZES)--yes it's
- (SNEEZES)--bless my soul, it won't let me speak! This is what an old
- fellow gets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree, and
- you don't get this dust; amputate a live bone, and you don't get it
- (SNEEZES). Come, come, you old Smut, there, bear a hand, and let's have
- that ferule and buckle-screw; I'll be ready for them presently. Lucky
- now (SNEEZES) there's no knee-joint to make; that might puzzle a little;
- but a mere shinbone--why it's easy as making hop-poles; only I should
- like to put a good finish on. Time, time; if I but only had the time, I
- could turn him out as neat a leg now as ever (SNEEZES) scraped to a lady
- in a parlor. Those buckskin legs and calves of legs I've seen in shop
- windows wouldn't compare at all. They soak water, they do; and of
- course get rheumatic, and have to be doctored (SNEEZES) with washes and
- lotions, just like live legs. There; before I saw it off, now, I must
- call his old Mogulship, and see whether the length will be all right;
- too short, if anything, I guess. Ha! that's the heel; we are in luck;
- here he comes, or it's somebody else, that's certain.
- AHAB (ADVANCING)
- (DURING THE ENSUING SCENE, THE CARPENTER CONTINUES SNEEZING AT TIMES)
- Well, manmaker!
- Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length.
- Let me measure, sir.
- Measured for a leg! good. Well, it's not the first time. About it!
- There; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast here,
- carpenter; let me feel its grip once. So, so; it does pinch some.
- Oh, sir, it will break bones--beware, beware!
- No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this
- slippery world that can hold, man. What's Prometheus about there?--the
- blacksmith, I mean--what's he about?
- He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.
- Right. It's a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He makes a
- fierce red flame there!
- Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work.
- Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that
- old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a
- blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what's made in fire must
- properly belong to fire; and so hell's probable. How the soot flies!
- This must be the remainder the Greek made the Africans of. Carpenter,
- when he's through with that buckle, tell him to forge a pair of steel
- shoulder-blades; there's a pedlar aboard with a crushing pack.
- Sir?
- Hold; while Prometheus is about it, I'll order a complete man after a
- desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest
- modelled after the Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to 'em, to stay
- in one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist; no heart at all,
- brass forehead, and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains; and let
- me see--shall I order eyes to see outwards? No, but put a sky-light on
- top of his head to illuminate inwards. There, take the order, and away.
- Now, what's he speaking about, and who's he speaking to, I should like
- to know? Shall I keep standing here? (ASIDE).
- 'Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here's one. No,
- no, no; I must have a lantern.
- Ho, ho! That's it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my turn.
- What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man?
- Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols.
- I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter.
- Carpenter? why that's--but no;--a very tidy, and, I may say,
- an extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here,
- carpenter;--or would'st thou rather work in clay?
- Sir?--Clay? clay, sir? That's mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir.
- The fellow's impious! What art thou sneezing about?
- Bone is rather dusty, sir.
- Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury thyself under
- living people's noses.
- Sir?--oh! ah!--I guess so;--yes--dear!
- Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good
- workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well
- for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall
- nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that
- is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst
- thou not drive that old Adam away?
- Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard
- something curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never
- entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still
- pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?
- It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once
- was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the
- soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a
- hair, do I. Is't a riddle?
- I should humbly call it a poser, sir.
- Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing
- may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where
- thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most
- solitary hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers? Hold, don't
- speak! And if I still feel the smart of my crushed leg, though it be now
- so long dissolved; then, why mayst not thou, carpenter, feel the fiery
- pains of hell for ever, and without a body? Hah!
- Good Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculate over again;
- I think I didn't carry a small figure, sir.
- Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises.--How long before the
- leg is done?
- Perhaps an hour, sir.
- Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (TURNS TO GO). Oh, Life! Here
- I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for
- a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will
- not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I'm down in the
- whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with
- the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was
- the world's); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By
- heavens! I'll get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to
- one small, compendious vertebra. So.
- CARPENTER (RESUMING HIS WORK).
- Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb always says
- he's queer; says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer; he's
- queer, says Stubb; he's queer--queer, queer; and keeps dinning it into
- Mr. Starbuck all the time--queer--sir--queer, queer, very queer. And
- here's his leg! Yes, now that I think of it, here's his bedfellow! has
- a stick of whale's jaw-bone for a wife! And this is his leg; he'll stand
- on this. What was that now about one leg standing in three places, and
- all three places standing in one hell--how was that? Oh! I don't wonder
- he looked so scornful at me! I'm a sort of strange-thoughted sometimes,
- they say; but that's only haphazard-like. Then, a short, little old body
- like me, should never undertake to wade out into deep waters with tall,
- heron-built captains; the water chucks you under the chin pretty quick,
- and there's a great cry for life-boats. And here's the heron's leg!
- long and slim, sure enough! Now, for most folks one pair of legs lasts
- a lifetime, and that must be because they use them mercifully, as a
- tender-hearted old lady uses her roly-poly old coach-horses. But Ahab;
- oh he's a hard driver. Look, driven one leg to death, and spavined the
- other for life, and now wears out bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there,
- you Smut! bear a hand there with those screws, and let's finish it
- before the resurrection fellow comes a-calling with his horn for
- all legs, true or false, as brewery-men go round collecting old beer
- barrels, to fill 'em up again. What a leg this is! It looks like a real
- live leg, filed down to nothing but the core; he'll be standing on this
- to-morrow; he'll be taking altitudes on it. Halloa! I almost forgot the
- little oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude. So,
- so; chisel, file, and sand-paper, now!
- CHAPTER 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
- According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and lo! no
- inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must have
- sprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck went down into
- the cabin to report this unfavourable affair.*
- *In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it
- is a regular semiweekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench
- the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals, is
- removed by the ship's pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be kept
- damply tight; while by the changed character of the withdrawn water, the
- mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious cargo.
- Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing nigh to Formosa and
- the Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical outlets from
- the China waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab with
- a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him;
- and another separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the
- Japanese islands--Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke. With his snow-white new
- ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table, and with a long
- pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man, with his
- back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old
- courses again.
- "Who's there?" hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning round
- to it. "On deck! Begone!"
- "Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir. We
- must up Burtons and break out."
- "Up Burtons and break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to here
- for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops?"
- "Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make good
- in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving,
- sir."
- "So it is, so it is; if we get it."
- "I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir."
- "And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it leak!
- I'm all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks,
- but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that's a far worse plight
- than the Pequod's, man. Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can
- find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if
- found, in this life's howling gale? Starbuck! I'll not have the Burtons
- hoisted."
- "What will the owners say, sir?"
- "Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What
- cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck,
- about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But
- look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye,
- my conscience is in this ship's keel.--On deck!"
- "Captain Ahab," said the reddening mate, moving further into the cabin,
- with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost seemed
- not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation
- of itself, but within also seemed more than half distrustful of itself;
- "A better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would quickly
- enough resent in a younger man; aye, and in a happier, Captain Ahab."
- "Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?--On
- deck!"
- "Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir--to be forbearing!
- Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto, Captain Ahab?"
- Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most
- South-Sea-men's cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck,
- exclaimed: "There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one
- Captain that is lord over the Pequod.--On deck!"
- For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks,
- you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of
- the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose,
- and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: "Thou hast
- outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of
- Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of
- thyself, old man."
- "He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!"
- murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. "What's that he said--Ahab
- beware of Ahab--there's something there!" Then unconsciously using the
- musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little
- cabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and
- returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.
- "Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck," he said lowly to the mate;
- then raising his voice to the crew: "Furl the t'gallant-sails, and
- close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up Burton,
- and break out in the main-hold."
- It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting
- Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of honesty in him;
- or mere prudential policy which, under the circumstance, imperiously
- forbade the slightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient,
- in the important chief officer of his ship. However it was, his orders
- were executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.
- CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
- Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold
- were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it
- being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the
- slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight
- sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they
- go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost
- puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask
- containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards,
- vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after
- tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and
- iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks
- were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if
- you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea
- like an air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless
- student with all Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons
- did not visit them then.
- Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast
- bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh
- to his endless end.
- Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;
- dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the
- higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as
- harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but--as
- we have elsewhere seen--mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and
- finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating
- all day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the
- clumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen,
- the harpooneers are the holders, so called.
- Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should
- have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where,
- stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about
- amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom
- of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor
- pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he
- caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after
- some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill
- of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few
- long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his
- frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones
- grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller;
- they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply
- looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that
- immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And like
- circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes
- seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe that
- cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this
- waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who
- were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous and
- fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing
- near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last
- revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell.
- So that--let us say it again--no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and
- holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping
- over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying
- hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final
- rest, and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher
- towards his destined heaven.
- Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself,
- what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour he
- asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was
- just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he
- had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich
- war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all
- whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes,
- and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not
- unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior,
- stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to
- the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars
- are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild,
- uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the
- white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at
- the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual
- sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks.
- No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial
- to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes
- were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and
- much lee-way adown the dim ages.
- Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter
- was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever it might
- include. There was some heathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber aboard,
- which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal
- groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin
- was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of
- the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent
- promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took
- Queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg's
- person as he shifted the rule.
- "Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated the Long Island
- sailor.
- Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general
- reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin
- was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches
- at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools,
- and to work.
- When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted,
- he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring
- whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.
- Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the
- people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one's
- consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to
- him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some
- dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will
- shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be
- indulged.
- Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with
- an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock
- drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along
- with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also,
- biscuits were then ranged round the sides within: a flask of fresh water
- was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in
- the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a
- pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he
- might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving
- a few minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his little
- god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he
- called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him.
- The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg
- in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in view. "Rarmai"
- (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last, and signed to be replaced
- in his hammock.
- But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all this
- while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took him
- by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.
- "Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? where
- go ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where
- the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little
- errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's now been missing long: I think
- he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he
- must be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;--I found
- it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I'll beat ye your dying
- march."
- "I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that in
- violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues;
- and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their
- wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken
- in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip,
- in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all
- our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?--Hark! he speaks
- again: but more wildly now."
- "Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where's his harpoon?
- Lay it across here.--Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game cock
- now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!--mind ye that;
- Queequeg dies game!--take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game! I
- say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward; died all
- a'shiver;--out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles
- he's a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped from
- a whale-boat! I'd never beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail
- him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame upon all
- cowards--shame upon them! Let 'em go drown like Pip, that jumped from a
- whale-boat. Shame! shame!"
- During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip
- was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.
- But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now
- that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon
- there seemed no need of the carpenter's box: and thereupon, when some
- expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the
- cause of his sudden convalescence was this;--at a critical moment, he
- had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone;
- and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet,
- he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of
- his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word,
- it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere
- sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some
- violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
- Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;
- that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing,
- generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day.
- So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after
- sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a
- vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms
- and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then
- springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon,
- pronounced himself fit for a fight.
- With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and
- emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there.
- Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of
- grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was
- striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on
- his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and
- seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on
- his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical
- treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own
- proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but
- whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart
- beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in
- the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were
- inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must
- have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when
- one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg--"Oh, devilish
- tantalization of the gods!"
