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20524 lines
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MD GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
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Version 01, 18 October 1851
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Copyright 2023 Stef Dunlap <kindrobot@tilde.team>
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1. Permissions
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Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose
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with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice
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and this permission notice appear in all copies.
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2. Warranty
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THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH
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REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
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FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT,
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INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS
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OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER
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TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF
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THIS SOFTWARE.
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3. Moby-Dick, or the Whale, by Herman Melville
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CONTENTS
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ETYMOLOGY.
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EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
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CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
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CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
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CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
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CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
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CHAPTER 5. Breakfast.
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CHAPTER 6. The Street.
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CHAPTER 7. The Chapel.
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CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.
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CHAPTER 9. The Sermon.
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CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.
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CHAPTER 11. Nightgown.
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CHAPTER 12. Biographical.
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CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.
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CHAPTER 14. Nantucket.
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CHAPTER 15. Chowder.
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CHAPTER 16. The Ship.
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CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.
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CHAPTER 18. His Mark.
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CHAPTER 19. The Prophet.
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CHAPTER 20. All Astir.
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CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.
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CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.
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CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore.
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CHAPTER 24. The Advocate.
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CHAPTER 25. Postscript.
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CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.
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CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.
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CHAPTER 28. Ahab.
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CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
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CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.
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CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.
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CHAPTER 32. Cetology.
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CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder.
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CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.
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CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head.
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CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.
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CHAPTER 37. Sunset.
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CHAPTER 38. Dusk.
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CHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch.
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CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.
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CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick.
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CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale.
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CHAPTER 43. Hark!
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CHAPTER 44. The Chart.
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CHAPTER 45. The Affidavit.
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CHAPTER 46. Surmises.
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CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.
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CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.
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CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
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CHAPTER 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
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CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.
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CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.
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CHAPTER 53. The Gam.
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CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story.
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CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
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CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures
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of Whaling Scenes.
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CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone;
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in Mountains; in Stars.
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CHAPTER 58. Brit.
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CHAPTER 59. Squid.
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CHAPTER 60. The Line.
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CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
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CHAPTER 62. The Dart.
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CHAPTER 63. The Crotch.
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CHAPTER 64. Stubb’s Supper.
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CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish.
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CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.
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CHAPTER 67. Cutting In.
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CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.
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CHAPTER 69. The Funeral.
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CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.
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CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story.
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CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.
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CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over
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Him.
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CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
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CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
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CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.
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CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
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CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.
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CHAPTER 79. The Prairie.
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CHAPTER 80. The Nut.
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CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
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CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.
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CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
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CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling.
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CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.
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CHAPTER 86. The Tail.
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CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.
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CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
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CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
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CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.
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CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
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CHAPTER 92. Ambergris.
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CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.
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CHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.
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CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.
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CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.
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CHAPTER 97. The Lamp.
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CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
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CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.
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CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm.
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CHAPTER 101. The Decanter.
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CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
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CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.
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CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.
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CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
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CHAPTER 106. Ahab’s Leg.
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CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.
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CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
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CHAPTER 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
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CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
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CHAPTER 111. The Pacific.
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CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.
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CHAPTER 113. The Forge.
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CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.
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CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
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CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.
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CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.
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CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.
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CHAPTER 119. The Candles.
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CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
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CHAPTER 121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.
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CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.
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CHAPTER 123. The Musket.
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CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
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CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.
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CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.
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CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
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CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
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CHAPTER 129. The Cabin.
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CHAPTER 130. The Hat.
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CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
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CHAPTER 132. The Symphony.
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CHAPTER 133. The Chase—First Day.
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CHAPTER 134. The Chase—Second Day.
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CHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day.
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Epilogue
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Original Transcriber’s Notes:
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This text is a combination of etexts, one from the now-defunct ERIS project at
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Virginia Tech and one from Project Gutenberg’s archives. The proofreaders of
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this version are indebted to The University of Adelaide Library for preserving
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the Virginia Tech version. The resulting etext was compared with a public domain
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hard copy version of the text.
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ETYMOLOGY. (Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.)
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The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was
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ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly
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embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He
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loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
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“While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a
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whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the
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letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you
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deliver that which is not true.” —Hackluyt.
