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MD GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 01, 18 October 1851
Copyright 2023 Stef Dunlap <kindrobot@tilde.team>
1. Permissions
Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose
with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice
and this permission notice appear in all copies.
2. Warranty
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH
REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT,
INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS
OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER
TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF
THIS SOFTWARE.
3. Moby-Dick, or the Whale, by Herman Melville
CONTENTS
ETYMOLOGY.
EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
CHAPTER 5. Breakfast.
CHAPTER 6. The Street.
CHAPTER 7. The Chapel.
CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.
CHAPTER 9. The Sermon.
CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.
CHAPTER 11. Nightgown.
CHAPTER 12. Biographical.
CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.
CHAPTER 14. Nantucket.
CHAPTER 15. Chowder.
CHAPTER 16. The Ship.
CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.
CHAPTER 18. His Mark.
CHAPTER 19. The Prophet.
CHAPTER 20. All Astir.
CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.
CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.
CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore.
CHAPTER 24. The Advocate.
CHAPTER 25. Postscript.
CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER 28. Ahab.
CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.
CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.
CHAPTER 32. Cetology.
CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder.
CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.
CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head.
CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.
CHAPTER 37. Sunset.
CHAPTER 38. Dusk.
CHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch.
CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.
CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick.
CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale.
CHAPTER 43. Hark!
CHAPTER 44. The Chart.
CHAPTER 45. The Affidavit.
CHAPTER 46. Surmises.
CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.
CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.
CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
CHAPTER 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.
CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.
CHAPTER 53. The Gam.
CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story.
CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures
of Whaling Scenes.
CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone;
in Mountains; in Stars.
CHAPTER 58. Brit.
CHAPTER 59. Squid.
CHAPTER 60. The Line.
CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
CHAPTER 62. The Dart.
CHAPTER 63. The Crotch.
CHAPTER 64. Stubb’s Supper.
CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish.
CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.
CHAPTER 67. Cutting In.
CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.
CHAPTER 69. The Funeral.
CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.
CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story.
CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.
CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over
Him.
CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.
CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.
CHAPTER 79. The Prairie.
CHAPTER 80. The Nut.
CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.
CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling.
CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.
CHAPTER 86. The Tail.
CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.
CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.
CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
CHAPTER 92. Ambergris.
CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.
CHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.
CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.
CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.
CHAPTER 97. The Lamp.
CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.
CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm.
CHAPTER 101. The Decanter.
CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.
CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.
CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
CHAPTER 106. Ahab’s Leg.
CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.
CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
CHAPTER 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
CHAPTER 111. The Pacific.
CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.
CHAPTER 113. The Forge.
CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.
CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.
CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.
CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.
CHAPTER 119. The Candles.
CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
CHAPTER 121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.
CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.
CHAPTER 123. The Musket.
CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.
CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.
CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
CHAPTER 129. The Cabin.
CHAPTER 130. The Hat.
CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
CHAPTER 132. The Symphony.
CHAPTER 133. The Chase—First Day.
CHAPTER 134. The Chase—Second Day.
CHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day.
Epilogue
Original Transcriber’s Notes:
This text is a combination of etexts, one from the now-defunct ERIS project at
Virginia Tech and one from Project Gutenberg’s archives. The proofreaders of
this version are indebted to The University of Adelaide Library for preserving
the Virginia Tech version. The resulting etext was compared with a public domain
hard copy version of the text.
ETYMOLOGY. (Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.)
The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was
ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly
embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He
loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
“While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a
whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the
letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you
deliver that which is not true.” —Hackluyt.
“WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness or rolling;
for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted.” —Webster’s Dictionary.
“WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen; A.S.
Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.” —Richardson’s Dictionary. חו, Hebrew.
ϰητος, Greek. CETUS, Latin. WHŒL, Anglo-Saxon. HVALT, Danish. WAL,
Dutch. HWAL, Swedish. HVALUR, Icelandic. WHALE, English. BALEINE,
French. BALLENA, Spanish. PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee. PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE,
Erromangoan.
EXTRACTS. (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor
devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and
street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he
could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must
not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements,
however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from
it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here
appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a
glancing bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied,
and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou
belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever
warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one
sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon
tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not
altogether unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more
pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go
thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye!
But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for
your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens,
and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your
coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike
unsplinterable glasses! EXTRACTS.
“And God created great whales.” —Genesis.
“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be
hoary.” —Job.
“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” —Jonah.
“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play
therein.” —Psalms.
“In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish
Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he
shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” —Isaiah.
“And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster’s mouth,
be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that foul great
swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch.” —Holland’s
Plutarch’s Morals.
“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among which
the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much in length as four
acres or arpens of land.” —Holland’s Pliny.
“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many
Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a
most monstrous size.... This came towards us, open-mouthed, raising the waves on
all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam.” —Tooke’s Lucian. “The
True History.”
“He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales, which had
bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the
king.... The best whales were catched in his own country, of which some were
forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of six who had
killed sixty in two days.” —Other or Other’s verbal narrative taken down from
his mouth by King Alfred, A.D. 890.
“And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that enter into the
dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are immediately lost and
swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in great security, and there
sleeps.” —MONTAIGNE. —Apology for Raimond Sebond.
“Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan described by
the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.” —Rabelais.
“This whale’s liver was two cartloads.” —Stowe’s Annals.
“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.” —Lord
Bacon’s Version of the Psalms.
“Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received nothing
certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil
will be extracted out of one whale.” —Ibid. “History of Life and Death.”
“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.” —King
Henry.
“Very like a whale.” —Hamlet.
“Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art Mote him availle, but to returne
againe To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart, Dinting his breast, had
bred his restless paine, Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the
maine.” —The Fairie Queen.
“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm
trouble the ocean till it boil.” —Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert.
“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hosmannus in his
work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit.” —Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma
Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E.
“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail He threatens ruin with his
ponderous tail. ... Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears, And on his
back a grove of pikes appears.” —Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands.
“By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State—(in
Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.” —Opening sentence of Hobbes’s
Leviathan.
“Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in the
mouth of a whale.” —Pilgrim’s Progress.
“That sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that
swim the ocean stream.” —Paradise Lost.
—“There Leviathan, Hugest of living creatures, in the deep Stretched like a
promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land; and at his gills Draws
in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.” —Ibid.
“The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming
in them.” —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
unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a
Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time.
But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the
picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop;
does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great
leviathan himself?
In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based
upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the
subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the
half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone
visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is
in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of
monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth
resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was
sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the
new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered
what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with
such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling
lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With
this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill
fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a
corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years
afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the
tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled
full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump.
Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut through what in
old times must have been a great central chimney with fireplaces all round—you
enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low ponderous
beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy
you trod some old craft’s cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when
this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low,
shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities
gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the further
angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right
whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the
whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby
shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of
swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called
him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the
sailors deliriums and death.
Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true
cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully
tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into
the glass, surround these footpads’ goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge
is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn
measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling.
Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table,
examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander. I sought the
landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for
answer that his house was full—not a bed unoccupied. “But avast,” he added,
tapping his forehead, “you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s
blanket, have ye? I s’pose you are goin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better get used to
that sort of thing.”
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do
so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he (the
landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not decidedly
objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter
a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man’s blanket.
“I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper? Supper’ll be
ready directly.”
I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery.
At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his jack-knife,
stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. He was
trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn’t make much headway, I
thought.
At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room.
It was cold as Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord said he couldn’t afford it.
Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to
button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our
half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind—not only meat
and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young
fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most
direful manner.
“My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty.”
“Landlord,” I whispered, “that aint the harpooneer is it?”
“Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the harpooneer is a
dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don’t—he eats nothing but
steaks, and he likes ’em rare.”
“The devil he does,” says I. “Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?”
“He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer.
I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark complexioned”
harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we
should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.
Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else
to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on.
Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried,
“That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a
three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we’ll have the latest
news from the Feegees.”
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in
rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and
with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and
their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador.
They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered.