- CHAPTER 111. The Pacific.
- When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South
- Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear Pacific
- with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was
- answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues
- of blue.
- There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently
- awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those
- fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St.
- John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery
- prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should
- rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed
- shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that
- we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like
- slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their
- restlessness.
- To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must
- ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of
- the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same
- waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday
- planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still
- gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between
- float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown
- Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine
- Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay
- to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal
- swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.
- But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing like an
- iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one
- nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles
- (in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other
- consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in
- which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at
- length upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese
- cruising-ground, the old man's purpose intensified itself. His firm lips
- met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead's veins swelled
- like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran through
- the vaulted hull, "Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick blood!"
- CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.
- Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in
- these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active
- pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old
- blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after
- concluding his contributory work for Ahab's leg, but still retained
- it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost
- incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do
- some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping their
- various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an
- eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads,
- harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement,
- as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded
- by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulance did come from
- him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically
- broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the
- heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so it
- was.--Most miserable!
- A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing
- yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the
- curiosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their persisted
- questionings he had finally given in; and so it came to pass that every
- one now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate.
- Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter's midnight, on the road
- running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt
- the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning,
- dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both
- feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four
- acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied fifth
- act of the grief of his life's drama.
- He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly
- encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals called ruin. He had been
- an artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a house
- and garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three
- blithe, ruddy children; every Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church,
- planted in a grove. But one night, under cover of darkness, and further
- concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into
- his happy home, and robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to
- tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into
- his family's heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of that
- fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for
- prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was in
- the basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so
- that always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no
- unhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of
- her young-armed old husband's hammer; whose reverberations, muffled by
- passing through the floors and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly,
- in her nursery; and so, to stout Labor's iron lullaby, the blacksmith's
- infants were rocked to slumber.
- Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst
- thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon
- him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a
- truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and
- all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked down some
- virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the
- responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than useless
- old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him easier to
- harvest.
- Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew more
- and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the last;
- the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly
- gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows fell; the
- forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother dived
- down into the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed her
- thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a vagabond
- in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to flaxen
- curls!
- Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death
- is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but
- the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the
- Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of
- such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against
- suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly
- spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and
- wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite
- Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them--"Come hither,
- broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate
- death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come
- hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and
- abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put
- up THY gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we
- marry thee!"
- Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by fall
- of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth went
- a-whaling.
- CHAPTER 113. The Forge.
- With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about
- mid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter
- placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the
- coals, and with the other at his forge's lungs, when Captain Ahab came
- along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While
- yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last,
- Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the
- anvil--the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights,
- some of which flew close to Ahab.
- "Are these thy Mother Carey's chickens, Perth? they are always flying
- in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;--look here, they
- burn; but thou--thou liv'st among them without a scorch."
- "Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab," answered Perth, resting
- for a moment on his hammer; "I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou
- scorch a scar."
- "Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful
- to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others
- that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou
- not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet
- hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?--What wert thou making there?"
- "Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it."
- "And can'st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard
- usage as it had?"
- "I think so, sir."
- "And I suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never
- mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?"
- "Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one."
- "Look ye here, then," cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning
- with both hands on Perth's shoulders; "look ye here--HERE--can ye
- smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith," sweeping one hand across his
- ribbed brow; "if thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay
- my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes.
- Answer! Can'st thou smoothe this seam?"
- "Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?"
- "Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for
- though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the
- bone of my skull--THAT is all wrinkles! But, away with child's play; no
- more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here!" jingling the leathern bag,
- as if it were full of gold coins. "I, too, want a harpoon made; one that
- a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth; something that will
- stick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There's the stuff," flinging
- the pouch upon the anvil. "Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered
- nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses."
- "Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the
- best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work."
- "I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from the
- melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge me
- first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer these
- twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! I'll
- blow the fire."
- When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one, by
- spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. "A
- flaw!" rejecting the last one. "Work that over again, Perth."
- This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one, when
- Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, then,
- with regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to
- him the glowing rods, one after the other, and the hard pressed forge
- shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed silently, and
- bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse or
- some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid aside.
- "What's that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?" muttered Stubb,
- looking on from the forecastle. "That Parsee smells fire like a fusee;
- and smells of it himself, like a hot musket's powder-pan."
- At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as
- Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near
- by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent face.
- "Would'st thou brand me, Perth?" wincing for a moment with the pain;
- "have I been but forging my own branding-iron, then?"
- "Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this
- harpoon for the White Whale?"
- "For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them
- thyself, man. Here are my razors--the best of steel; here, and make the
- barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea."
- For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain
- not use them.
- "Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave, sup,
- nor pray till--but here--to work!"
- Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the
- shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith
- was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he
- cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.
- "No, no--no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy,
- there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me
- as much blood as will cover this barb?" holding it high up. A cluster of
- dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh,
- and the White Whale's barbs were then tempered.
- "Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!"
- deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the
- baptismal blood.
- Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of hickory,
- with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket of
- the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of
- it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing
- his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly
- bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and
- now for the seizings."
- At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns
- were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the pole
- was then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope
- was traced half-way along the pole's length, and firmly secured so, with
- intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope--like the Three
- Fates--remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the
- weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole,
- both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his cabin,
- light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. Oh,
- Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy strange
- mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the
- melancholy ship, and mocked it!
- CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.
- Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising
- ground, the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild,
- pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the
- stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing,
- or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy
- minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small success
- for their pains.
- At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow
- heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so
- sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone
- cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy
- quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the
- ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and
- would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a
- remorseless fang.
- These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a
- certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he
- regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing
- only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high
- rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when
- the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears, while their
- hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.
- The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these
- there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied
- children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when
- the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most
- mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate,
- and form one seamless whole.
- Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as
- temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem
- to open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath upon
- them prove but tarnishing.
- Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in
- ye,--though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,--in ye,
- men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some
- few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them.
- Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling
- threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a
- storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this
- life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one
- pause:--through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless
- faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then
- disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. But once
- gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men,
- and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no
- more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will
- never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like
- those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of
- our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
- And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side into that
- same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:--
- "Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride's
- eye!--Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping
- cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep
- down and do believe."
- And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that same
- golden light:--
- "I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that
- he has always been jolly!"
- CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
- And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down
- before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been welded.
- It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her
- last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad
- holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing
- round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to
- pointing her prow for home.
- The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting
- at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down;
- and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the
- last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colours
- were flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of
- her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her
- top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious
- fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp.
- As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most surprising
- success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in the same
- seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without securing a
- single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to
- make room for the far more valuable sperm, but additional supplemental
- casks had been bartered for, from the ships she had met; and these were
- stowed along the deck, and in the captain's and officers' state-rooms.
- Even the cabin table itself had been knocked into kindling-wood; and the
- cabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil-butt, lashed down to the
- floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, the sailors had actually
- caulked and pitched their chests, and filled them; it was humorously
- added, that the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and
- filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled
- it; that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and
- filled them; that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the
- captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands
- into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction.
- As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the
- barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing
- still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge
- try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like POKE or stomach skin of
- the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the clenched
- hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates and harpooneers were
- dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the
- Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly secured
- aloft between the foremast and mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with
- glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious
- jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy at
- the masonry of the try-works, from which the huge pots had been
- removed. You would have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed
- Bastille, such wild cries they raised, as the now useless brick and
- mortar were being hurled into the sea.
- Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the
- ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was
- full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual
- diversion.
- And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black,
- with a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other's
- wakes--one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings
- as to things to come--their two captains in themselves impersonated the
- whole striking contrast of the scene.
- "Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's commander, lifting
- a glass and a bottle in the air.
- "Hast seen the White Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply.
- "No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all," said the other
- good-humoredly. "Come aboard!"
- "Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?"
- "Not enough to speak of--two islanders, that's all;--but come aboard,
- old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your brow. Come
- along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and homeward-bound."
- "How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud, "Thou art
- a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me an empty
- ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward there!
- Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!"
- And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the other
- stubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted; the crew
- of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the receding
- Bachelor; but the Bachelor's men never heeding their gaze for the lively
- revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the taffrail, eyed the
- homewardbound craft, he took from his pocket a small vial of sand, and
- then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed thereby bringing two
- remote associations together, for that vial was filled with Nantucket
- soundings.
- CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.
- Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favourites
- sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the
- rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed
- it with the Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor,
- whales were seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab.
- It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson
- fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun
- and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such
- plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that
- it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of
- the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had
- gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.
- Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned
- off from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from the now
- tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales
- dying--the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring--that strange
- spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a
- wondrousness unknown before.
- "He turns and turns him to it,--how slowly, but how steadfastly, his
- homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too
- worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!--Oh
- that these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights.
- Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe;
- in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks
- furnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still
- rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the
- Niger's unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith; but
- see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it heads
- some other way.
- "Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded
- thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas;
- thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the
- wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor
- has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round
- again, without a lesson to me.
- "Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed
- jet!--that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh
- whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that
- only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker
- half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable
- imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living
- things, exhaled as air, but water now.
- "Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild
- fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though
- hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!"
- CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.
- The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to
- windward; one, less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These
- last three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one
- could not be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay
- by its side all night; and that boat was Ahab's.
- The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale's spout-hole; and
- the lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare
- upon the black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves, which
- gently chafed the whale's broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach.
- Ahab and all his boat's crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who crouching
- in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played round the
- whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails. A sound
- like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of
- Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.
- Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee; and
- hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a
- flooded world. "I have dreamed it again," said he.
- "Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor
- coffin can be thine?"
- "And who are hearsed that die on the sea?"
- "But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two
- hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by
- mortal hands; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in
- America."
- "Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:--a hearse and its plumes
- floating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha! Such a
- sight we shall not soon see."
- "Believe it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man."
- "And what was that saying about thyself?"
- "Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy pilot."
- "And when thou art so gone before--if that ever befall--then ere I can
- follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?--Was it not
- so? Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two
- pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it."
- "Take another pledge, old man," said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up
- like fire-flies in the gloom--"Hemp only can kill thee."
- "The gallows, ye mean.--I am immortal then, on land and on sea," cried
- Ahab, with a laugh of derision;--"Immortal on land and on sea!"
- Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came on, and the
- slumbering crew arose from the boat's bottom, and ere noon the dead
- whale was brought to the ship.
- CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.
- The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Ahab,
- coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would
- ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to
- the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed
- on the nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point the ship's
- prow for the equator. In good time the order came. It was hard upon high
- noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat, was
- about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his
- latitude.
- Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of
- effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing
- focus of the glassy ocean's immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks
- lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness
- of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God's throne.
- Well that Ahab's quadrant was furnished with coloured glasses, through
- which to take sight of that solar fire. So, swinging his seated form
- to the roll of the ship, and with his astrological-looking instrument
- placed to his eye, he remained in that posture for some moments to
- catch the precise instant when the sun should gain its precise meridian.