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“WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness or rolling;
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for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.” —Webster’s Dictionary.
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“WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen; A.S.
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Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.” —Richardson’s Dictionary. חו, Hebrew.
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ϰητος, Greek. CETUS, Latin. WHŒL, Anglo-Saxon. HVALT, Danish. WAL,
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Dutch. HWAL, Swedish. HVALUR, Icelandic. WHALE, English. BALEINE,
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French. BALLENA, Spanish. PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee. PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE,
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Erromangoan.
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EXTRACTS. (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
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It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor
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devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and
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street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he
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could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must
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not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements,
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however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from
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it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here
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appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a
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glancing bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied,
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and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.
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So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou
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belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever
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warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one
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sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon
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tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not
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altogether unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more
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pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go
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thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye!
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But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for
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your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens,
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and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your
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coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike
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unsplinterable glasses! EXTRACTS.
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“And God created great whales.” —Genesis.
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“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be
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hoary.” —Job.
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“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” —Jonah.
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“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play
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therein.” —Psalms.
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“In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish
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Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he
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shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” —Isaiah.
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“And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster’s mouth,
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be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that foul great
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swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch.” —Holland’s
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Plutarch’s Morals.
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“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among which
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the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much in length as four
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acres or arpens of land.” —Holland’s Pliny.
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“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many
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Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a
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most monstrous size.... This came towards us, open-mouthed, raising the waves on
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all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam.” —Tooke’s Lucian. “The
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True History.”
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“He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales, which had
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bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the
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king.... The best whales were catched in his own country, of which some were
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forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of six who had
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killed sixty in two days.” —Other or Other’s verbal narrative taken down from
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his mouth by King Alfred, A.D. 890.
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“And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that enter into the
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dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are immediately lost and
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swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in great security, and there
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sleeps.” —MONTAIGNE. —Apology for Raimond Sebond.
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“Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan described by
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the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.” —Rabelais.
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“This whale’s liver was two cartloads.” —Stowe’s Annals.
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“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.” —Lord
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Bacon’s Version of the Psalms.
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“Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received nothing
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certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil
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will be extracted out of one whale.” —Ibid. “History of Life and Death.”
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“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.” —King
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Henry.
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“Very like a whale.” —Hamlet.
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“Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art Mote him availle, but to returne
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againe To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart, Dinting his breast, had
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bred his restless paine, Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the
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maine.” —The Fairie Queen.
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“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm
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trouble the ocean till it boil.” —Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert.
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“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hosmannus in his
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work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit.” —Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma
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Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E.
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|
“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail He threatens ruin with his
|
|||
|
ponderous tail. ... Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears, And on his
|
|||
|
back a grove of pikes appears.” —Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State—(in
|
|||
|
Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.” —Opening sentence of Hobbes’s
|
|||
|
Leviathan.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in the
|
|||
|
mouth of a whale.” —Pilgrim’s Progress.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“That sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that
|
|||
|
swim the ocean stream.” —Paradise Lost.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
—“There Leviathan, Hugest of living creatures, in the deep Stretched like a
|
|||
|
promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land; and at his gills Draws
|
|||
|
in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.” —Ibid.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming
|
|||
|
in them.” —Fuller’s Profane and Holy State.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“So close behind some promontory lie The huge Leviathan to attend their
|
|||
|
prey, And give no chance, but swallow in the fry, Which through their
|
|||
|
gaping jaws mistake the way.” —Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his head,
|
|||
|
and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it will be aground
|
|||
|
in twelve or thirteen feet water.” —Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in
|
|||
|
Purchas.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in wantonness
|
|||
|
fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which nature has placed on
|
|||
|
their shoulders.” —Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to proceed with
|
|||
|
a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship upon them.”
|
|||
|
—Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
|
|||
|
Jonas-in-the-Whale.... Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that is a
|
|||
|
fable.... They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a
|
|||
|
whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains.... I was told of a
|
|||
|
whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of herrings in his belly....
