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|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. 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. 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 cant 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.     |
|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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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." 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. 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." 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 Peleg. 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. 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. 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," 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. "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. 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. 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. 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. |
|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! 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. 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.    |
|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! 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! 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! 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. 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."   |
|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. 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." 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 Baliene 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! 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! 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! 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 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! 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 razeed 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. 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! 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. 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! |
|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. 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. 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! 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 invunerable  |
|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. 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?     |
|"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!" 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. 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 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.  |
|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. 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. 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. 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.    |
|"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. 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 Tormentoto, 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. 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. 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. 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,' 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.'" 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. 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. 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! 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! 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.   |
|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." 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. 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! |
|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. 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."   |
|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. 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 tensing 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 tall. 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   |
|it 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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?   |
|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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 forthing, 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?    |
|"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. "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.  |
|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? 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. 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.   |
|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. 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.|
|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. 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! 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, 't is 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!" "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. 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.   |
|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.|
|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. 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. 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. 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.    |
|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. 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.     |
|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. 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! 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. 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!" 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!" 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. 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! 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!" 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.|
|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!" 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. 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!"   |
|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. 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!" 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." "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!" 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." 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. 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." 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." 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!"    |
|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. 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." "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." 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. 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!" 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. 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. 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,    |
|yell 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. 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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