- Meantime while his whole attention was absorbed, the Parsee was kneeling
- beneath him on the ship's deck, and with face thrown up like Ahab's,
- was eyeing the same sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded
- their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness.
- At length the desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon
- his ivory leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that
- precise instant. Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked up
- towards the sun and murmured to himself: "Thou sea-mark! thou high and
- mighty Pilot! thou tellest me truly where I AM--but canst thou cast the
- least hint where I SHALL be? Or canst thou tell where some other thing
- besides me is this moment living? Where is Moby Dick? This instant thou
- must be eyeing him. These eyes of mine look into the very eye that is
- even now beholding him; aye, and into the eye that is even now equally
- beholding the objects on the unknown, thither side of thee, thou sun!"
- Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its
- numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered:
- "Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and
- Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what
- after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou
- thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds
- thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water
- or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence
- thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed
- be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live
- vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched
- with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the
- glances of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God
- had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!"
- dashing it to the deck, "no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee;
- the level ship's compass, and the level deadreckoning, by log and by
- line; THESE shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye,"
- lighting from the boat to the deck, "thus I trample on thee, thou paltry
- thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!"
- As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live
- and dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and a
- fatalistic despair that seemed meant for himself--these passed over
- the mute, motionless Parsee's face. Unobserved he rose and glided away;
- while, awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the seamen clustered
- together on the forecastle, till Ahab, troubledly pacing the deck,
- shouted out--"To the braces! Up helm!--square in!"
- In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled upon
- her heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon
- her long, ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one
- sufficient steed.
- Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Pequod's
- tumultuous way, and Ahab's also, as he went lurching along the deck.
- "I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of
- its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down,
- to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine,
- what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!"
- "Aye," cried Stubb, "but sea-coal ashes--mind ye that, Mr.
- Starbuck--sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well; I heard Ahab
- mutter, 'Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine;
- swears that I must play them, and no others.' And damn me, Ahab, but
- thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!"
- CHAPTER 119. The Candles.
- 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 these
- resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all
- storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless
- sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
- Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and
- bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly
- ahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the
- thunder, and blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled masts
- fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the
- tempest had left for its after sport.
- Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at every
- flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional disaster
- might have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb and Flask
- were directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the
- boats. But all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted to the very
- top of the cranes, the windward quarter boat (Ahab's) did not escape.
- A great rolling sea, dashing high up against the reeling ship's high
- teetering side, stove in the boat's bottom at the stern, and left it
- again, all dripping through like a sieve.
- "Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck," said Stubb, regarding the wreck,
- "but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can't fight it. You see,
- Mr. Starbuck, a wave 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 deck 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 whale,
- A' flourishin' his tail,--
- Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, 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 Ocean, oh!
- Thunder splits the ships,
- But he only smacks his lips,
- A tastin' of this flip,--
- Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!
- "Avast Stubb," 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 Stubb by the shoulder, and pointing his
- hand towards the weather bow, "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 noon? now mark his boat there; where is
- that stove? In the stern-sheets, man; where he is wont to stand--his
- stand-point is stove, man! Now jump overboard, and sing away, if thou
- must!
- "I don't half understand ye: what's in the wind?"
- "Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to
- Nantucket," soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb's
- question. "The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it
- into a fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward,
- all is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward--I see it lightens up
- there; but not with the lightning."
- At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, following
- the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at the same
- instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.
- "Who's there?"
- "Old Thunder!" said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to his
- pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed
- lances of fire.
- Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off
- the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea some
- ships carry to each mast, is intended to conduct it into the water. But
- as this conductor must descend to considerable depth, that its end may
- avoid all contact with the hull; and as moreover, if kept constantly
- towing there, it would be liable to many mishaps, besides interfering
- not a little with some of the rigging, and more or less impeding the
- vessel's way in the water; because of all this, the lower parts of a
- ship's lightning-rods are not always overboard; but are generally made
- in long slender links, so as to be the more readily hauled up into the
- chains outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may require.
- "The rods! the rods!" cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished to
- vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux,
- to light Ahab to his post. "Are they overboard? drop them over, fore and
- aft. Quick!"
- "Avast!" cried Ahab; "let's have fair play here, though we be the weaker
- side. Yet I'll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and Andes, that
- all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let them be, sir."
- "Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The corpusants! the corpusants!"
- All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each
- tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of
- the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like
- three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.
- "Blast the boat! let it go!" cried Stubb at this instant, as a swashing
- sea heaved up under his own little craft, so that its gunwale violently
- jammed his hand, as he was passing a lashing. "Blast it!"--but
- slipping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames; and
- immediately shifting his tone he cried--"The corpusants have mercy on us
- all!"
- To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of
- the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses
- from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething
- sea; but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when
- God's burning finger has been laid on the ship; when His "Mene, Mene,
- Tekel Upharsin" has been woven into the shrouds and the cordage.
- While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from the
- enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle,
- all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like a far away
- constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the gigantic
- jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed
- the black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted mouth of
- Tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth, which strangely gleamed as
- if they too had been tipped by corpusants; while lit up by the
- preternatural light, Queequeg's tattooing burned like Satanic blue
- flames on his body.
- The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once more
- the Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. A moment
- or two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one. It
- was Stubb. "What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry; it was not the
- same in the song."
- "No, no, it wasn't; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I
- hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces?--have
- they no bowels for a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck--but it's too dark
- to look. Hear me, then: I take that mast-head flame we saw for a sign
- of good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be
- chock a' block with sperm-oil, d'ye see; and so, all that sperm will
- work up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three masts will
- yet be as three spermaceti candles--that's the good promise we saw."
- At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb's face slowly beginning
- to glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: "See! see!" and once
- more the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled
- supernaturalness in their pallor.
- "The corpusants have mercy on us all," cried Stubb, again.
- At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame,
- the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab's front, but with his head bowed away
- from him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging rigging, where
- they had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen,
- arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous, like a
- knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. In various enchanted
- attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running skeletons in
- Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all their eyes
- upcast.
- "Aye, aye, men!" cried Ahab. "Look up at it; mark it well; the white
- flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast
- links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it;
- blood against fire! So."
- Then turning--the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot
- upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm, he
- stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.
- "Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian
- once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to
- this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now
- know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence
- wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all
- are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless,
- placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will
- dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the
- personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at
- best; whencesoe'er I came; wheresoe'er I go; yet while I earthly live,
- the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war
- is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will
- kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power;
- and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there's that
- in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy
- fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to
- thee."
- [SUDDEN, REPEATED FLASHES OF LIGHTNING; THE NINE FLAMES LEAP LENGTHWISE
- TO THRICE THEIR PREVIOUS HEIGHT; AHAB, WITH THE REST, CLOSES HIS EYES,
- HIS RIGHT HAND PRESSED HARD UPON THEM.]
- "I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung
- from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then
- grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of
- these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning
- flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten
- brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh!
- Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou
- leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping
- out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the
- flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou
- art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what
- hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater.
- Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten;
- certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I
- know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent.
- There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom
- all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through
- thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou
- foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable
- riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read
- my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with
- thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!"
- "The boat! the boat!" cried Starbuck, "look at thy boat, old man!"
- Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly lashed
- in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat's
- bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather
- sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a
- levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there
- like a serpent's tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm--"God, God
- is against thee, old man; forbear! 'tis an ill voyage! ill begun, ill
- continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a
- fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this."
- Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the
- braces--though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast
- mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But
- dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the
- burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to
- transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end.
- Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart
- that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:--
- "All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and
- heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye
- may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out
- the last fear!" And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the
- flame.
- As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of
- some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so
- much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts;
- so at those last words of Ahab's many of the mariners did run from him
- in a terror of dismay.
- CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
- AHAB STANDING BY THE HELM. STARBUCK APPROACHING HIM.
- "We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working loose
- and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?"
- "Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I'd sway them up
- now."
- "Sir!--in God's name!--sir?"
- "Well."
- "The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?"
- "Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises,
- but it has not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.--By
- masts and keels! he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some
- coasting smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest
- trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now
- sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none but cowards
- send down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a hooroosh aloft
- there! I would e'en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic
- is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!"
- CHAPTER 121. Midnight.--The Forecastle Bulwarks.
- STUBB AND FLASK MOUNTED ON THEM, AND PASSING ADDITIONAL LASHINGS OVER
- THE ANCHORS THERE HANGING.
- "No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please, but you
- will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how long
- ago is it since you said the very contrary? Didn't you once say that
- whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on its
- insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft
- and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didn't you say so?"
- "Well, suppose I did? What then? I've part changed my flesh since that
- time, why not my mind? Besides, supposing we ARE loaded with powder
- barrels aft and lucifers forward; how the devil could the lucifers get
- afire in this drenching spray here? Why, my little man, you have
- pretty red hair, but you couldn't get afire now. Shake yourself; you're
- Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask; might fill pitchers at your coat
- collar. Don't you see, then, that for these extra risks the Marine
- Insurance companies have extra guarantees? Here are hydrants, Flask. But
- hark, again, and I'll answer ye the other thing. First take your leg off
- from the crown of the anchor here, though, so I can pass the rope;
- now listen. What's the mighty difference between holding a mast's
- lightning-rod in the storm, and standing close by a mast that hasn't
- got any lightning-rod at all in a storm? Don't you see, you timber-head,
- that no harm can come to the holder of the rod, unless the mast is first
- struck? What are you talking about, then? Not one ship in a hundred
- carries rods, and Ahab,--aye, man, and all of us,--were in no more
- danger then, in my poor opinion, than all the crews in ten thousand
- ships now sailing the seas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose you would
- have every man in the world go about with a small lightning-rod running
- up the corner of his hat, like a militia officer's skewered feather,
- and trailing behind like his sash. Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's
- easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be
- sensible."
- "I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard."
- "Yes, when a fellow's soaked through, it's hard to be sensible, that's
- a fact. And I am about drenched with this spray. Never mind; catch the
- turn there, and pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors
- now as if they were never going to be used again. Tying these two
- anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man's hands behind him. And what
- big generous hands they are, to be sure. These are your iron fists,
- hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder, Flask, whether the world is
- anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable,
- though. There, hammer that knot down, and we've done. So; next to
- touching land, lighting on deck is the most satisfactory. I say, just
- wring out my jacket skirts, will ye? Thank ye. They laugh at long-togs
- so, Flask; but seems to me, a Long tailed coat ought always to be worn
- in all storms afloat. The tails tapering down that way, serve to carry
- off the water, d'ye see. Same with cocked hats; the cocks form gable-end
- eave-troughs, Flask. No more monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me; I
- must mount a swallow-tail, and drive down a beaver; so. Halloa! whew!
- there goes my tarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord, that the winds that come
- from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad."
- CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.--Thunder and Lightning.
- THE MAIN-TOP-SAIL YARD.--TASHTEGO PASSING NEW LASHINGS AROUND IT.
- "Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What's
- the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don't want thunder; we want rum; give
- us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!"
- CHAPTER 123. The Musket.