|
|||
|
One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that
|
|||
|
was white all over.” —A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671. Harris Coll.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one eighty feet
|
|||
|
in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was informed), besides a
|
|||
|
vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for
|
|||
|
a gate in the garden of Pitferren.” —Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma-ceti whale,
|
|||
|
for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any man, such is
|
|||
|
his fierceness and swiftness.” —Richard Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas.
|
|||
|
Phil. Trans. A.D. 1668.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Whales in the sea God’s voice obey.” —N. E. Primer.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those southern seas,
|
|||
|
as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the northward of us.”
|
|||
|
—Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe, A.D. 1729.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an
|
|||
|
insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.” —Ulloa’s South
|
|||
|
America.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, We trust the important charge, the
|
|||
|
petticoat. Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, Tho’ stuffed
|
|||
|
with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.” —Rape of the Lock.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that take up
|
|||
|
their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear contemptible in the
|
|||
|
comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal in creation.” —Goldsmith,
|
|||
|
Nat. Hist.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like
|
|||
|
great whales.” —Goldsmith to Johnson.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was found to be
|
|||
|
a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then towing ashore. They
|
|||
|
seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to avoid
|
|||
|
being seen by us.” —Cook’s Voyages.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great dread
|
|||
|
of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even their
|
|||
|
names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles of the
|
|||
|
same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their too near
|
|||
|
approach.” —Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland
|
|||
|
in 1772.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce animal, and
|
|||
|
requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.” —Thomas Jefferson’s Whale
|
|||
|
Memorial to the French minister in 1778.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?” —Edmund Burke’s reference in
|
|||
|
Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.” —Edmund Burke.
|
|||
|
(somewhere.)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on the
|
|||
|
consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates and robbers,
|
|||
|
is the right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when either
|
|||
|
thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the property of the king.”
|
|||
|
—Blackstone.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair: Rodmond unerring o’er his
|
|||
|
head suspends The barbed steel, and every turn attends.” —Falconer’s
|
|||
|
Shipwreck.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, And rockets blew self
|
|||
|
driven, To hang their momentary fire Around the vault of heaven.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“So fire with water to compare, The ocean serves on high, Up-spouted by a
|
|||
|
whale in air, To express unwieldy joy.” —Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to
|
|||
|
London.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with
|
|||
|
immense velocity.” —John Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale. (A small
|
|||
|
sized one.)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
|
|||
|
water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that
|
|||
|
pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale’s
|
|||
|
heart.” —Paley’s Theology.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.” —Baron Cuvier.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the
|
|||
|
first of May, the sea being then covered with them.” —Colnett’s Voyage for the
|
|||
|
Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fishery.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered and dived, in play, in
|
|||
|
chace, in battle, Fishes of every colour, form, and kind; Which language
|
|||
|
cannot paint, and mariner Had never seen; from dread Leviathan To insect
|
|||
|
millions peopling every wave: Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating
|
|||
|
islands, Led by mysterious instincts through that waste And trackless
|
|||
|
region, though on every side Assaulted by voracious enemies, Whales,
|
|||
|
sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw, With swords, saws, spiral
|
|||
|
horns, or hooked fangs.” —Montgomery’s World before the Flood.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Io! Paean! Io! sing. To the finny people’s king. Not a mightier whale
|
|||
|
than this In the vast Atlantic is; Not a fatter fish than he, Flounders
|
|||
|
round the Polar Sea.” —Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting
|
|||
|
and sporting with each other, when one observed: there—pointing to the sea—is a
|
|||
|
green pasture where our children’s grand-children will go for bread.” —Obed
|
|||
|
Macy’s History of Nantucket.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a
|
|||
|
Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.” —Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a
|
|||
|
whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago.” —Ibid.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his sprout; he threw up a
|
|||
|
pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He’s a raal
|
|||
|
oil-butt, that fellow!” —Cooper’s Pilot.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had
|
|||
|
been introduced on the stage there.” —Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have been stove by a
|
|||
|
whale.” —“Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket, which
|
|||
|
was attacked and finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean.”
|
|||
|
By Owen Chace of Nantucket, first mate of said vessel. New York, 1821.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, The wind was piping free; Now
|
|||
|
bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale, And the phospher gleamed in the
|
|||
|
wake of the whale, As it floundered in the sea.” —Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture of this
|
|||
|
one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles....