No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale’s mouth—the
bar—when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out
brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah
mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a
sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long
standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of
an ice-island.
The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the
arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most
obstreperously.
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed
desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet
upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man
interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon
become my shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative
is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood
full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I
have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt,
making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of
his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His
voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I
thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in
Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man
slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on
the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being,
it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of
“Bulkington! Bulkington! where’s Bulkington?” and darted out of the house in
pursuit of him.
It was now about nine o’clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet
after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had
occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen.
No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not
sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is, but people like to be
private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown
stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer,
then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why
I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no
more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they
all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover
yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of
sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or
woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of
the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my
decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should
tumble in upon me at midnight—how could I tell from what vile hole he had been
coming?
“Landlord! I’ve changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I shan’t sleep with him.
I’ll try the bench here.”
“Just as you please; I’m sorry I can’t spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and
it’s a plaguy rough board here”—feeling of the knots and notches. “But wait a
bit, Skrimshander; I’ve got a carpenter’s plane there in the bar—wait, I say,
and I’ll make ye snug enough.” So saying he procured the plane; and with his old
silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my
bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at
last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was
near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven’s sake to quit—the bed was
soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world
could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another
grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went
about his business, and left me in a brown study.
I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short; but
that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other
bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one—so there was
no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only clear
space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle
down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me
from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all,
especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window,
and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity
of the spot where I had thought to spend the night.
The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn’t I steal a march
on him—bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the
most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon second thoughts I
dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped
out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to
knock me down!
Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a
sufferable night unless in some other person’s bed, I began to think that after
all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown
harpooneer. Thinks I, I’ll wait awhile; he must be dropping in before long. I’ll
have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows
after all—there’s no telling.
But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes, and
going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.
“Landlord!” said I, “what sort of a chap is he—does he always keep such late
hours?” It was now hard upon twelve o’clock.
The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily
tickled at something beyond my comprehension. “No,” he answered, “generally he’s
an early bird—airley to bed and airley to rise—yes, he’s the bird what catches
the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don’t see what on
airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can’t sell his head.”
“Can’t sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling
me?” getting into a towering rage. “Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this
harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday
morning, in peddling his head around this town?”
“That’s precisely it,” said the landlord, “and I told him he couldn’t sell it
here, the market’s overstocked.”
“With what?” shouted I.
“With heads to be sure; ain’t there too many heads in the world?”
“I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I quite calmly, “you’d better stop
spinning that yarn to me—I’m not green.”
“May be not,” taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, “but I rayther guess
you’ll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin’ his head.”
“I’ll break it for him,” said I, now flying into a passion again at this
unaccountable farrago of the landlord’s.
“It’s broke a’ready,” said he.
“Broke,” said I—“broke, do you mean?”
“Sartain, and that’s the very reason he can’t sell it, I guess.”
“Landlord,” said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a
snow-storm—“landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and
that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can
only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer.
And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me
the most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an
uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow—a sort of
connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest
degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this
harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night
with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story
about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this
harpooneer is stark mad, and I’ve no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you,
sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly,
would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.”
“Wall,” said the landlord, fetching a long breath, “that’s a purty long sarmon
for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here
harpooneer I have been tellin’ you of has just arrived from the south seas,
where he bought up a lot of ’balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know),
and he’s sold all on ’em but one, and that one he’s trying to sell to-night,
cause to-morrow’s Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin’ human heads about
the streets when folks is goin’ to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I
stopped him just as he was goin’ out of the door with four heads strung on a
string, for all the airth like a string of inions.”
This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the
landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me—but at the same time what
could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the
holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead
idolators?
“Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.”
“He pays reg’lar,” was the rejoinder. “But come, it’s getting dreadful late, you
had better be turning flukes—it’s a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed
the night we were spliced. There’s plenty of room for two to kick about in that
bed; it’s an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put
our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling
about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near
breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn’t do. Come along here, I’ll
give ye a glim in a jiffy;” and so saying he lighted a candle and held it
towards me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a
clock in the corner, he exclaimed “I vum it’s Sunday—you won’t see that
harpooneer to-night; he’s come to anchor somewhere—come along then; do come;
won’t ye come?”
I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was ushered
into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious
bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep abreast.
“There,” said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did
double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; “there, make yourself comfortable
now, and good night to ye.” I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he had
disappeared.
Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the most
elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced round the
room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniture
belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered
fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging
to the room, there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one
corner; also a large seaman’s bag, containing the harpooneer’s wardrobe, no
doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone
fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the
head of the bed.
But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the light, and
felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some
satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large
door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the
stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in
the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could
it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade
the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try it,
and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I
thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it
of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I
never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that
I gave myself a kink in the neck.
I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on the
bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in the middle
of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a little more in my
shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, and
remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer’s not coming home at all
that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my
pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and
commended myself to the care of heaven.
Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is no
telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At
last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a good offing
towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a
glimmer of light come into the room from under the door.
Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler.
But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to.
Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other,
the stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his
candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began working
away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the
room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time
while employed in unlacing the bag’s mouth. This accomplished, however, he
turned round—when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark,
purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large blackish looking
squares. Yes, it’s just as I thought, he’s a terrible bedfellow; he’s been in a
fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that
moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I plainly saw they
could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They
were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this; but
soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white
man—a whaleman too—who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them.
I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must
have met with a similar adventure. And what is it, thought I, after all! It’s
only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what to
make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about,
and completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be
nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun’s
tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the
South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon
the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning,
this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty having
opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of
tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old
chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head—a ghastly
thing enough—and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his hat—a new
beaver hat—when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise. There was no hair
on his head—none to speak of at least—nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up
on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a
mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have
bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.
Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was
the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling
purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of
fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I
confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had
thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him
that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory
answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.
Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest
and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same
squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he
seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and just escaped from it with a
sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of
dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite
plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a
whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to
think of it. A peddler of heads too—perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He
might take a fancy to mine—heavens! look at that tomahawk!
But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something
that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be
a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had
previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a
curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour
of a three days’ old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I
almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar
manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good
deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol,
which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty
fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little
hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and
all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a
very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at
ease meantime—to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double
handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before
the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from
the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after
many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers
(whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing
out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite
offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such
dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were
accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be
praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during
which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last
extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it
again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead
woodcock.
All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now
exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping
into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was
put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking up
his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then
holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great
clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this
wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out,
I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began
feeling me.
Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the
wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and
let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied me
at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning.
“Who-e debel you?”—he at last said—“you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e.” And so
saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.
“Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord! Watch! Coffin!
Angels! save me!”
“Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!” again growled the
cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot
tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank
heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and
leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
“Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again, “Queequeg here wouldn’t harm a
hair of your head.”
“Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you tell me that that infernal
harpooneer was a cannibal?”
“I thought ye know’d it;—didn’t I tell ye, he was a peddlin’ heads around
town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here—you sabbee me,
I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—you sabbee?”
“Me sabbee plenty”—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in
bed.
“You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the
clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind
and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he
was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have
been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am: he
has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep
with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
“Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever
you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him.
But I don’t fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It’s dangerous. Besides,
I ain’t insured.”
This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned me
to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to say—“I won’t touch a leg
of ye.”
“Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.”
I turned in, and never slept better in my life.
CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me
in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been
his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured
squares and triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an
interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one
precise shade—owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in
sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this
same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same
patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I
could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and it
was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was
hugging me.
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, I
well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me; whether it was a
reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I
had been cutting up some caper or other—I think it was trying to crawl up the
chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother
who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed
supperless,—my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me
off to bed, though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st June,
the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was
no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the third floor,
undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter
sigh got between the sheets.
I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse before I
could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small of my back ached
to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining in at the window, and a
great rattling of coaches in the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over
the house. I felt worse and worse—at last I got up, dressed, and softly going
down in my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself
at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good slippering
for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an
unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most conscientious of
stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For several hours I lay there
broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from
the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a troubled
nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it—half steeped in dreams—I opened
my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness.
Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen,
and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My
arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or
phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side. For
what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears,
not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it
one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. I knew not how this
consciousness at last glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I
shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I
lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very
hour, I often puzzle myself with it.
Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the supernatural
hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to those which I
experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm thrown round me. But at
length all the past night’s events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed
reality, and then I lay only alive to the comical predicament. For though I
tried to move his arm—unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he
still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain. I now
strove to rouse him—“Queequeg!”—but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled
over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a
slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping
by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle,
truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal
and a tomahawk! “Queequeg!—in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At length,
by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the
unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I
succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook
himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed,
stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not
altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim consciousness of
knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay
quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly
observing so curious a creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made up touching
the character of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were, reconciled to the
fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to
understand that, if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to
dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg,
under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the truth is,
these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is
marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this particular compliment to
Queequeg, because he treated me with so much civility and consideration, while I
was guilty of great rudeness; staring at him from the bed, and watching all his
toilette motions; for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding.
Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don’t see every day, he and his ways were
well worth unusual regarding.
He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one, by the
by, and then—still minus his trowsers—he hunted up his boots. What under the
heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next movement was to crush
himself—boots in hand, and hat on—under the bed; when, from sundry violent
gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was hard at work booting himself; though
by no law of propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private
when putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the
transition stage—neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized
to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His education
was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not been a small
degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at
all; but then, if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of
getting under the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his hat very much
dented and crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking and limping about the
room, as if, not being much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled
cowhide ones—probably not made to order either—rather pinched and tormented him
at the first go off of a bitter cold morning.
Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the street
being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view into the room, and
observing more and more the indecorous figure that Queequeg made, staving about
with little else but his hat and boots on; I begged him as well as I could, to
accelerate his toilet somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as
soon as possible. He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time
in the morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to my
amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest, arms,
and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on
the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water and commenced lathering his
face. I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he
takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden stock,
unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit
of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of
his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers’s best cutlery with a
vengeance. Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know
of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the
long straight edges are always kept.
The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of the
room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his harpoon like
a marshal’s baton.
CHAPTER 5. Breakfast.
I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the grinning
landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him, though he had been
skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my bedfellow.
However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good
thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford
stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him
cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has
anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than
you perhaps think for.
The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the night
previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were nearly all
whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters,
and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown
and brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing
monkey jackets for morning gowns.
You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This young
fellow’s healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would seem to
smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days landed from his Indian
voyage. That man next him looks a few shades lighter; you might say a touch of
satin wood is in him. In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn,
but slightly bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But
who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed
like the Andes’ western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates,
zone by zone.
“Grub, ho!” now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to
breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in
manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard, the great
New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men, they
possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere crossing of
Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary
walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of
poor Mungo’s performances—this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best
mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of
thing is to be had anywhere.
These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that after we
were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some good stories
about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound
silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of
sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great
whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead without
winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same
calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other as
though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green
Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!
But as for Queequeg—why, Queequeg sat there among them—at the head of the table,
too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his
breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing
his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there without ceremony;
reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and
grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very coolly done by
him, and every one knows that in most people’s estimation, to do anything coolly
is to do it genteelly.
We will not speak of all Queequeg’s peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee
and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare.
Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the public
room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting and
smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll.
CHAPTER 6. The Street.
If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an
individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town,
that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the
streets of New Bedford.
In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer
to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway
and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the
affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at
Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New
Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you
see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street
corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh.
It makes a stranger stare.
But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and
Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded
reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more curious, certainly
more comical. There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and
New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are
mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek
to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green
Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours
old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and
swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes
another with a sou’-wester and a bombazine cloak.
No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one—I mean a downright
bumpkin dandy—a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin
gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes
it into his head to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great
whale-fishery, you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the
seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats;
straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those
straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and
all, down the throat of the tempest.
But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and
bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place.
Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps have
been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her
back country are enough to frighten one, they look so bony. The town itself is
perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil,
true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do
not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs.
Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like
houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they?
how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country?
Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and
your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens
came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were
harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander
perform a feat like that?
In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters,
and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. You must go to New
Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say, they have reservoirs of oil
in every house, and every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti
candles.
In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples—long avenues of
green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful
horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright
cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art; which in many a district of
New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse
rocks thrown aside at creation’s final day.
And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses
only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as
sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye
cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk,
their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing
nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.
CHAPTER 7. The Chapel.
In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s Chapel, and few are the moody
fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a
Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.
Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this special
errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist.
Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my
way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small scattered congregation
of sailors, and sailors’ wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only
broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed
purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and
incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands
of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black
borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran
something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:—
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost
overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November 1st, 1836. THIS
TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER
CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats’ crews OF THE SHIP
ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the
PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is here placed by their surviving
SHIPMATES.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows of his
boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, August 3d, 1833. THIS
TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.
Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near
the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected
by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous
curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed
to notice my entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and,
therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of
the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the
congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the
fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not
the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were
assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets
sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.
Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers
can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in
bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which
cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids
and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and
refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a
grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is
that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though
containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his name who
yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a
word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies
of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures
upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless
trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that
we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are
dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the
dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city.
All these things are not without their meanings.
But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts
she gathers her most vital hope.
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket
voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that
darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes,
Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful
inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems—aye, a stove boat
will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of
whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what
then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks
that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that
in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun
through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks
my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take
it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a
stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself
cannot.
CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.
I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness
entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a
quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested
that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple,
so called by the whalemen, among whom he was a very great favourite. He had been
a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had dedicated
his life to the ministry. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the
hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into
a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there
shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom—the spring verdure peeping
forth even beneath February’s snow. No one having previously heard his history,
could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest,
because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable
to that adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that he
carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his
tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket
seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had
absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung
up in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a decent suit, he
quietly approached the pulpit.
Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a regular
stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously
contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had
acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs,
substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship
from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a
handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself
nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance,
considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste.
Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping
the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and
then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand,
mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with
swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that
at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not
escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the present
instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after
gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit,
deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited
within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec.
I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this. Father
Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could
not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. No,
thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it must
symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical
isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward
worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the
word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing
stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within the
walls.
But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place, borrowed from
the chaplain’s former sea-farings. Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand
of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large painting
representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of
black rocks and snowy breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling
clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an
angel’s face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the
ship’s tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into the
Victory’s plank where Nelson fell. “Ah, noble ship,” the angel seemed to say,
“beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is
breaking through; the clouds are rolling off—serenest azure is at hand.”
Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had
achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness of a
ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll
work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak.
What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost
part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it
is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the
earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first
invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and
not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.
CHAPTER 9. The Sermon.
Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the
scattered people to condense. “Starboard gangway, there! side away to
larboard—larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!”
There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still
slighter shuffling of women’s shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on
the preacher.
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, folded his large brown
hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply
devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.
This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a
ship that is foundering at sea in a fog—in such tones he commenced reading the
following hymn; but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas, burst
forth with a pealing exultation and joy—
“The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While
all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom.
“I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which
none but they that feel can tell— Oh, I was plunging to despair.
“In black distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints— No more the whale did me confine.
“With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; Awful, yet
bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God.
“My song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful hour; I give the
glory to my God, His all the mercy and the power.”
Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the howling of
the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of
the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon the proper page, said:
“Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah—‘And God
had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.’”
“Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters—four yarns—is one of the
smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the
soul does Jonah’s deep sealine sound! what a pregnant lesson to us is this
prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish’s belly! How
billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging over us; we sound
with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the
sea is about us! But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches?
Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a
lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us
all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened
fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance
and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai
was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God—never mind now what that
command was, or how conveyed—which he found a hard command. But all the things
that God would have us do are hard for us to do—remember that—and hence, he
oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must
disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness
of obeying God consists.
“With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at God, by
seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into
countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth. He
skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship that’s bound for Tarshish.