- During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pequod's
- jaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by
- its spasmodic motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached
- to it--for they were slack--because some play to the tiller was
- indispensable.
- In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock
- to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the
- compasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the
- Pequod's; at almost every shock the helmsman had not failed to notice
- the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon the cards; it is
- a sight that hardly anyone can behold without some sort of unwonted
- emotion.
- Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the
- strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb--one engaged forward and the
- other aft--the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails
- were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like
- the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when
- that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.
- The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and a
- storm-trysail was set further aft; so that the ship soon went through
- the water with some precision again; and the course--for the present,
- East-south-east--which he was to steer, if practicable, was once more
- given to the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he had only
- steered according to its vicissitudes. But as he was now bringing the
- ship as near her course as possible, watching the compass meanwhile, lo!
- a good sign! the wind seemed coming round astern; aye, the foul breeze
- became fair!
- Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of "HO! THE
- FAIR WIND! OH-YE-HO, CHEERLY MEN!" the crew singing for joy, that so
- promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents
- preceding it.
- In compliance with the standing order of his commander--to report
- immediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided change
- in the affairs of the deck,--Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to
- the breeze--however reluctantly and gloomily,--than he mechanically went
- below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance.
- Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it
- a moment. The cabin lamp--taking long swings this way and that--was
- burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man's bolted
- door,--a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper panels.
- The isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain humming
- silence to reign there, though it was hooped round by all the roar of
- the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as
- they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest,
- upright man; but out of Starbuck's heart, at that instant when he saw
- the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with
- its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew
- it for itself.
- "He would have shot me once," he murmured, "yes, there's the very musket
- that he pointed at me;--that one with the studded stock; let me touch
- it--lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly lances,
- strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded? I must see. Aye, aye; and
- powder in the pan;--that's not good. Best spill it?--wait. I'll cure
- myself of this. I'll hold the musket boldly while I think.--I come
- to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and
- doom,--THAT'S fair for Moby Dick. It's a fair wind that's only fair for
- that accursed fish.--The very tube he pointed at me!--the very one;
- THIS one--I hold it here; he would have killed me with the very thing I
- handle now.--Aye and he would fain kill all his crew. Does he not say
- he will not strike his spars to any gale? Has he not dashed his heavenly
- quadrant? and in these same perilous seas, gropes he not his way by mere
- dead reckoning of the error-abounding log? and in this very Typhoon, did
- he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods? But shall this crazed
- old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom
- with him?--Yes, it would make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and
- more, if this ship come to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my
- soul swears this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this
- instant--put aside, that crime would not be his. Ha! is he muttering in
- his sleep? Yes, just there,--in there, he's sleeping. Sleeping? aye,
- but still alive, and soon awake again. I can't withstand thee, then, old
- man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to;
- all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands, this is
- all thou breathest. Aye, and say'st the men have vow'd thy vow; say'st
- all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!--But is there no other way? no
- lawful way?--Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What! hope to wrest
- this old man's living power from his own living hands? Only a fool
- would try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes
- and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would
- be more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the
- sight; could not possibly fly his howlings; all comfort, sleep itself,
- inestimable reason would leave me on the long intolerable voyage. What,
- then, remains? The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan
- the nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and
- a whole continent between me and law.--Aye, aye, 'tis so.--Is heaven
- a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed,
- tindering sheets and skin together?--And would I be a murderer, then,
- if"--and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the
- loaded musket's end against the door.
- "On this level, Ahab's hammock swings within; his head this way. A
- touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.--Oh
- Mary! Mary!--boy! boy! boy!--But if I wake thee not to death, old man,
- who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck's body this day week
- may sink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall
- I?--The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails
- are reefed and set; she heads her course."
- "Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!"
- Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's
- tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream
- to speak.
- The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel;
- Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he
- placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.
- "He's too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell
- him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say."
- CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
- Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of
- mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on
- like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded
- so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world
- boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible
- sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his
- bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian
- kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of
- molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
- Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time
- the tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to eye
- the bright sun's rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly settled by
- the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun's rearward place, and how
- the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating wake.
- "Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of
- the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye!
- Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!"
- But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards the
- helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
- "East-sou-east, sir," said the frightened steersman.
- "Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched fist. "Heading East at this
- hour in the morning, and the sun astern?"
- Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then
- observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very
- blinding palpableness must have been the cause.
- Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse
- of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost
- seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two
- compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.
- But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew,
- the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, "I have it! It has happened
- before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our compasses--that's
- all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it."
- "Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said the pale mate,
- gloomily.
- Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than
- one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as
- developed in the mariner's needle, is, as all know, essentially one with
- the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled
- at, that such things should be. Instances where the lightning has
- actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and
- rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more fatal;
- all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before magnetic
- steel was of no more use than an old wife's knitting needle. But in
- either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original
- virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected,
- the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship; even were
- the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.
- Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed
- compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took
- the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were
- exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship's course to be
- changed accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod
- thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair
- one had only been juggling her.
- Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said nothing,
- but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and Flask--who
- in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings--likewise
- unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some of them lowly
- rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate. But as
- ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed;
- or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into their
- congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab's.
- For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But
- chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper
- sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.
- "Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I wrecked
- thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But
- Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck--a lance without
- a pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker's needles.
- Quick!"
- Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about
- to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to
- revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a
- matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old
- man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though clumsily
- practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious sailors,
- without some shudderings and evil portents.
- "Men," said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed
- him the things he had demanded, "my men, the thunder turned old Ahab's
- needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that
- will point as true as any."
- Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this
- was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might
- follow. But Starbuck looked away.
- With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the
- lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade
- him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the maul,
- after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed the
- blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered
- that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then
- going through some small strange motions with it--whether indispensable
- to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe
- of the crew, is uncertain--he called for linen thread; and moving to the
- binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, and horizontally
- suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of the compass-cards.
- At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at
- either end; but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had
- been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back from the
- binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,--"Look
- ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun
- is East, and that compass swears it!"
- One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could
- persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk
- away.
- In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his
- fatal pride.
- CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.
- While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage, the log
- and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident reliance
- upon other means of determining the vessel's place, some merchantmen,
- and many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave the
- log; though at the same time, and frequently more for form's sake than
- anything else, regularly putting down upon the customary slate the
- course steered by the ship, as well as the presumed average rate of
- progression every hour. It had been thus with the Pequod. The wooden
- reel and angular log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the
- railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it; sun and
- wind had warped it; all the elements had combined to rot a thing that
- hung so idly. But heedless of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he
- happened to glance upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet scene,
- and he remembered how his quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic
- oath about the level log and line. The ship was sailing plungingly;
- astern the billows rolled in riots.
- "Forward, there! Heave the log!"
- Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman. "Take
- the reel, one of ye, I'll heave."
- They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship's lee side, where the
- deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into
- the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.
- The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting
- handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved, so
- stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to him.
- Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty
- turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old
- Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to
- speak.
- "Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have
- spoiled it."
- "'Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee?
- Thou seem'st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it."
- "I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these
- grey hairs of mine 'tis not worth while disputing, 'specially with a
- superior, who'll ne'er confess."
- "What's that? There now's a patched professor in Queen Nature's
- granite-founded College; but methinks he's too subservient. Where wert
- thou born?"
- "In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir."
- "Excellent! Thou'st hit the world by that."
- "I know not, sir, but I was born there."
- "In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it's good. Here's a man
- from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man;
- which is sucked in--by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall
- butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So."
- The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long
- dragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In
- turn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the towing
- resistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely.
- "Hold hard!"
- Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the tugging
- log was gone.
- "I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad
- sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here, Tahitian;
- reel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and
- mend thou the line. See to it."
- "There he goes now; to him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer
- seems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in,
- Tahitian! These lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken, and
- dragging slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?"
- "Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whale-boat. Pip's missing.
- Let's see now if ye haven't fished him up here, fisherman. It drags
- hard; I guess he's holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off; we haul
- in no cowards here. Ho! there's his arm just breaking water. A hatchet!
- a hatchet! cut it off--we haul in no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir,
- sir! here's Pip, trying to get on board again."
- "Peace, thou crazy loon," cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm.
- "Away from the quarter-deck!"
- "The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser," muttered Ahab, advancing.
- "Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?
- "Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!"
- "And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of
- thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve
- through! Who art thou, boy?"
- "Bell-boy, sir; ship's-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip!
- One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high--looks
- cowardly--quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip the
- coward?"
- "There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look
- down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him,
- ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home
- henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou
- art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let's down."
- "What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's hand,
- and feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this,
- perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope;
- something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come
- and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I
- will not let this go."
- "Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse
- horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in
- gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods
- oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not
- what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come!
- I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an
- Emperor's!"
- "There go two daft ones now," muttered the old Manxman. "One daft with
- strength, the other daft with weakness. But here's the end of the rotten
- line--all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new
- line altogether. I'll see Mr. Stubb about it."
- CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.
- Steering now south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, and her progress
- solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod held on
- her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such
- unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled
- by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed
- the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.
- At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the
- Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the
- dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch--then headed
- by Flask--was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly--like
- half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod's murdered
- Innocents--that one and all, they started from their reveries, and for
- the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all transfixedly
- listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild cry remained
- within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the crew said it was
- mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers remained unappalled.
- Yet the grey Manxman--the oldest mariner of all--declared that the wild
- thrilling sounds that were heard, were the voices of newly drowned men
- in the sea.
- Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when
- he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not
- unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus
- explained the wonder.
- Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers
- of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or some dams
- that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and kept company
- with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail. But this
- only the more affected some of them, because most mariners cherish a
- very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not only from their
- peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the human look of their
- round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising from
- the water alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances, seals have
- more than once been mistaken for men.
- But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
- confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At
- sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore;
- and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for
- sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was thus
- with the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may, he
- had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard--a cry and a
- rushing--and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and
- looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the
- sea.
- The life-buoy--a long slender cask--was dropped from the stern, where it
- always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to seize it,
- and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken, so that it
- slowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its every pore; and
- the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom, as if to
- yield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.
- And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out
- for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground; that man
- was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the
- time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this event, at
- least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil
- in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged. They
- declared that now they knew the reason of those wild shrieks they had
- heard the night before. But again the old Manxman said nay.
- The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to see
- to it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as
- in the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of
- the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly
- connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be;
- therefore, they were going to leave the ship's stern unprovided with a
- buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg hinted a hint
- concerning his coffin.
- "A life-buoy of a coffin!" cried Starbuck, starting.
- "Rather queer, that, I should say," said Stubb.
- "It will make a good enough one," said Flask, "the carpenter here can
- arrange it easily."
- "Bring it up; there's nothing else for it," said Starbuck, after a
- melancholy pause. "Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so--the coffin,
- I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it."
- "And shall I nail down the lid, sir?" moving his hand as with a hammer.
- "Aye."
- "And shall I caulk the seams, sir?" moving his hand as with a
- caulking-iron.
- "Aye."
- "And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?" moving his hand as
- with a pitch-pot.
- "Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin, and
- no more.--Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me."
- "He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he baulks.