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which, cracking like
|
|||
|
a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles.” —Scoresby.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the infuriated Sperm
|
|||
|
Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head, and with wide expanded
|
|||
|
jaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes at the boats with his head; they
|
|||
|
are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly
|
|||
|
destroyed.... It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the
|
|||
|
habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an
|
|||
|
animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should
|
|||
|
have excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent
|
|||
|
observers, that of late years, must have possessed the most abundant and the
|
|||
|
most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes.” —Thomas Beale’s
|
|||
|
History of the Sperm Whale, 1839.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The Cachalot” (Sperm Whale) “is not only better armed than the True Whale”
|
|||
|
(Greenland or Right Whale) “in possessing a formidable weapon at either
|
|||
|
extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ
|
|||
|
these weapons offensively and in manner at once so artful, bold, and
|
|||
|
mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to attack of
|
|||
|
all the known species of the whale tribe.” —Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling
|
|||
|
Voyage Round the Globe, 1840.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head. “Where
|
|||
|
away?” demanded the captain. “Three points off the lee bow, sir.” “Raise
|
|||
|
up your wheel. Steady!” “Steady, sir.” “Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that
|
|||
|
whale now?” “Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows!
|
|||
|
There she breaches!” “Sing out! sing out every time!” “Ay Ay, sir! There
|
|||
|
she blows! there—there—thar she blows—bowes—bo-o-os!” “How far off?” “Two
|
|||
|
miles and a half.” “Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands.” —J.
|
|||
|
Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize. 1846.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid transactions
|
|||
|
we are about to relate, belonged to the island of Nantucket.” —“Narrative of the
|
|||
|
Globe Mutiny,” by Lay and Hussey survivors. A.D. 1828.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the assault for
|
|||
|
some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length rushed on the boat;
|
|||
|
himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water when they
|
|||
|
saw the onset was inevitable.” —Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Nantucket itself,” said Mr. Webster, “is a very striking and peculiar portion
|
|||
|
of the National interest. There is a population of eight or nine thousand
|
|||
|
persons living here in the sea, adding largely every year to the National wealth
|
|||
|
by the boldest and most persevering industry.” —Report of Daniel Webster’s
|
|||
|
Speech in the U. S. Senate, on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater
|
|||
|
at Nantucket. 1828.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment.” —“The
|
|||
|
Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman’s Adventures and the Whale’s Biography,
|
|||
|
gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore Preble.” By Rev. Henry T.
|
|||
|
Cheever.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I will send you to
|
|||
|
hell.” —Life of Samuel Comstock (the mutineer), by his brother, William
|
|||
|
Comstock. Another Version of the whale-ship Globe narrative.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order, if
|
|||
|
possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they failed of their
|
|||
|
main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale.” —McCulloch’s Commercial
|
|||
|
Dictionary.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward again;
|
|||
|
for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen seem to have
|
|||
|
indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North-West Passage.” —From
|
|||
|
“Something” unpublished.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being struck by her
|
|||
|
near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look-outs at the mast-heads,
|
|||
|
eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them, has a totally different air from
|
|||
|
those engaged in regular voyage.” —Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect having seen
|
|||
|
large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form arches over
|
|||
|
gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that
|
|||
|
these were the ribs of whales.” —Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales, that the
|
|||
|
whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages enrolled among the
|
|||
|
crew.” —Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking of the Whale-Ship Hobomack.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels (American)
|
|||
|
few ever return in the ships on board of which they departed.” —Cruise in a
|
|||
|
Whale Boat.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up perpendicularly into
|
|||
|
the air. It was the whale.” —Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would manage a
|
|||
|
powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of
|
|||
|
his tail.” —A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and female,
|
|||
|
slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone’s throw of the
|
|||
|
shore” (Terra Del Fuego), “over which the beech tree extended its branches.”
|
|||
|
—Darwin’s Voyage of a Naturalist.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“‘Stern all!’ exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the distended
|
|||
|
jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat, threatening it with
|
|||
|
instant destruction;—‘Stern all, for your lives!’” —Wharton the Whale Killer.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold harpooneer is
|
|||
|
striking the whale!” —Nantucket Song.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale In his ocean home will be A
|
|||
|
giant in might, where might is right, And King of the boundless sea.”
