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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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