- Now I don't like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he wears it
- like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he won't put
- his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin?
- And now I'm ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It's like turning an old
- coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I don't like this
- cobbling sort of business--I don't like it at all; it's undignified;
- it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats do tinkerings; we are their
- betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square
- mathematical jobs, something that regularly begins at the beginning, and
- is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at the conclusion; not
- a cobbler's job, that's at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at
- the end. It's the old woman's tricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord!
- what an affection all old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of
- sixty-five who ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that's
- the reason I never would work for lonely widow old women ashore, when
- I kept my job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken it into their
- lonely old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at
- sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay
- over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the
- snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before
- with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied
- up in the rigging, ere they would do the job. But I'm made of knotty
- Aroostook hemlock; I don't budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing
- about with a grave-yard tray! But never mind. We workers in woods make
- bridal-bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We
- work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask
- the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too confounded cobbling,
- and then we stash it if we can. Hem! I'll do the job, now, tenderly.
- I'll have me--let's see--how many in the ship's company, all told? But
- I've forgotten. Any way, I'll have me thirty separate, Turk's-headed
- life-lines, each three feet long hanging all round to the coffin. Then,
- if the hull go down, there'll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for
- one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun! Come hammer,
- caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and marling-spike! Let's to it."
- CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
- THE COFFIN LAID UPON TWO LINE-TUBS, BETWEEN THE VICE-BENCH AND THE OPEN
- HATCHWAY; THE CARPENTER CAULKING ITS SEAMS; THE STRING OF TWISTED OAKUM
- SLOWLY UNWINDING FROM A LARGE ROLL OF IT PLACED IN THE BOSOM OF
- HIS FROCK.--AHAB COMES SLOWLY FROM THE CABIN-GANGWAY, AND HEARS PIP
- FOLLOWING HIM.
- "Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand
- complies with my humor more genially than that boy.--Middle aisle of a
- church! What's here?"
- "Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the
- hatchway!"
- "Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault."
- "Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does."
- "Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy
- shop?"
- "I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?"
- "Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?"
- "Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but
- they've set me now to turning it into something else."
- "Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,
- monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the
- next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those
- same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a
- jack-of-all-trades."
- "But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do."
- "The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a
- coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the
- craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in
- hand. Dost thou never?"
- "Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I'm indifferent enough, sir, for that; but
- the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there
- was none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark
- to it."
- "Aye, and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board; and what in
- all things makes the sounding-board is this--there's naught beneath. And
- yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.
- Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against
- the churchyard gate, going in?
- "Faith, sir, I've--"
- "Faith? What's that?"
- "Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamation-like--that's all,
- sir."
- "Um, um; go on."
- "I was about to say, sir, that--"
- "Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
- Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight."
- "He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
- latitudes. I've heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos,
- is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some sort of
- Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He's always under
- the Line--fiery hot, I tell ye! He's looking this way--come, oakum;
- quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and I'm the
- professor of musical glasses--tap, tap!"
- (AHAB TO HIMSELF.)
- "There's a sight! There's a sound! The grey-headed woodpecker tapping
- the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that
- thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag,
- that fellow. Rat-tat! So man's seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all
- materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here
- now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made
- the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life.
- A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some
- spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!
- I'll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth,
- that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain
- twilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed
- sound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return
- again. Now, then, Pip, we'll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous
- philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds
- must empty into thee!"
- CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
- Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down
- upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the
- time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the
- broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all
- fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from
- the smitten hull.
- "Bad news; she brings bad news," muttered the old Manxman. But ere her
- commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he
- could hopefully hail, Ahab's voice was heard.
- "Hast seen the White Whale?"
- "Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?"
- Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected question;
- and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the stranger captain
- himself, having stopped his vessel's way, was seen descending her
- side. A few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched the Pequod's
- main-chains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he was recognised by
- Ahab for a Nantucketer he knew. But no formal salutation was exchanged.
- "Where was he?--not killed!--not killed!" cried Ahab, closely advancing.
- "How was it?"
- It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous, while
- three of the stranger's boats were engaged with a shoal of whales, which
- had led them some four or five miles from the ship; and while they were
- yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and head of Moby Dick had
- suddenly loomed up out of the water, not very far to leeward; whereupon,
- the fourth rigged boat--a reserved one--had been instantly lowered in
- chase. After a keen sail before the wind, this fourth boat--the swiftest
- keeled of all--seemed to have succeeded in fastening--at least, as
- well as the man at the mast-head could tell anything about it. In the
- distance he saw the diminished dotted boat; and then a swift gleam
- of bubbling white water; and after that nothing more; whence it was
- concluded that the stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with
- his pursuers, as often happens. There was some apprehension, but no
- positive alarm, as yet. The recall signals were placed in the rigging;
- darkness came on; and forced to pick up her three far to windward
- boats--ere going in quest of the fourth one in the precisely opposite
- direction--the ship had not only been necessitated to leave that boat to
- its fate till near midnight, but, for the time, to increase her distance
- from it. But the rest of her crew being at last safe aboard, she crowded
- all sail--stunsail on stunsail--after the missing boat; kindling a fire
- in her try-pots for a beacon; and every other man aloft on the look-out.
- But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain the
- presumed place of the absent ones when last seen; though she then
- paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her; and not finding
- anything, had again dashed on; again paused, and lowered her boats; and
- though she had thus continued doing till daylight; yet not the least
- glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.
- The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal his
- object in boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with his
- own in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five miles
- apart, on parallel lines, and so sweeping a double horizon, as it were.
- "I will wager something now," whispered Stubb to Flask, "that some one
- in that missing boat wore off that Captain's best coat; mayhap, his
- watch--he's so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of two
- pious whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the height of
- the whaling season? See, Flask, only see how pale he looks--pale in the
- very buttons of his eyes--look--it wasn't the coat--it must have been
- the--"
- "My boy, my own boy is among them. For God's sake--I beg, I
- conjure"--here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far
- had but icily received his petition. "For eight-and-forty hours let me
- charter your ship--I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it--if
- there be no other way--for eight-and-forty hours only--only that--you
- must, oh, you must, and you SHALL do this thing."
- "His son!" cried Stubb, "oh, it's his son he's lost! I take back the
- coat and watch--what says Ahab? We must save that boy."
- "He's drowned with the rest on 'em, last night," said the old Manx
- sailor standing behind them; "I heard; all of ye heard their spirits."
- Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the Rachel's
- the more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was one of the
- Captain's sons among the number of the missing boat's crew; but among
- the number of the other boat's crews, at the same time, but on the other
- hand, separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes of the chase,
- there had been still another son; as that for a time, the wretched
- father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity; which
- was only solved for him by his chief mate's instinctively adopting the
- ordinary procedure of a whale-ship in such emergencies, that is, when
- placed between jeopardized but divided boats, always to pick up the
- majority first. But the captain, for some unknown constitutional reason,
- had refrained from mentioning all this, and not till forced to it by
- Ahab's iciness did he allude to his one yet missing boy; a little lad,
- but twelve years old, whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving
- hardihood of a Nantucketer's paternal love, had thus early sought to
- initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation almost immemorially
- the destiny of all his race. Nor does it unfrequently occur, that
- Nantucket captains will send a son of such tender age away from them,
- for a protracted three or four years' voyage in some other ship than
- their own; so that their first knowledge of a whaleman's career shall
- be unenervated by any chance display of a father's natural but untimely
- partiality, or undue apprehensiveness and concern.
- Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of Ahab;
- and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without
- the least quivering of his own.
- "I will not go," said the stranger, "till you say aye to me. Do to me
- as you would have me do to you in the like case. For YOU too have a boy,
- Captain Ahab--though but a child, and nestling safely at home now--a
- child of your old age too--Yes, yes, you relent; I see it--run, run,
- men, now, and stand by to square in the yards."
- "Avast," cried Ahab--"touch not a rope-yarn"; then in a voice that
- prolongingly moulded every word--"Captain Gardiner, I will not do it.
- Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I
- forgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch,
- and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers:
- then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before."
- Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin,
- leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter
- rejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment,
- Gardiner silently hurried to the side; more fell than stepped into his
- boat, and returned to his ship.
- Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel
- was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot,
- however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung round;
- starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat against a
- head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while all the while, her
- masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as three tall cherry
- trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs.
- But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw
- that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort.
- She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.
- CHAPTER 129. The Cabin.
- (AHAB MOVING TO GO ON DECK; PIP CATCHES HIM BY THE HAND TO FOLLOW.)
- "Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is coming
- when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee by him.
- There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady.
- Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired
- health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall serve thee, as if
- thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit here in my own screwed
- chair; another screw to it, thou must be."
- "No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me for
- your one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I remain a
- part of ye."
- "Oh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless
- fidelity of man!--and a black! and crazy!--but methinks like-cures-like
- applies to him too; he grows so sane again."
- "They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip, whose
- drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living skin.
- But I will never desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must go with
- ye."
- "If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab's purpose keels up in him.
- I tell thee no; it cannot be."
- "Oh good master, master, master!
- "Weep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is mad.
- Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and still
- know that I am there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand!--Met! True art
- thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for ever bless
- thee; and if it come to that,--God for ever save thee, let what will
- befall."
- (AHAB GOES; PIP STEPS ONE STEP FORWARD.)
- "Here he this instant stood; I stand in his air,--but I'm alone. Now
- were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he's missing. Pip! Pip!
- Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip? He must be up here; let's try the
- door. What? neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar; and yet there's no opening
- it. It must be the spell; he told me to stay here: Aye, and told me this
- screwed chair was mine. Here, then, I'll seat me, against the transom,
- in the ship's full middle, all her keel and her three masts before me.
- Here, our old sailors say, in their black seventy-fours great
- admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it over rows of captains and
- lieutenants. Ha! what's this? epaulets! epaulets! the epaulets all come
- crowding! Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs!
- What an odd feeling, now, when a black boy's host to white men with gold
- lace upon their coats!--Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip?--a little
- negro lad, five feet high, hang-dog look, and cowardly! Jumped from a
- whale-boat once;--seen him? No! Well then, fill up again, captains, and
- let's drink shame upon all cowards! I name no names. Shame upon them!
- Put one foot upon the table. Shame upon all cowards.--Hist! above there,
- I hear ivory--Oh, master! master! I am indeed down-hearted when you walk
- over me. But here I'll stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they
- bulge through; and oysters come to join me."
- CHAPTER 130. The Hat.
- And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a
- preliminary cruise, Ahab,--all other whaling waters swept--seemed to
- have chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely
- there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and
- longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a
- vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually
- encountered Moby Dick;--and now that all his successive meetings with
- various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference
- with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned
- against; now it was that there lurked a something in the old man's eyes,
- which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting
- polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months' night
- sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Ahab's purpose now
- fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It
- domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings,
- fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a
- single spear or leaf.
- In this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced or natural,
- vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more strove
- to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to
- finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of
- Ahab's iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the deck, ever
- conscious that the old man's despot eye was on them.
- But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours; when
- he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have seen that
- even as Ahab's eyes so awed the crew's, the inscrutable Parsee's glance
- awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it.
- Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah
- now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious
- at him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal
- substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen
- being's body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by
- night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go
- below. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan
- but wondrous eyes did plainly say--We two watchmen never rest.
- Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon the
- deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot-hole, or
- exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits,--the main-mast
- and the mizen; or else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle,--his
- living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step; his hat slouched
- heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he stood, however the
- days and nights were added on, that he had not swung in his hammock;
- yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never tell unerringly
- whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at times; or whether
- he was still intently scanning them; no matter, though he stood so in
- the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp
- gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The
- clothes that the night had wet, the next day's sunshine dried upon him;
- and so, day after day, and night after night; he went no more beneath
- the planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for.
- He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,--breakfast and
- dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly grew
- all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still grow
- idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure. But though
- his whole life was now become one watch on deck; and though the Parsee's
- mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet these two never
- seemed to speak--one man to the other--unless at long intervals some
- passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a potent spell
- seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck crew,
- they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak one word;
- by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal
- interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they
- stood far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by
- the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the
- Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned
- substance.
- And yet, somehow, did Ahab--in his own proper self, as daily, hourly,
- and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,--Ahab
- seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again both
- seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean shade
- siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and keel
- was solid Ahab.
- At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard
- from aft,--"Man the mast-heads!"--and all through the day, till after
- sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking of
- the helmsman's bell, was heard--"What d'ye see?--sharp! sharp!"
- But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the
- children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac
- old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity; at least, of nearly
- all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether
- Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But if
- these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from verbally
- expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them.
- "I will have the first sight of the whale myself,"--he said. "Aye!
- Ahab must have the doubloon!" and with his own hands he rigged a nest
- of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved
- block, to secure to the main-mast head, he received the two ends of the
- downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared a pin for
- the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This done, with that
- end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked round upon
- his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance long upon
- Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then settling his
- firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,--"Take the rope, sir--I give
- it into thy hands, Starbuck." Then arranging his person in the basket,
- he gave the word for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being
- the one who secured the rope at last; and afterwards stood near it. And
- thus, with one hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad
- upon the sea for miles and miles,--ahead, astern, this side, and
- that,--within the wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height.
- When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in
- the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is
- hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under these
- circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge
- to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in such a
- wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations aloft
- cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them at the
- deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few minutes
- cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural fatality, if,
- unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should by some
- carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the
- sea. So Ahab's proceedings in this matter were not unusual; the only
- strange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the one
- only man who had ever ventured to oppose him with anything in the
- slightest degree approaching to decision--one of those too, whose
- faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt somewhat;--it was
- strange, that this was the very man he should select for his watchman;
- freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted person's
- hands.
- Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there ten
- minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly
- incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these
- latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head
- in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a thousand feet
- straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and went eddying
- again round his head.
- But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed
- not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked
- it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least
- heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every
- sight.
- "Your hat, your hat, sir!" suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who
- being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though
- somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing
- them.
- But already the sable wing was before the old man's eyes; the long
- hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with
- his prize.
- An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to replace
- it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would
- be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen
- accounted good. Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and
- on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while
- from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly
- discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.
- CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
- The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the
- life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably
- misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were
- fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships,
- cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to
- carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.
- Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and
- some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you
- now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled,
- half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.
- "Hast seen the White Whale?"
- "Look!" replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and with
- his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.
- "Hast killed him?"
- "The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that," answered the
- other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered
- sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.
- "Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab
- held it out, exclaiming--"Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold
- his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs;
- and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin,
- where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"
- "Then God keep thee, old man--see'st thou that"--pointing to the
- hammock--"I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only
- yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only THAT one I bury; the rest were
- buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb." Then turning to his
- crew--"Are ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and
- lift the body; so, then--Oh! God"--advancing towards the hammock with
- uplifted hands--"may the resurrection and the life--"
- "Brace forward! Up helm!" cried Ahab like lightning to his men.
- But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the sound
- of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea; not so
- quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled
- her hull with their ghostly baptism.
- As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy
- hanging at the Pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief.
- "Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!" cried a foreboding voice in her wake.
- "In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us your
- taffrail to show us your coffin!"
- CHAPTER 132. The Symphony.
- It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were
- hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was
- transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and
- man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's
- chest in his sleep.
- Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
- unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;
- but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed
- mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong,
- troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.
- But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and
- shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were,
- that distinguished them.
- Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle
- air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the
- girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion--most seen
- here at the Equator--denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving
- alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.
- Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm
- and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the
- ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the
- morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's
- forehead of heaven.
- Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
- creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how
- oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen
- little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around
- their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on
- the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
- Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and
- watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more
- and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely
- aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment,
- the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome
- sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long
- cruel--forbidding--now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck,
- and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however
- wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to
- bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea;
- nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.
- Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side;
- and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that
- stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch
- him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.
- Ahab turned.
- "Starbuck!"
- "Sir."
- "Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such
- a day--very much such a sweetness as this--I struck my first whale--a
- boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty--forty--forty years ago!--ago! Forty
- years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and
- storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab
- forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors
- of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not
- spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation
- of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's
- exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the
- green country without--oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of
- solitary command!--when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so
- keenly known to me before--and how for forty years I have fed upon dry
- salted fare--fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!--when the
- poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the
- world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts--away, whole oceans away, from
- that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn
- the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow--wife?
- wife?--rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor
- girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy,
- the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand
- lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey--more a
- demon than a man!--aye, aye! what a forty years' fool--fool--old fool,
- has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy
- the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or
- better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this
- weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under
- me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep.
- Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look
- very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and
- humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled
- centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!--crack my heart!--stave my
- brain!--mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have
- I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably old?
- Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is
- better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By
- the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass,
- man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on
- board!--lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick.
- That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see
- in that eye!"
- "Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why
- should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us
- fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are
- Starbuck's--wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow
- youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,
- longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!--this instant let me alter
- the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl
- on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some such
- mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."
- "They have, they have. I have seen them--some summer days in the
- morning. About this time--yes, it is his noon nap now--the boy
- vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of
- cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back
- to dance him again."
- "'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning,
- should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's
- sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my
- Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy's face
- from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!"
- But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and
- cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.
- "What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
- cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor
- commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep
- pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
- making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not
- so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this
- arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy
- in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power;
- how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think
- thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that
- living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in
- this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all
- the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon
- Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where
- do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged
- to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and
- the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been
- making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the
- mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how
- we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid
- greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut
- swaths--Starbuck!"
- But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.
- Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at
- two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly
- leaning over the same rail.
- CHAPTER 133. The Chase--First Day.
- That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man--as his wont at
- intervals--stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went
- to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing
- up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing nigh to
- some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that
- peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the
- living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner
- surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and
- then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible,
- Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly altered, and the
- sail to be shortened.
- The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated
- at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and
- lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery
- wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift
- tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
- "Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!"
- Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle
- deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they
- seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear
- with their clothes in their hands.
- "What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
- "Nothing, nothing sir!" was the sound hailing down in reply.
- "T'gallant sails!--stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!"
- All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for
- swaying him to the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they were
- hoisting him thither, when, while but two thirds of the way aloft,
- and while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the
- main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the
- air. "There she blows!--there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is
- Moby Dick!"
- Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
- look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous
- whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final
- perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just
- beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian's
- head was almost on a level with Ahab's heel. From this height the whale
- was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing
- his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into the
- air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they had
- so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
- "And did none of ye see it before?" cried Ahab, hailing the perched men
- all around him.
- "I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I
- cried out," said Tashtego.
- "Not the same instant; not the same--no, the doubloon is mine, Fate
- reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the
- White Whale first. There she blows!--there she blows!--there she blows!
- There again!--there again!" he cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic
- tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale's visible jets.
- "He's going to sound! In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by
- three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship.
- Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So; steady, man, steady! There go
- flukes! No, no; only black water! All ready the boats there? Stand by,
- stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck; lower, lower,--quick, quicker!" and he
- slid through the air to the deck.
- "He is heading straight to leeward, sir," cried Stubb, "right away from
- us; cannot have seen the ship yet."
- "Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!--brace up!
- Shiver her!--shiver her!--So; well that! Boats, boats!"
- Soon all the boats but Starbuck's were dropped; all the boat-sails
- set--all the paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to
- leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up
- Fedallah's sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.
- Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea;
- but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew
- still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a
- noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came
- so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump
- was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing,
- and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish
- foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head
- beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went
- the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical
- rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters
- interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake;
- and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But
- these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly
- feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like to
- some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but
- shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back;
- and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and
- to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and
- rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons.
- A gentle joyousness--a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested
- the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with
- ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering
- eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness,
- rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that
- great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so
- divinely swam.
- On each soft side--coincident with the parted swell, that but once
- leaving him, then flowed so wide away--on each bright side, the whale
- shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters who
- namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured
- to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of
- tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all
- who for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way
- thou may'st have bejuggled and destroyed before.
- And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among
- waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby
- Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his
- submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw.
- But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant
- his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's Natural
- Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the
- grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringly
- halting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls longingly lingered
- over the agitated pool that he left.
- With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift, the
- three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's reappearance.
- "An hour," said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern; and he gazed
- beyond the whale's place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing
- vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed
- whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze now
- freshened; the sea began to swell.
- "The birds!--the birds!" cried Tashtego.
- In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were
- now all flying towards Ahab's boat; and when within a few yards began
- fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous,
- expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man's; Ahab could discover
- no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its
- depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white
- weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose,
- till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked
- rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable
- bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast,
- shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The
- glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble
- tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled
- the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon
- Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and
- seizing Perth's harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and
- stand by to stern.
- Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its
- bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale's head while yet
- under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that
- malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself,
- as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath
- the boat.
- Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for
- an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of
- a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his
- mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into
- the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish
- pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab's
- head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale
- now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With
- unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the
- tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other's heads to gain the
- uttermost stern.
- And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the
- whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his
- body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from
- the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and
- while the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis
- impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with
- this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and
- helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized
- the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from
- its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the
- frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an
- enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain,
- and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two
- floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew
- at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold fast
- to the oars to lash them across.
- At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first
- to perceive the whale's intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a
- movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand
- had made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only
- slipping further into the whale's mouth, and tilting over sideways as it
- slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him out of
- it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the sea.
- Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little
- distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the
- billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body;
- so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose--some twenty or more feet
- out of the water--the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves,
- dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray
- still higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel
- billows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to
- overleap its summit with their scud.
- *This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation
- (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down
- poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously
- described. By this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively
- view whatever objects may be encircling him.
- But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly round
- and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful
- wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault.
- The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood of
- grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book
- of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's
- insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,--though he could still
- keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless
- Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock
- might burst. From the boat's fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and
- mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not
- succor him; more than enough was it for them to look to themselves.