|
|||
|
—Whale Song.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or
|
|||
|
no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought
|
|||
|
I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I
|
|||
|
have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find
|
|||
|
myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in
|
|||
|
my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses,
|
|||
|
and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my
|
|||
|
hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to
|
|||
|
prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
|
|||
|
people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
|
|||
|
This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato
|
|||
|
throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing
|
|||
|
surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some
|
|||
|
time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as
|
|||
|
Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left,
|
|||
|
the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that
|
|||
|
noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous
|
|||
|
were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to
|
|||
|
Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted
|
|||
|
like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of
|
|||
|
mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated
|
|||
|
upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some
|
|||
|
high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep.
|
|||
|
But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to
|
|||
|
counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green
|
|||
|
fields gone? What do they here?
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly
|
|||
|
bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of
|
|||
|
the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice.
|
|||
|
No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling
|
|||
|
in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from
|
|||
|
lanes and alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here
|
|||
|
they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the
|
|||
|
compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost
|
|||
|
any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves
|
|||
|
you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most
|
|||
|
absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his
|
|||
|
legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water
|
|||
|
there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American
|
|||
|
desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a
|
|||
|
metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded
|
|||
|
for ever.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
|
|||
|
quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the
|
|||
|
Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a
|
|||
|
hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his
|
|||
|
meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy
|
|||
|
smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping
|
|||
|
spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies
|
|||
|
thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon
|
|||
|
this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed
|
|||
|
upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores
|
|||
|
on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm
|
|||
|
wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract
|
|||
|
of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet
|
|||
|
of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether
|
|||
|
to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian
|
|||
|
trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust
|
|||
|
healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your
|
|||
|
first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration,
|
|||
|
when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did
|
|||
|
the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity,
|
|||
|
and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still
|
|||
|
deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp
|
|||
|
the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was
|
|||
|
drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is
|
|||
|
the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow
|
|||
|
hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean
|
|||
|
to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a
|
|||
|
passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have
|
|||
|
something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep
|
|||
|
of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a
|
|||
|
passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a
|
|||
|
Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such
|
|||
|
offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable
|
|||
|
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 honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the
|
|||
|
land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if
|
|||
|
just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as
|
|||
|
a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The
|
|||
|
transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and
|
|||
|
requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and
|
|||
|
bear it. But even this wears off in time.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and
|
|||
|
sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in
|
|||
|
the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks
|
|||
|
anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks
|
|||
|
in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then,
|
|||
|
however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch
|
|||
|
me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that
|
|||
|
everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a
|
|||
|
physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
|
|||
|
passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be
|
|||
|
content.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me
|
|||
|
for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever
|
|||
|
heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the
|
|||
|
difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is
|
|||
|
perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed
|
|||
|
upon us. But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with
|
|||
|
which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so
|
|||
|
earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
|
|||
|
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves
|
|||
|
to perdition!
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and
|
|||
|
pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more
|
|||
|
prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean
|
|||
|
maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his
|
|||
|
atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he
|
|||
|
breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their
|
|||
|
leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect
|
|||
|
it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
|
|||
|
merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage;
|
|||
|
this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant
|
|||
|
surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some
|
|||
|
unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my
|
|||
|
going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence
|
|||
|
that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and
|
|||
|
solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill
|
|||
|
must have run something like this:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States. “WHALING
|
|||
|
VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates,
|
|||
|
put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down
|
|||
|
for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel
|
|||
|
comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly;
|
|||
|
yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into
|
|||
|
the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various
|
|||
|
disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling
|
|||
|
me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased
|
|||
|
freewill and discriminating judgment.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself.