There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish
could have been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That’s the opinion of
learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water,
from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the
Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates,
is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or
Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside the
Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee
world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all
scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among
the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered,
self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah,
on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a
deck. How plainly he’s a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or
carpet-bag,—no friends accompany him to the wharf with their adieux. At last,
after much dodging search, he finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items
of her cargo; and as he steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the
sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger’s
evil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence;
in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure the
mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious way, one
whispers to the other—“Jack, he’s robbed a widow;” or, “Joe, do you mark him;
he’s a bigamist;” or, “Harry lad, I guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in
old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom.” Another runs
to read the bill that’s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship
is moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide,
and containing a description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah to
the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to
lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his
boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. He will not confess
himself suspected; but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of
it; and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let
him pass, and he descends into the cabin.
“‘Who’s there?’ cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his
papers for the Customs—‘Who’s there?’ Oh! how that harmless question mangles
Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. ‘I seek a
passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir?’ Thus far the busy
Captain had not looked up to Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no
sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. ‘We
sail with the next coming tide,’ at last he slowly answered, still intently
eyeing him. ‘No sooner, sir?’—‘Soon enough for any honest man that goes a
passenger.’ Ha! Jonah, that’s another stab. But he swiftly calls away the
Captain from that scent. ‘I’ll sail with ye,’—he says,—‘the passage money how
much is that?—I’ll pay now.’ For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it
were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, ‘that he paid the fare
thereof’ ere the craft did sail. And taken with the context, this is full of
meaning.
“Now Jonah’s Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any,
but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates,
sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue,
if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah’s Captain prepares to test
the length of Jonah’s purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the
usual sum; and it’s assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a
fugitive; but at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear
with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still
molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any
way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his passage. ‘Point out my
state-room, Sir,’ says Jonah now, ‘I’m travel-weary; I need sleep.’ ‘Thou
lookest like it,’ says the Captain, ‘there’s thy room.’ Jonah enters, and would
lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling
there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the
doors of convicts’ cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed
and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little
state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah
gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship’s water-line,
Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale
shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels’ wards.
“Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in
Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of
the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still
maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth,
infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among
which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his
tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds
no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more and
more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘Oh! so my
conscience hangs in me!’ he groans, ‘straight upwards, so it burns; but the
chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!’
“Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling,
but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman race-horse
but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as one who in that
miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying God for
annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he
feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for
conscience is the wound, and there’s naught to staunch it; so, after sore
wrestlings in his berth, Jonah’s prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning
down to sleep.
“And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the
deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea.
That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! the contraband was
Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm
comes on, the ship is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands
to lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the
wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with
trampling feet right over Jonah’s head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps
his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not the reeling
timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which
even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah
was gone down into the sides of the ship—a berth in the cabin as I have taken
it, and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in
his dead ear, ‘What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!’ Startled from his lethargy
by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck,
grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon
by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into
the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the
mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon
shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead,
aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat
downward again towards the tormented deep.
“Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing
attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark him; more
and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test the
truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they fall to casting lots,
to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah’s;
that discovered, then how furiously they mob him with their questions. ‘What is
thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now, my
shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is,
and where from; whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions, but
likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited
answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.
“‘I am a Hebrew,’ he cries—and then—‘I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who hath
made the sea and the dry land!’ Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear
the Lord God then! Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession;
whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For
when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the
darkness of his deserts,—when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and
cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for his sake this great tempest
was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to save
the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder; then, with one hand
raised invokingly to God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of
Jonah.
“And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea; when
instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is still, as
Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down
in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the
moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale
shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then
Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly. But observe his prayer, and
learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for
direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all
his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his
pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here,
shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but
grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is
shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates,
I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him
before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to
repent of it like Jonah.”
While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, slanting storm
without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah’s
sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest heaved as with a
ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the
thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from
his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was
strange to them.
There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves of the
Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the
moment, seemed communing with God and himself.
But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly, with an
aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these words:
“Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me. I
have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to
all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater
sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit
on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of
you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a
pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true
things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a
wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his
mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But
God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him
in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift
slantings tore him along ‘into the midst of the seas,’ where the eddying depths
sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and ‘the weeds were wrapped about his
head,’ and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the
reach of any plummet—‘out of the belly of hell’—when the whale grounded upon the
ocean’s utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when
he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and
blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant
sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and ‘vomited out Jonah upon the dry
land;’ when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and
beaten—his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the
ocean—Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach
the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!
“This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living
God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to
him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale!
Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name
is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not
dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were
salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching
to others is himself a castaway!”
He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to
them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly
enthusiasm,—“But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a
sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is
deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him—a
far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of
this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose
strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has
gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and
kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes
of Senators and Judges. Delight,—top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges
no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight
is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob
can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and
deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final
breath—O Father!—chiefly known to me by Thy rod—mortal or immortal, here I die.
I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this
is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out
the lifetime of his God?”
He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with his
hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed, and he was
left alone in the place.
CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.
Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite
alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time. He was
sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in
one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering
hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose,
meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.
But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the
table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the
pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page—as I fancied—stopping a
moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn
gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty;
seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more
than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found
together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.
With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously
marred about the face—at least to my taste—his countenance yet had a something
in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all
his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart;
and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a
spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a
certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not
altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a
creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was
drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it
otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head
was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me
of General Washington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the
same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were
likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top.
Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.
Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking
out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled
himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with
counting the pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been
sleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the
affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I
thought this indifference of his very strange. But savages are strange beings;
at times you do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing;
their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had
noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the
other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no
desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty
singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it.
Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn,
that is—which was the only way he could get there—thrown among people as strange
to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at
his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship;
always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no
doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be
true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so
striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a
philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have “broken
his digester.”
As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that mild stage
when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be
looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and
peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn
swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No
more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish
world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference
speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland
deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself
mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have repelled
most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I’ll try a pagan
friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I
drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best to
talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but
presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to
ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought
he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.
We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to him the
purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures that were in it.
Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went to jabbering the best we
could about the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon I
proposed a social smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly
offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his,
and keeping it regularly passing between us.
If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan’s breast,
this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He
seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our
smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the
waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s
phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should
be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too
premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old
rules would not apply.
After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room together.
He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his enormous tobacco wallet,
and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then
spreading them on the table, and mechanically dividing them into two equal
portions, pushed one of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to
remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers’ pockets. I let
them stay. He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and
removed the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed
anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a
moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or otherwise.
I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in
worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose
now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all
included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood?
Impossible! But what is worship?—to do the will of God—that is worship. And what
is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do
to me—that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I
wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular
Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his;
ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the
innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before
him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to
bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to
sleep without some little chat.
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential
disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom
of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old
times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and
Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.
CHAPTER 11. Nightgown.
We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg
now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then
drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at
last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us
altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet
some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position began to
grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up; the
clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the head-board with our four
knees drawn up close together, and our two noses bending over them, as if our
kneepans were warming-pans. We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was
so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no
fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some
small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is
not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter
yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then
you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in
the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why
then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and
unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be
furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich.
For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket
between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie
like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.
We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all at once I
thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether by day or by
night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always keeping my eyes shut,
in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed. Because no man
can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness
were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial
to our clayey part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant
and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the
unilluminated twelve-o’clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable revulsion.
Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to
strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong
desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I
had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before,
yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.
For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed,
because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then. I no more felt
unduly concerned for the landlord’s policy of insurance. I was only alive to the
condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a
real friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed
the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue
hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far distant
scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island; and, eager to hear
his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly complied. Though at
the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words, yet subsequent
disclosures, when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology, now
enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I
give.
CHAPTER 12. Biographical.
Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It
is not down in any map; true places never are.