- For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale's aspect, and so
- planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed
- horizontally swooping upon them. And though the other boats, unharmed,
- still hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into the eddy to
- strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant destruction of
- the jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that case could they
- themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then, they remained on
- the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had now become the old
- man's head.
- Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship's
- mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene;
- and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!--"Sail on
- the"--but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and
- whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing
- to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,--"Sail on the whale!--Drive him
- off!"
- The Pequod's prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed circle, she
- effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly swam
- off, the boats flew to the rescue.
- Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine
- caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily strength did
- crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom: for a time, lying
- all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one trodden under foot
- of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as
- desolate sounds from out ravines.
- But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more
- abbreviate it. In an instant's compass, great hearts sometimes condense
- to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused
- through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary
- in each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their
- life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous
- intensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures
- contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls.
- "The harpoon," said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on one
- bended arm--"is it safe?"
- "Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it," said Stubb, showing it.
- "Lay it before me;--any missing men?"
- "One, two, three, four, five;--there were five oars, sir, and here are
- five men."
- "That's good.--Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him! there!
- there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!--Hands off from me!
- The eternal sap runs up in Ahab's bones again! Set the sail; out oars;
- the helm!"
- It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked
- up by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase is thus
- continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus now. But
- the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale,
- for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with a
- velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these circumstances,
- pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a
- hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long a period, such an
- unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing barely tolerable
- only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as it
- sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate means of
- overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were
- soon swayed up to their cranes--the two parts of the wrecked boat having
- been previously secured by her--and then hoisting everything to her
- side, and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it
- with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the
- Pequod bore down in the leeward wake of Moby-Dick. At the well known,
- methodic intervals, the whale's glittering spout was regularly announced
- from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be reported as just gone
- down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the deck, binnacle-watch
- in hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted hour expired, his
- voice was heard.--"Whose is the doubloon now? D'ye see him?" and if the
- reply was, No, sir! straightway he commanded them to lift him to his
- perch. In this way the day wore on; Ahab, now aloft and motionless;
- anon, unrestingly pacing the planks.
- As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men aloft,
- or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a still
- greater breadth--thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at
- every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon
- the quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow to shattered stern.
- At last he paused before it; and as in an already over-clouded sky fresh
- troops of clouds will sometimes sail across, so over the old man's face
- there now stole some such added gloom as this.
- Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to
- evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in
- his Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed--"The
- thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha!"
- "What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man! did
- I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I could swear
- thou wert a poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck."
- "Aye, sir," said Starbuck drawing near, "'tis a solemn sight; an omen,
- and an ill one."
- "Omen? omen?--the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to
- man, they will honourably speak outright; not shake their heads, and
- give an old wives' darkling hint.--Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles
- of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and
- ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of
- the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold--I
- shiver!--How now? Aloft there! D'ye see him? Sing out for every spout,
- though he spout ten times a second!"
- The day was nearly done; only the hem of his golden robe was rustling.
- Soon, it was almost dark, but the look-out men still remained unset.
- "Can't see the spout now, sir;--too dark"--cried a voice from the air.
- "How heading when last seen?"
- "As before, sir,--straight to leeward."
- "Good! he will travel slower now 'tis night. Down royals and top-gallant
- stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before morning; he's
- making a passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm there! keep her
- full before the wind!--Aloft! come down!--Mr. Stubb, send a fresh hand
- to the fore-mast head, and see it manned till morning."--Then advancing
- towards the doubloon in the main-mast--"Men, this gold is mine, for I
- earned it; but I shall let it abide here till the White Whale is dead;
- and then, whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be
- killed, this gold is that man's; and if on that day I shall again raise
- him, then, ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye! Away
- now!--the deck is thine, sir!"
- And so saying, he placed himself half way within the scuttle, and
- slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals
- rousing himself to see how the night wore on.
- CHAPTER 134. The Chase--Second Day.
- At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh.
- "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the light
- to spread.
- "See nothing, sir."
- "Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought
- for;--the top-gallant sails!--aye, they should have been kept on her all
- night. But no matter--'tis but resting for the rush."
- Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale,
- continued through day into night, and through night into day, is a thing
- by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such is the
- wonderful skill, prescience of experience, and invincible confidence
- acquired by some great natural geniuses among the Nantucket commanders;
- that from the simple observation of a whale when last descried, they
- will, under certain given circumstances, pretty accurately foretell both
- the direction in which he will continue to swim for a time, while out of
- sight, as well as his probable rate of progression during that period.
- And, in these cases, somewhat as a pilot, when about losing sight of
- a coast, whose general trending he well knows, and which he desires
- shortly to return to again, but at some further point; like as this
- pilot stands by his compass, and takes the precise bearing of the
- cape at present visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright
- the remote, unseen headland, eventually to be visited: so does the
- fisherman, at his compass, with the whale; for after being chased, and
- diligently marked, through several hours of daylight, then, when night
- obscures the fish, the creature's future wake through the darkness
- is almost as established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the
- pilot's coast is to him. So that to this hunter's wondrous skill, the
- proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all
- desired purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land. And as the
- mighty iron Leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known in
- its every pace, that, with watches in their hands, men time his rate as
- doctors that of a baby's pulse; and lightly say of it, the up train or
- the down train will reach such or such a spot, at such or such an hour;
- even so, almost, there are occasions when these Nantucketers time that
- other Leviathan of the deep, according to the observed humor of his
- speed; and say to themselves, so many hours hence this whale will have
- gone two hundred miles, will have about reached this or that degree of
- latitude or longitude. But to render this acuteness at all successful in
- the end, the wind and the sea must be the whaleman's allies; for of what
- present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that
- assures him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his
- port? Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile
- matters touching the chase of whales.
- The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a
- cannon-ball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level
- field.
- "By salt and hemp!" cried Stubb, "but this swift motion of the deck
- creeps up one's legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two
- brave fellows!--Ha, ha! Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise,
- on the sea,--for by live-oaks! my spine's a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait
- that leaves no dust behind!"
- "There she blows--she blows!--she blows!--right ahead!" was now the
- mast-head cry.
- "Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I knew it--ye can't escape--blow on and
- split your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your
- trump--blister your lungs!--Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller
- shuts his watergate upon the stream!"
- And Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies
- of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine
- worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might
- have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the
- growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed,
- as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand
- of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of
- the previous day; the rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed,
- unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging
- towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled
- along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the
- vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of
- that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race.
- They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all;
- though it was put together of all contrasting things--oak, and maple,
- and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp--yet all these ran into each
- other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and
- directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of
- the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all
- varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal
- goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.
- The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were
- outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one
- hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others,
- shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking
- yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for
- their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to
- seek out the thing that might destroy them!
- "Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when, after
- the lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard.
- "Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd jet
- that way, and then disappears."
- It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some
- other thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for
- hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its
- pin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the
- air vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant
- halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as--much nearer to the ship
- than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead--Moby Dick
- bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not
- by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White
- Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon
- of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths,
- the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of
- air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the
- distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged
- waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his
- act of defiance.
- "There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his
- immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to
- Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved
- against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for
- the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and
- stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling
- intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.
- "Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and
- thy harpoon are at hand!--Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore.
- The boats!--stand by!"
- Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like
- shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and
- halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from
- his perch.
- "Lower away," he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat--a spare one,
- rigged the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine--keep
- away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!"
- As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first
- assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for the
- three crews. Ahab's boat was central; and cheering his men, he told them
- he would take the whale head-and-head,--that is, pull straight up to his
- forehead,--a not uncommon thing; for when within a certain limit, such
- a course excludes the coming onset from the whale's sidelong vision.
- But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all three boats were
- plain as the ship's three masts to his eye; the White Whale churning
- himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing
- among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling
- battle on every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him from every
- boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which
- those boats were made. But skilfully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling
- like trained chargers in the field; the boats for a while eluded him;
- though, at times, but by a plank's breadth; while all the time, Ahab's
- unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to shreds.
- But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed
- and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three
- lines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of themselves,
- warped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him; though now
- for a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to rally for a more
- tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab first paid out more
- line: and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it again--hoping
- that way to disencumber it of some snarls--when lo!--a sight more savage
- than the embattled teeth of sharks!
- Caught and twisted--corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose harpoons
- and lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came flashing
- and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab's boat. Only one
- thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached
- within--through--and then, without--the rays of steel; dragged in
- the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice
- sundering the rope near the chocks--dropped the intercepted fagot of
- steel into the sea; and was all fast again. That instant, the White
- Whale made a sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines;
- by so doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and
- Flask towards his flukes; dashed them together like two rolling husks on
- a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in
- a boiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of
- the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly
- stirred bowl of punch.
- While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out after
- the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while
- aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching his
- legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was lustily
- singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while the old man's
- line--now parting--admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to
- rescue whom he could;--in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand
- concreted perils,--Ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards
- Heaven by invisible wires,--as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly
- from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its
- bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell
- again--gunwale downwards--and Ahab and his men struggled out from under
- it, like seals from a sea-side cave.
- The first uprising momentum of the whale--modifying its direction as
- he struck the surface--involuntarily launched him along it, to a little
- distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his
- back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from
- side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip
- or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and
- came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work
- for that time was done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the
- ocean, and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued his
- leeward way at a traveller's methodic pace.
- As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again
- came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the
- floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at, and
- safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and
- ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable
- intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all these were there;
- but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen any one. As
- with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now found grimly clinging to
- his boat's broken half, which afforded a comparatively easy float; nor
- did it so exhaust him as the previous day's mishap.
- But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him; as
- instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of
- Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist him. His ivory
- leg had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter.
- "Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who he
- will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has."
- "The ferrule has not stood, sir," said the carpenter, now coming up; "I
- put good work into that leg."
- "But no bones broken, sir, I hope," said Stubb with true concern.
- "Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!--d'ye see it.--But even with
- a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living bone of
- mine one jot more me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor white whale,
- nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and
- inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrape
- yonder roof?--Aloft there! which way?"
- "Dead to leeward, sir."
- "Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest of
- the spare boats and rig them--Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the boat's
- crews."
- "Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir."
- "Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate! that the
- unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!"
- "Sir?"
- "My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane--there, that
- shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet.
- By heaven it cannot be!--missing?--quick! call them all."
- The old man's hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company, the
- Parsee was not there.
- "The Parsee!" cried Stubb--"he must have been caught in--"
- "The black vomit wrench thee!--run all of ye above, alow, cabin,
- forecastle--find him--not gone--not gone!"
- But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was
- nowhere to be found.
- "Aye, sir," said Stubb--"caught among the tangles of your line--I
- thought I saw him dragging under."
- "MY line! MY line? Gone?--gone? What means that little word?--What
- death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry.
- The harpoon, too!--toss over the litter there,--d'ye see it?--the forged
- iron, men, the white whale's--no, no, no,--blistered fool! this hand did
- dart it!--'tis in the fish!--Aloft there! Keep him nailed--Quick!--all
- hands to the rigging of the boats--collect the oars--harpooneers!
- the irons, the irons!--hoist the royals higher--a pull on all the
- sheets!--helm there! steady, steady for your life! I'll ten times girdle
- the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I'll slay
- him yet!"
