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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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