When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass
clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling; even then,
in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of
Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a High Chief, a King;
his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the
wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal
stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in
his untutored youth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a passage to
Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his
suit; and not all the King his father’s influence could prevail. But Queequeg
vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he
knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a
coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets
that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these
thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand;
and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side;
with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the
chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt
there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass over
his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not.
Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom,
the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But
this fine young savage—this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain’s cabin.
They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar
Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no
seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his
untutored countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a profound
desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still
happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they were. But,
alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be
both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s heathens.
Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and
then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place
also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all
meridians; I’ll die a pagan.
And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians, wore
their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer ways about
him, though now some time from home.
By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having a
coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he being very
old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; and added that he
was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending
the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by,
he said, he would return,—as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the
nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four
oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a
sceptre now.
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future movements.
He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon this, I told him that
whaling was my own design, and informed him of my intention to sail out of
Nantucket, as being the most promising port for an adventurous whaleman to
embark from. He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the
same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in
short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the
Potluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the
affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as
such, could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly
ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as
known to merchant seamen.
His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg embraced me,
pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the light, we rolled over
from each other, this way and that, and very soon were sleeping.
CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.
Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber, for a
block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using, however, my comrade’s money.
The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the
sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as
Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me
concerning the very person whom I now companied with.
We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poor
carpet-bag, and Queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we went down to “the
Moss,” the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. As we were
going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much—for they were used to
seeing cannibals like him in their streets,—but at seeing him and me upon such
confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by
turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon
barbs. I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and
whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in
substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a
particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well
tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In
short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers’ meadows
armed with their own scythes—though in no wise obliged to furnish them—even so,
Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.
Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about the
first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his
ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his
boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing—though in truth he was
entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow—Queequeg
puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders the barrow and
marches up the wharf. “Why,” said I, “Queequeg, you might have known better than
that, one would think. Didn’t the people laugh?”
Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of Rokovoko, it
seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts
into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms
the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a
certain grand merchant ship once touched at Rokovoko, and its commander—from all
accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain—this
commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg’s sister, a pretty young
princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at
the bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post
of honor, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest
and his majesty the King, Queequeg’s father. Grace being said,—for those people
have their grace as well as we—though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at
such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the
ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts—Grace, I say, being said,
the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; that
is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the
blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting
the ceremony, and thinking himself—being Captain of a ship—as having plain
precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King’s own house—the
Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl;—taking it I suppose
for a huge finger-glass. “Now,” said Queequeg, “what you tink now?—Didn’t our
people laugh?”
At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner.
Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New Bedford rose
in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear,
cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her
wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely
moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with
blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new
cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only
begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever
and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly
effort.
Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little Moss
tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings. How I
snuffed that Tartar air!—how I spurned that turnpike earth!—that common highway
all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to
admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records.
At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me. His dusky
nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew;
and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast; ducked and dived her
bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every
ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in
land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the
plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of
the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow beings
should be so companionable; as though a white man were anything more dignified
than a whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who,
by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of all
verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind his
back. I thought the bumpkin’s hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, the
brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost miraculous dexterity and
strength, sent him high up bodily into the air; then slightly tapping his stern
in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet, while
Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to
me for a puff.
“Capting! Capting!” yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer; “Capting,
Capting, here’s the devil.”
“Hallo, you sir,” cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking up to
Queequeg, “what in thunder do you mean by that? Don’t you know you might have
killed that chap?”
“What him say?” said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.
“He say,” said I, “that you came near kill-e that man there,” pointing to the
still shivering greenhorn.
“Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly
expression of disdain, “ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e so
small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!”
“Look you,” roared the Captain, “I’ll kill-e you, you cannibal, if you try any
more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye.”
But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to mind his
own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted the weather-sheet,
and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to side, completely sweeping
the entire after part of the deck. The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so
roughly, was swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attempt
snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed madness. It flew from right to left,
and back again, almost in one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on
the point of snapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed
capable of being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing
the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst of
this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling under the
path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and
then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over
his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe.
The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the
stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long
living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog,
throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by turns revealing his
brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I looked at the grand and glorious
fellow, but saw no one to be saved. The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting
himself perpendicularly from the water, Queequeg, now took an instant’s glance
around him, and seeming to see just how matters were, dived down and
disappeared. A few minutes more, and he rose again, one arm still striking out,
and with the other dragging a lifeless form. The boat soon picked them up. The
poor bumpkin was restored. All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain
begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till
poor Queequeg took his last long dive.
Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he at all
deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He only asked for
water—fresh water—something to wipe the brine off; that done, he put on dry
clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing
those around him, seemed to be saying to himself—“It’s a mutual, joint-stock
world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.”
CHAPTER 14. Nantucket.
Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a fine
run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world
it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone
lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a
background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a
substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have
to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada
thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an
oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the
true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to
get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis,
three blades in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes,
something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about,
every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that
to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as
to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is
no Illinois.
Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the
red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New
England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament
the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They
resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a
perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory
casket,—the poor little Indian’s skeleton.
What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the
sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown
bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off
in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the
sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations
round it; peeped in at Behring’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans
declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the
flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon,
clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are
more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their
ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many
Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans,
as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile
Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their
blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the
Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other
seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension
bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though
following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other
fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from
the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the
sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing
it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business,
which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions
in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among
the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows
not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world,
more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that
at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at
nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him
to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.
CHAPTER 15. Chowder.
It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to anchor, and
Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no business that day, at least
none but a supper and a bed. The landlord of the Spouter-Inn had recommended us
to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the
proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had
assured us that Cousin Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In
short, he plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck
at the Try Pots. But the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow
warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to the larboard,
and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a corner three points to
the starboard, and that done, then ask the first man we met where the place was:
these crooked directions of his very much puzzled us at first, especially as, at
the outset, Queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouse—our first point of
departure—must be left on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter
Coffin to say it was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating about a
little in the dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to
inquire the way, we at last came to something which there was no mistaking.
Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses’ ears, swung from
the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an old doorway. The
horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other side, so that this old
top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I was over sensitive to
such impressions at the time, but I could not help staring at this gallows with
a vague misgiving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two
remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. It’s
ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port;
tombstones staring at me in the whalemen’s chapel; and here a gallows! and a
pair of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints
touching Tophet?
I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman with yellow
hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn, under a dull red lamp
swinging there, that looked much like an injured eye, and carrying on a brisk
scolding with a man in a purple woollen shirt.
“Get along with ye,” said she to the man, “or I’ll be combing ye!”
“Come on, Queequeg,” said I, “all right. There’s Mrs. Hussey.”
And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving Mrs. Hussey
entirely competent to attend to all his affairs. Upon making known our desires
for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing further scolding for the
present, ushered us into a little room, and seating us at a table spread with
the relics of a recently concluded repast, turned round to us and said—“Clam or
Cod?”
“What’s that about Cods, ma’am?” said I, with much politeness.
“Clam or Cod?” she repeated.
“A clam for supper? a cold clam; is that what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?” says I,
“but that’s a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter time, ain’t it,
Mrs. Hussey?”
But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple Shirt, who
was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing but the word
“clam,” Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, and
bawling out “clam for two,” disappeared.
“Queequeg,” said I, “do you think that we can make out a supper for us both on
one clam?”
However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently
cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery
was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of
small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship
biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with
butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being
sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite
fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we
despatched it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking
me of Mrs. Hussey’s clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little
experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word “cod” with great
emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savoury steam came forth
again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine cod-chowder was
placed before us.
We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks I to
myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head? What’s that
stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? “But look, Queequeg, ain’t that
a live eel in your bowl? Where’s your harpoon?”
Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its name; for
the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder
for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish-bones coming
through your clothes. The area before the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs.
Hussey wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his
account books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the
milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening to
take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen’s boats, I saw Hosea’s
brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each
foot in a cod’s decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.
Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey concerning
the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to precede me up the stairs,
the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon
in her chambers. “Why not?” said I; “every true whaleman sleeps with his
harpoon—but why not?” “Because it’s dangerous,” says she. “Ever since young
Stiggs coming from that unfort’nt v’y’ge of his, when he was gone four years and
a half, with only three barrels of ile, was found dead in my first floor back,
with his harpoon in his side; ever since then I allow no boarders to take sich
dangerous weepons in their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg” (for she had
learned his name), “I will just take this here iron, and keep it for you till
morning. But the chowder; clam or cod to-morrow for breakfast, men?”
“Both,” says I; “and let’s have a couple of smoked herring by way of variety.”
CHAPTER 16. The Ship.
In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise and no small
concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, that he had been diligently
consulting Yojo—the name of his black little god—and Yojo had told him two or
three times over, and strongly insisted upon it everyway, that instead of our
going together among the whaling-fleet in harbor, and in concert selecting our
craft; instead of this, I say, Yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of the
ship should rest wholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us; and,
in order to do so, had already pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself,
I, Ishmael, should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though it had
turned out by chance; and in that vessel I must immediately ship myself, for the
present irrespective of Queequeg.
I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed great
confidence in the excellence of Yojo’s judgment and surprising forecast of
things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good sort of
god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all cases did not
succeed in his benevolent designs.
Now, this plan of Queequeg’s, or rather Yojo’s, touching the selection of our
craft; I did not like that plan at all. I had not a little relied upon
Queequeg’s sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry us and our
fortunes securely. But as all my remonstrances produced no effect upon Queequeg,
I was obliged to acquiesce; and accordingly prepared to set about this business
with a determined rushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quickly settle
that trifling little affair. Next morning early, leaving Queequeg shut up with
Yojo in our little bedroom—for it seemed that it was some sort of Lent or
Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that
day; how it was I never could find out, for, though I applied myself to it
several times, I never could master his liturgies and XXXIX Articles—leaving
Queequeg, then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself at his
sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among the shipping. After much
prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt that there were three
ships up for three-years’ voyages—The Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and the Pequod.
Devil-Dam, I do not know the origin of; Tit-bit is obvious; Pequod, you will no
doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians; now
extinct as the ancient Medes. I peered and pryed about the Devil-dam; from her,
hopped over to the Tit-bit; and finally, going on board the Pequod, looked
around her for a moment, and then decided that this was the very ship for us.
You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I know;—square-toed
luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-box galliots, and what not; but take
my word for it, you never saw such a rare old craft as this same rare old
Pequod. She was a ship of the old school, rather small if anything; with an
old-fashioned claw-footed look about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in
the typhoons and calms of all four oceans, her old hull’s complexion was
darkened like a French grenadier’s, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia.
Her venerable bows looked bearded. Her masts—cut somewhere on the coast of
Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale—her masts stood
stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her ancient decks
were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury
Cathedral where Becket bled. But to all these her old antiquities, were added
new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild business that for more than
half a century she had followed. Old Captain Peleg, many years her chief-mate,
before he commanded another vessel of his own, and now a retired seaman, and one
of the principal owners of the Pequod,—this old Peleg, during the term of his
chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and inlaid it, all
over, with a quaintness both of material and device, unmatched by anything
except it be Thorkill-Hake’s carved buckler or bedstead. She was apparelled like
any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory.
She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in
the chased bones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were
garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale,
inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those
thews ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over
sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she
sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from
the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who steered by
that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery
steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All
noble things are touched with that.
Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having authority, in
order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at first I saw nobody;
but I could not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or rather wigwam, pitched
a little behind the main-mast. It seemed only a temporary erection used in port.
It was of a conical shape, some ten feet high; consisting of the long, huge
slabs of limber black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of
the right-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of these
slabs laced together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at the apex united
in a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the
top-knot on some old Pottowottamie Sachem’s head. A triangular opening faced
towards the bows of the ship, so that the insider commanded a complete view
forward.
And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by his
aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and the ship’s work
suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of command. He was seated on
an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and the
bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of
which the wigwam was constructed.
There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of the
elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen, and heavily
rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only there was a fine
and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his
eyes, which must have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and
always looking to windward;—for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become
pursed together. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.
“Is this the Captain of the Pequod?” said I, advancing to the door of the tent.
“Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of him?” he
demanded.
“I was thinking of shipping.”
“Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer—ever been in a stove boat?”
“No, Sir, I never have.”
“Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say—eh?
“Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I’ve been several voyages
in the merchant service, and I think that—”
“Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that leg?—I’ll
take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service
to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now ye feel considerable proud
of having served in those marchant ships. But flukes! man, what makes thee want
to go a whaling, eh?—it looks a little suspicious, don’t it, eh?—Hast not been a
pirate, hast thou?—Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?—Dost not think of
murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?”
I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask of these
half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated Quakerish
Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather distrustful of all
aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard.
“But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of shipping
ye.”
“Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world.”
“Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?”
“Who is Captain Ahab, sir?”
“Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship.”
“I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself.”
“Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg—that’s who ye are speaking to, young man. It
belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage,
and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We are part owners and agents.
But as I was going to say, if thou wantest to know what whaling is, as thou
tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself
to it, past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find
that he has only one leg.”
“What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?”
“Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed up,
crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat!—ah, ah!”
I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at the
hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I could, “What
you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know there was any
peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed I might have inferred
as much from the simple fact of the accident.”
“Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d’ye see; thou dost not
talk shark a bit. Sure, ye’ve been to sea before now; sure of that?”
“Sir,” said I, “I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in the
merchant—”
“Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant service—don’t
aggravate me—I won’t have it. But let us understand each other. I have given
thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet feel inclined for it?”
“I do, sir.”
“Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale’s throat,
and then jump after it? Answer, quick!”
“I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to be got rid
of, that is; which I don’t take to be the fact.”
“Good again. Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find out by
experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in order to see the world?
Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well then, just step forward there, and
take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back to me and tell me what ye see
there.”
For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not knowing
exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But concentrating all
his crow’s feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg started me on the errand.
Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived that the ship
swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely pointing towards
the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and
forbidding; not the slightest variety that I could see.
“Well, what’s the report?” said Peleg when I came back; “what did ye see?”
“Not much,” I replied—“nothing but water; considerable horizon though, and
there’s a squall coming up, I think.”
“Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to go round
Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can’t ye see the world where you stand?”
I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would; and the Pequod
was as good a ship as any—I thought the best—and all this I now repeated to
Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed his willingness to ship me.
“And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,” he added—“come along with
ye.” And so saying, he led the way below deck into the cabin.
Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and surprising
figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who along with Captain Peleg was one
of the largest owners of the vessel; the other shares, as is sometimes the case
in these ports, being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless
children, and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a
foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their
money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state
stocks bringing in good interest.
Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a Quaker, the
island having been originally settled by that sect; and to this day its
inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the
Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and
heterogeneous. For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all
sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a
vengeance.
So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with Scripture names—a
singularly common fashion on the island—and in childhood naturally imbibing the
stately dramatic thee and thou of the Quaker idiom; still, from the audacious,
daring, and boundless adventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with
these unoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not
unworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when these
things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain
and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long
night-watches in the remotest waters, and beneath constellations never seen here
at the north, been led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all
nature’s sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and
confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental
advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language—that man makes one in a
whole nation’s census—a mighty pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies. Nor
will it at all detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or
other circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness at
the bottom of his nature. For all men tragically great are made so through a
certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is
but disease. But, as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with quite
another; and still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only results again from
another phase of the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.
Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman. But
unlike Captain Peleg—who cared not a rush for what are called serious things,
and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the veriest of all
trifles—Captain Bildad had not only been originally educated according to the
strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and
the sight of many unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn—all that had
not moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one
angle of his vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of
common consistency about worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from
conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had
illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human
bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of
leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious
Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did
not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the
sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s religion is one thing, and this
practical world quite another. This world pays dividends. Rising from a little
cabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad
shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain,
and finally a ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded his
adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of
sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his
well-earned income.
Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an incorrigible old
hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard task-master. They told me in
Nantucket, though it certainly seems a curious story, that when he sailed the
old Categut whaleman, his crew, upon arriving home, were mostly all carried
ashore to the hospital, sore exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially
for a Quaker, he was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least. He never
used to swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an inordinate
quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them. When Bildad was a
chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made you feel
completely nervous, till you could clutch something—a hammer or a marling-spike,
and go to work like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and
idleness perished before him. His own person was the exact embodiment of his
utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no
superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like the worn
nap of his broad-brimmed hat.
Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I followed
Captain Peleg down into the cabin. The space between the decks was small; and
there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so, and never leaned, and
this to save his coat tails. His broad-brim was placed beside him; his legs were
stiffly crossed; his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on
nose, he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume.
“Bildad,” cried Captain Peleg, “at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have been studying
those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my certain knowledge. How
far ye got, Bildad?”
As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate, Bildad,
without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up, and seeing me,
glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg.
“He says he’s our man, Bildad,” said Peleg, “he wants to ship.”
“Dost thee?” said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me.
“I dost,” said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.
“What do ye think of him, Bildad?” said Peleg.
“He’ll do,” said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at his book
in a mumbling tone quite audible.
I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as Peleg, his
friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer. But I said nothing, only
looking round me sharply. Peleg now threw open a chest, and drawing forth the
ship’s articles, placed pen and ink before him, and seated himself at a little
table. I began to think it was high time to settle with myself at what terms I
would be willing to engage for the voyage. I was already aware that in the
whaling business they paid no wages; but all hands, including the captain,
received certain shares of the profits called lays, and that these lays were
proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of
the ship’s company. I was also aware that being a green hand at whaling, my own
lay would not be very large; but considering that I was used to the sea, could
steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from all I had
heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay—that is, the 275th part of the
clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever that might eventually amount to. And
though the 275th lay was what they call a rather long lay, yet it was better
than nothing; and if we had a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the
clothing I would wear out on it, not to speak of my three years’ beef and board,
for which I would not have to pay one stiver.
It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely
fortune—and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those that never
take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready to
board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder
Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the 275th lay would be about the fair
thing, but would not have been surprised had I been offered the 200th,
considering I was of a broad-shouldered make.
But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about receiving a
generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had heard something of both
Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad; how that they being the
principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the other and more inconsiderable
and scattered owners, left nearly the whole management of the ship’s affairs to
these two. And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty
deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the
Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his own
fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife,
old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested
party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to
himself out of his book, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where
moth—”
“Well, Captain Bildad,” interrupted Peleg, “what d’ye say, what lay shall we
give this young man?”
“Thou knowest best,” was the sepulchral reply, “the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh wouldn’t be too much, would it?—‘where moth and rust do corrupt,
but lay—’”
Lay, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and seventy-seventh!
Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not lay up many lays
here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly long lay that,
indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a
landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred
and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a teenth
of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part
of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and seventy-seven gold
doubloons; and so I thought at the time.
“Why, blast your eyes, Bildad,” cried Peleg, “thou dost not want to swindle this
young man! he must have more than that.”
“Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,” again said Bildad, without lifting his
eyes; and then went on mumbling—“for where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also.”
“I am going to put him down for the three hundredth,” said Peleg, “do ye hear
that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say.”
Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said, “Captain
Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the duty thou owest to
the other owners of this ship—widows and orphans, many of them—and that if we
too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may be taking the bread
from those widows and those orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay,
Captain Peleg.”
“Thou Bildad!” roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the cabin. “Blast
ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these matters, I would afore
now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the
largest ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn.”
“Captain Peleg,” said Bildad steadily, “thy conscience may be drawing ten inches
of water, or ten fathoms, I can’t tell; but as thou art still an impenitent man,
Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one; and will
in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg.”
“Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye insult
me. It’s an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he’s bound to
hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and start my soul-bolts,
but I’ll—I’ll—yes, I’ll swallow a live goat with all his hair and horns on. Out
of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured son of a wooden gun—a straight wake with
ye!”
As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a marvellous
oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.
Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and responsible
owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up all idea of sailing in a
vessel so questionably owned and temporarily commanded, I stepped aside from the
door to give egress to Bildad, who, I made no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish
from before the awakened wrath of Peleg. But to my astonishment, he sat down
again on the transom very quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest
intention of withdrawing. He seemed quite used to impenitent Peleg and his ways.
As for Peleg, after letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more left in
him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, though he twitched a little as if still
nervously agitated. “Whew!” he whistled at last—“the squall’s gone off to
leeward, I think. Bildad, thou used to be good at sharpening a lance, mend that
pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs the grindstone. That’s he; thank ye,
Bildad. Now then, my young man, Ishmael’s thy name, didn’t ye say? Well then,
down ye go here, Ishmael, for the three hundredth lay.”
“Captain Peleg,” said I, “I have a friend with me who wants to ship too—shall I
bring him down to-morrow?”
“To be sure,” said Peleg. “Fetch him along, and we’ll look at him.”
“What lay does he want?” groaned Bildad, glancing up from the book in which he
had again been burying himself.
“Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad,” said Peleg. “Has he ever whaled it
any?” turning to me.
“Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg.”
“Well, bring him along then.”
And, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I had done
a good morning’s work, and that the Pequod was the identical ship that Yojo had
provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape.
But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the Captain with
whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though, indeed, in many cases, a
whale-ship will be completely fitted out, and receive all her crew on board, ere
the captain makes himself visible by arriving to take command; for sometimes
these voyages are so prolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly
brief, that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of that
sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to
the owners till all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a
look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into his hands. Turning back
I accosted Captain Peleg, inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found.
“And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It’s all right enough; thou art
shipped.”
“Yes, but I should like to see him.”
“But I don’t think thou wilt be able to at present. I don’t know exactly what’s
the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house; a sort of sick, and
yet he don’t look so. In fact, he ain’t sick; but no, he isn’t well either. Any
how, young man, he won’t always see me, so I don’t suppose he will thee. He’s a
queer man, Captain Ahab—so some think—but a good one. Oh, thou’lt like him well
enough; no fear, no fear. He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab;
doesn’t speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye,
be forewarned; Ahab’s above the common; Ahab’s been in colleges, as well as
’mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery
lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and
the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain’t Captain Bildad; no, and he
ain’t Captain Peleg; he’s Ahab, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a
crowned king!”
“And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not
lick his blood?”
“Come hither to me—hither, hither,” said Peleg, with a significance in his eye
that almost startled me. “Look ye, lad; never say that on board the Pequod.
Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself. ’Twas a foolish,
ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a
twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name
would somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee
the same. I wish to warn thee. It’s a lie. I know Captain Ahab well; I’ve sailed
with him as mate years ago; I know what he is—a good man—not a pious, good man,
like Bildad, but a swearing good man—something like me—only there’s a good deal
more of him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on
the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the
sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one
might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that
accursed whale, he’s been a kind of moody—desperate moody, and savage sometimes;
but that will all pass off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee,
young man, it’s better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad
one. So good-bye to thee—and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens to have
a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife—not three voyages wedded—a sweet,
resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet girl that old man has a child: hold
ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken,
blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!”
As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been incidentally
revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain wild vagueness of
painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the time, I felt a sympathy and a
sorrow for him, but for I don’t know what, unless it was the cruel loss of his
leg. And yet I also felt a strange awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I
cannot at all describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I
felt it; and it did not disincline me towards him; though I felt impatience at
what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then.
However, my thoughts were at length carried in other directions, so that for the
present dark Ahab slipped my mind.
CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.
As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all day, I
did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I cherish the
greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how
comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of
ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our
earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow
down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the
inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.
I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and
not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not,
because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now,
certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;—but
what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed
to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail;
let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans
alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need
mending.
Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and rituals must
be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door; but no answer. I tried
to open it, but it was fastened inside. “Queequeg,” said I softly through the
key-hole:—all silent. “I say, Queequeg! why don’t you speak? It’s I—Ishmael.”