- "Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck;
- "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man--In Jesus' name no more of
- this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove
- to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil
- shadow gone--all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:--
- "What more wouldst thou have?--Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish
- till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom
- of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh,
- oh,--Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"
- "Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that
- hour we both saw--thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in this
- matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this
- hand--a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This
- whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion
- years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act
- under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.--Stand round
- me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered
- lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab--his body's part; but
- Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel
- strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale;
- and I may look so. But ere I break, ye'll hear me crack; and till ye hear
- THAT, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in
- the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they
- drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again,
- to sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick--two days he's floated--tomorrow
- will be the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more,--but only to spout
- his last! D'ye feel brave men, brave?"
- "As fearless fire," cried Stubb.
- "And as mechanical," muttered Ahab. Then as the men went forward, he
- muttered on: "The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the same
- to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek
- to drive out of others' hearts what's clinched so fast in mine!--The
- Parsee--the Parsee!--gone, gone? and he was to go before:--but still was
- to be seen again ere I could perish--How's that?--There's a riddle now
- might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line
- of judges:--like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain. I'LL, I'LL solve it,
- though!"
- When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.
- So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as
- on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the
- grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns
- in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening
- their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken keel of
- Ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while still as
- on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle; his
- hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial; sat due
- eastward for the earliest sun.
- CHAPTER 135. The Chase.--Third Day.
- The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the
- solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the
- daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.
- "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.
- "In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all. Helm
- there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day
- again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the
- angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a
- fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food for thought, had
- Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels;
- THAT'S tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has
- that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a
- calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much
- for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm--frozen
- calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents
- turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this
- moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort
- of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy clefts of
- Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it; they whip
- it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they
- cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison
- corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and
- now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!--it's
- tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable
- world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a
- noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight
- it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run
- through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not
- stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing--a nobler
- thing than THAT. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things
- that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are
- bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most
- special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I
- say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and
- gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the
- clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous
- mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of
- the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the land swift
- and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal
- Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these
- Trades, or something like them--something so unchangeable, and full as
- strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there! What d'ye see?"
- "Nothing, sir."
- "Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun!
- Aye, aye, it must be so. I've oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye,
- he's chasing ME now; not I, HIM--that's bad; I might have known it, too.
- Fool! the lines--the harpoons he's towing. Aye, aye, I have run him by
- last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but the regular look
- outs! Man the braces!"
- Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's
- quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced
- ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own
- white wake.
- "Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck to
- himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. "God keep
- us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside wet my
- flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!"
- "Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen basket.
- "We should meet him soon."
- "Aye, aye, sir," and straightway Starbuck did Ahab's bidding, and once
- more Ahab swung on high.
- A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now held
- long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the
- weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three
- mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced
- it.
- "Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On deck
- there!--brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's eye. He's too
- far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that
- helmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But
- let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea; there's
- time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young; aye, and
- not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-hills of
- Nantucket! The same!--the same!--the same to Noah as to me. There's
- a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They must lead
- somewhere--to something else than common land, more palmy than the
- palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward,
- then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old
- mast-head! What's this?--green? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks.
- No such green weather stains on Ahab's head! There's the difference now
- between man's old age and matter's. But aye, old mast, we both grow old
- together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, minus
- a leg, that's all. By heaven this dead wood has the better of my live
- flesh every way. I can't compare with it; and I've known some ships made
- of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of
- vital fathers. What's that he said? he should still go before me, my
- pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at the
- bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all
- night I've been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye,
- like many more thou told'st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee;
- but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-head--keep a good
- eye upon the whale, the while I'm gone. We'll talk to-morrow, nay,
- to-night, when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and tail."
- He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered
- through the cloven blue air to the deck.
- In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop's
- stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the
- mate,--who held one of the tackle-ropes on deck--and bade him pause.
- "Starbuck!"
- "Sir?"
- "For the third time my soul's ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck."
- "Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so."
- "Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing,
- Starbuck!"
- "Truth, sir: saddest truth."
- "Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of
- the flood;--and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested comb,
- Starbuck. I am old;--shake hands with me, man."
- Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck's tears the glue.
- "Oh, my captain, my captain!--noble heart--go not--go not!--see, it's a
- brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!"
- "Lower away!"--cried Ahab, tossing the mate's arm from him. "Stand by
- the crew!"
- In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.
- "The sharks! the sharks!" cried a voice from the low cabin-window there;
- "O master, my master, come back!"
- But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and the
- boat leaped on.
- Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when
- numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath
- the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they
- dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat with their
- bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in
- those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in
- the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching
- regiments in the east. But these were the first sharks that had been
- observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried;
- and whether it was that Ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow
- barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the
- sharks--a matter sometimes well known to affect them,--however it was,
- they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others.
- "Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and
- following with his eyes the receding boat--"canst thou yet ring boldly
- to that sight?--lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by
- them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?--For
- when three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure
- the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third the evening
- and the end of that thing--be that end what it may. Oh! my God! what
- is this that shoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yet
- expectant,--fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swim before me,
- as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim.
- Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to
- see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem
- clearing; but clouds sweep between--Is my journey's end coming? My legs
- feel faint; like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,--beats
- it yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck!--stave it off--move, move!
- speak aloud!--Mast-head there! See ye my boy's hand on the
- hill?--Crazed;--aloft there!--keep thy keenest eye upon the boats:--
- "Mark well the whale!--Ho! again!--drive off that hawk! see! he pecks--he
- tears the vane"--pointing to the red flag flying at the main-truck--"Ha!
- he soars away with it!--Where's the old man now? see'st thou that sight,
- oh Ahab!--shudder, shudder!"
- The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast-heads--a
- downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had sounded; but
- intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on his way a little
- sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew maintaining the profoundest
- silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and hammered against the
- opposing bow.
- "Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads
- drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no
- hearse can be mine:--and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!"
- Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; then
- quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of
- ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a
- subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with
- trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot lengthwise,
- but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it
- hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back
- into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for
- an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of
- flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the
- marble trunk of the whale.
- "Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward to
- the attack; but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded in
- him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell
- from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad
- white forehead, beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted together;
- as head on, he came churning his tail among the boats; and once more
- flailed them apart; spilling out the irons and lances from the two
- mates' boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of their bows,
- but leaving Ahab's almost without a scar.
- While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks; and as the
- whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire flank as he
- shot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round
- and round to the fish's back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which,
- during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines
- around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment
- frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.
- The harpoon dropped from his hand.
- "Befooled, befooled!"--drawing in a long lean breath--"Aye, Parsee! I
- see thee again.--Aye, and thou goest before; and this, THIS then is the
- hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of
- thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those
- boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to
- me; if not, Ahab is enough to die--Down, men! the first thing that but
- offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are
- not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.--Where's the
- whale? gone down again?"
- But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with the
- corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter had
- been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily
- swimming forward; and had almost passed the ship,--which thus far had
- been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the present
- her headway had been stopped. He seemed swimming with his utmost
- velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight path in the
- sea.
- "Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third
- day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that
- madly seekest him!"
- Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled to
- leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was sliding
- by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck's face as he
- leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow
- him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he
- saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three
- mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats
- which had but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in
- repairing them. One after the other, through the port-holes, as he sped,
- he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves
- on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all this; as he
- heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving
- a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking that the vane or
- flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had
- just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer
- and nails, and so nail it to the mast.
- Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the resistance
- to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some
- latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White
- Whale's way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly
- nearing him once more; though indeed the whale's last start had not been
- so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves the
- unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to the
- boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades became
- jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea, at almost
- every dip.
- "Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull on!
- 'tis the better rest, the shark's jaw than the yielding water."
- "But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"
- "They will last long enough! pull on!--But who can tell"--he
- muttered--"whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on
- Ahab?--But pull on! Aye, all alive, now--we near him. The helm! take the
- helm! let me pass,"--and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward
- to the bows of the still flying boat.
- At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along
- with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its
- advance--as the whale sometimes will--and Ahab was fairly within the
- smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled
- round his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when,
- with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the
- poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the
- hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked
- into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh
- flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly
- canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the
- gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed
- into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen--who foreknew not the
- precise instant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for its
- effects--these were flung out; but so fell, that, in an instant two of
- them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a combing
- wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man helplessly
- dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.
- Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,
- instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering
- sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with
- the line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on their
- seats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment the treacherous line
- felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air!
- "What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!--'tis whole again; oars! oars!
- Burst in upon him!"
- Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled
- round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution,
- catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing
- in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it--it may be--a
- larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing
- prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.
- Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. "I grow blind; hands!
- stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night?"
- "The whale! The ship!" cried the cringing oarsmen.
- "Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for
- ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I see:
- the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?"
- But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the
- sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks
- burst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat
- lay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew, trying
- hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water.
- Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego's mast-head hammer
- remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as
- with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his own
- forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon the
- bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just as soon
- as he.
- "The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air,
- now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's
- fainting fit. Up helm, I say--ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is this the
- end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab,
- Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again!
- He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one,
- whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now!"
- "Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help
- Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale!
- Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking
- eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too
- soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou
- grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of
- as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet
- ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou
- grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye
- not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in
- his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though;--cherries!
- cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die!"
- "Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope
- my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will
- now come to her, for the voyage is up."
- From the ship's bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive; hammers,
- bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in their
- hands, just as they had darted from their various employments; all their
- enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side strangely
- vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of overspreading
- semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution, swift vengeance,
- eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal
- man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's
- starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their
- faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook
- on their bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters
- pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.
- "The ship! The hearse!--the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat;
- "its wood could only be American!"
- Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its
- keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far
- off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a
- time, he lay quiescent.
- "I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer.
- Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only
- god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed
- prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I
- cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh,
- lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in
- my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in,
- ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber
- of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering
- whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at
- thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins
- and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let
- me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee,
- thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!"
- The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting
- velocity the line ran through the grooves;--ran foul. Ahab stooped to
- clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the
- neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was
- shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the
- heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty
- tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its
- depths.
- For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The
- ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering
- mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana;
- only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or
- fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers
- still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric
- circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating
- oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all
- round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod
- out of sight.
- But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the
- sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the
- erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag,
- which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying
- billows they almost touched;--at that instant, a red arm and a hammer
- hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing
- the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that
- tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home
- among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there;
- this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the
- hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill,
- the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen
- there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his
- imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the
- flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink
- to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and
- helmeted herself with it.
- Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white
- surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great
- shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
- Epilogue
- "AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE" Job.
- The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?--Because one
- did survive the wreck.
- It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he whom the
- Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that bowsman
- assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three
- men were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So,
- floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it,
- when the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then,
- but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had
- subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting
- towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling
- circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital
- centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of
- its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great
- force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and
- floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day
- and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks,
- they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks
- sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer,
- and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in
- her retracing search after her missing children, only found another
- orphan.
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