|
|||
|
Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild
|
|||
|
and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless
|
|||
|
perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand
|
|||
|
Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men,
|
|||
|
perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am
|
|||
|
tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden
|
|||
|
seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to
|
|||
|
perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it
|
|||
|
is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges
|
|||
|
in.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great
|
|||
|
flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed
|
|||
|
me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless
|
|||
|
processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom,
|
|||
|
like a snow hill in the air.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and
|
|||
|
started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I
|
|||
|
duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in December. Much was I
|
|||
|
disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already
|
|||
|
sailed, and that no way of reaching that place would offer, till the following
|
|||
|
Monday.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this
|
|||
|
same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related
|
|||
|
that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no
|
|||
|
other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something
|
|||
|
about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased
|
|||
|
me. Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising the
|
|||
|
business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much
|
|||
|
behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the
|
|||
|
place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from
|
|||
|
Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes
|
|||
|
to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that
|
|||
|
first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
|
|||
|
cobblestones—so goes the story—to throw at the whales, in order to discover when
|
|||
|
they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New
|
|||
|
Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of
|
|||
|
concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very
|
|||
|
dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless.
|
|||
|
I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and
|
|||
|
only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to
|
|||
|
myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and
|
|||
|
comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the
|
|||
|
south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear
|
|||
|
Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don’t be too particular.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of “The Crossed
|
|||
|
Harpoons”—but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the
|
|||
|
bright red windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,” there came such fervent rays, that
|
|||
|
it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for
|
|||
|
everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic
|
|||
|
pavement,—rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty
|
|||
|
projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were
|
|||
|
in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing
|
|||
|
one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the
|
|||
|
tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don’t you hear? get
|
|||
|
away from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I
|
|||
|
went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there,
|
|||
|
doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here
|
|||
|
and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the
|
|||
|
night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but
|
|||
|
deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide
|
|||
|
building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if
|
|||
|
it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did
|
|||
|
was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying
|
|||
|
particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah?
|
|||
|
But “The Crossed Harpoons,” and “The Sword-Fish?”—this, then must needs be the
|
|||
|
sign of “The Trap.” However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within,
|
|||
|
pushed on and opened a second, interior door.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces
|
|||
|
turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was
|
|||
|
beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the preacher’s text was
|
|||
|
about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing
|
|||
|
there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign
|
|||
|
of ‘The Trap!’
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and
|
|||
|
heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over
|
|||
|
the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet
|
|||
|
of misty spray, and these words underneath—“The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.”
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But it
|
|||
|
is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an
|
|||
|
emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time,
|
|||
|
looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if
|
|||
|
it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the
|
|||
|
swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here
|
|||
|
was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it
|
|||
|
were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that
|
|||
|
tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor
|
|||
|
Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to
|
|||
|
any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. “In judging
|
|||
|
of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,” says an old writer—of whose works I
|
|||
|
possess the only copy extant—“it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou
|
|||
|
lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or
|
|||
|
whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both
|
|||
|
sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier.” True enough, thought
|
|||
|
I, as this passage occurred to my mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well.
|
|||
|
Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity
|
|||
|
they didn’t stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little
|
|||
|
lint here and there. But it’s too late to make any improvements now. The
|
|||
|
universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a
|
|||
|
million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the
|
|||
|
curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he
|
|||
|
might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet
|
|||
|
that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives,
|
|||
|
in his red silken wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a
|
|||
|
fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of
|
|||
|
their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the
|
|||
|
privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the
|
|||
|
grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would
|
|||
|
he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye
|
|||
|
gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of
|
|||
|
Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of
|
|||
|
the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made
|
|||
|
of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks
|
|||
|
the tepid tears of orphans.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty
|
|||
|
of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what
|
|||
|
sort of a place this “Spouter” may be.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low,
|
|||
|
straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of
|
|||
|
some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oilpainting so
|
|||
|
thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by
|
|||
|
which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic
|
|||
|
visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way
|
|||
|
arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades
|
|||
|
and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in
|
|||
|
the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched.
|
|||
|
But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
|
|||
|
especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you
|
|||
|
at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be
|
|||
|
altogether unwarranted.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black
|
|||
|
mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim,
|
|||
|
perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy
|
|||
|
picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of
|
|||
|
indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you
|
|||
|
to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that
|
|||
|
marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea
|
|||
|
would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the
|
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|
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
|
|||
|