But all remained still as before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him
such abundant time; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked
through the key-hole; but the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the
key-hole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one. I could only see part of
the foot-board of the bed and a line of the wall, but nothing more. I was
surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden shaft of Queequeg’s
harpoon, which the landlady the evening previous had taken from him, before our
mounting to the chamber. That’s strange, thought I; but at any rate, since the
harpoon stands yonder, and he seldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore
he must be inside here, and no possible mistake.
“Queequeg!—Queequeg!”—all still. Something must have happened. Apoplexy! I tried
to burst open the door; but it stubbornly resisted. Running down stairs, I
quickly stated my suspicions to the first person I met—the chamber-maid. “La!
la!” she cried, “I thought something must be the matter. I went to make the bed
after breakfast, and the door was locked; and not a mouse to be heard; and it’s
been just so silent ever since. But I thought, may be, you had both gone off and
locked your baggage in for safe keeping. La! la, ma’am!—Mistress! murder! Mrs.
Hussey! apoplexy!”—and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I
following.
Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a vinegar-cruet in
the other, having just broken away from the occupation of attending to the
castors, and scolding her little black boy meantime.
“Wood-house!” cried I, “which way to it? Run for God’s sake, and fetch something
to pry open the door—the axe!—the axe! he’s had a stroke; depend upon it!”—and
so saying I was unmethodically rushing up stairs again empty-handed, when Mrs.
Hussey interposed the mustard-pot and vinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of
her countenance.
“What’s the matter with you, young man?”
“Get the axe! For God’s sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry it
open!”
“Look here,” said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-cruet, so as to
have one hand free; “look here; are you talking about prying open any of my
doors?”—and with that she seized my arm. “What’s the matter with you? What’s the
matter with you, shipmate?”
In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand the whole
case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to one side of her nose, she
ruminated for an instant; then exclaimed—“No! I haven’t seen it since I put it
there.” Running to a little closet under the landing of the stairs, she glanced
in, and returning, told me that Queequeg’s harpoon was missing. “He’s killed
himself,” she cried. “It’s unfort’nate Stiggs done over again—there goes another
counterpane—God pity his poor mother!—it will be the ruin of my house. Has the
poor lad a sister? Where’s that girl?—there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter,
and tell him to paint me a sign, with—“no suicides permitted here, and no
smoking in the parlor;”—might as well kill both birds at once. Kill? The Lord be
merciful to his ghost! What’s that noise there? You, young man, avast there!”
And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force open the
door.
“I don’t allow it; I won’t have my premises spoiled. Go for the locksmith,
there’s one about a mile from here. But avast!” putting her hand in her
side-pocket, “here’s a key that’ll fit, I guess; let’s see.” And with that, she
turned it in the lock; but, alas! Queequeg’s supplemental bolt remained
unwithdrawn within.
“Have to burst it open,” said I, and was running down the entry a little, for a
good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing I should not break down
her premises; but I tore from her, and with a sudden bodily rush dashed myself
full against the mark.
With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming against the
wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good heavens! there sat
Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected; right in the middle of the room;
squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on top of his head. He looked neither
one way nor the other way, but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of
active life.
“Queequeg,” said I, going up to him, “Queequeg, what’s the matter with you?”
“He hain’t been a sittin’ so all day, has he?” said the landlady.
But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him; I almost felt like pushing
him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost intolerable, it seemed
so painfully and unnaturally constrained; especially, as in all probability he
had been sitting so for upwards of eight or ten hours, going too without his
regular meals.
“Mrs. Hussey,” said I, “he’s alive at all events; so leave us, if you please,
and I will see to this strange affair myself.”
Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon Queequeg to
take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could do—for all my polite
arts and blandishments—he would not move a peg, nor say a single word, nor even
look at me, nor notice my presence in the slightest way.
I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan; do they fast
on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so; yes, it’s part of
his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; he’ll get up sooner or later, no
doubt. It can’t last for ever, thank God, and his Ramadan only comes once a
year; and I don’t believe it’s very punctual then.
I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long stories
of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage, as they called it
(that is, a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or brig, confined to the north of
the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only); after listening to these plum-puddingers
till nearly eleven o’clock, I went up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by
this time Queequeg must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But
no; there he was just where I had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began
to grow vexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be
sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room, holding a
piece of wood on his head.
“For heaven’s sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up and have some
supper. You’ll starve; you’ll kill yourself, Queequeg.” But not a word did he
reply.
Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed and to sleep; and no
doubt, before a great while, he would follow me. But previous to turning in, I
took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as it promised to be a
very cold night; and he had nothing but his ordinary round jacket on. For some
time, do all I would, I could not get into the faintest doze. I had blown out
the candle; and the mere thought of Queequeg—not four feet off—sitting there in
that uneasy position, stark alone in the cold and dark; this made me really
wretched. Think of it; sleeping all night in the same room with a wide awake
pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan!
But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break of day;
when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he had been
screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered the
window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a cheerful look;
limped towards me where I lay; pressed his forehead again against mine; and said
his Ramadan was over.
Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it
what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person,
because that other person don’t believe it also. But when a man’s religion
becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine,
makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high
time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.
And just so I now did with Queequeg. “Queequeg,” said I, “get into bed now, and
lie and listen to me.” I then went on, beginning with the rise and progress of
the primitive religions, and coming down to the various religions of the present
time, during which time I labored to show Queequeg that all these Lents,
Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark
nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the
obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense. I told him, too, that he being in
other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very
badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous
Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the
spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be
half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such
melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather
digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and
since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with dyspepsia;
expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it in. He said no; only
upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great feast given by his father the
king, on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty of the enemy had been
killed by about two o’clock in the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very
evening.
“No more, Queequeg,” said I, shuddering; “that will do;” for I knew the
inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who had visited
that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when a great battle had
been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard or garden of the
victor; and then, one by one, they were placed in great wooden trenchers, and
garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts; and with some
parsley in their mouths, were sent round with the victor’s compliments to all
his friends, just as though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys.
After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much impression
upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing on
that important subject, unless considered from his own point of view; and, in
the second place, he did not more than one third understand me, couch my ideas
simply as I would; and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more
about the true religion than I did. He looked at me with a sort of condescending
concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such a
sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety.
At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty
breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not make much
profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering
along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.
CHAPTER 18. His Mark.
As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg carrying
his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam,
saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing
that he let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced
their papers.
“What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?” said I, now jumping on the bulwarks,
and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.
“I mean,” he replied, “he must show his papers.”
“Yes,” said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from behind
Peleg’s, out of the wigwam. “He must show that he’s converted. Son of darkness,”
he added, turning to Queequeg, “art thou at present in communion with any
Christian church?”
“Why,” said I, “he’s a member of the first Congregational Church.” Here be it
said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to be
converted into the churches.
“First Congregational Church,” cried Bildad, “what! that worships in Deacon
Deuteronomy Coleman’s meeting-house?” and so saying, taking out his spectacles,
he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and putting them on
very carefully, came out of the wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks,
took a good long look at Queequeg.
“How long hath he been a member?” he then said, turning to me; “not very long, I
rather guess, young man.”
“No,” said Peleg, “and he hasn’t been baptized right either, or it would have
washed some of that devil’s blue off his face.”
“Do tell, now,” cried Bildad, “is this Philistine a regular member of Deacon
Deuteronomy’s meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord’s
day.”
“I don’t know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting,” said I; “all I
know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First Congregational Church.
He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is.”
“Young man,” said Bildad sternly, “thou art skylarking with me—explain thyself,
thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me.”
Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. “I mean, sir, the same ancient
Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here,
and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and
everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to
that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand
belief; in that we all join hands.”
“Splice, thou mean’st splice hands,” cried Peleg, drawing nearer. “Young man,
you’d better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand; I never heard a
better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy—why Father Mapple himself couldn’t beat it,
and he’s reckoned something. Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about the
papers. I say, tell Quohog there—what’s that you call him? tell Quohog to step
along. By the great anchor, what a harpoon he’s got there! looks like good stuff
that; and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is,
did you ever stand in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?”
Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon the
bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to the
side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in some
such way as this:—
“Cap’ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well, spose him
one whale eye, well, den!” and taking sharp aim at it, he darted the iron right
over old Bildad’s broad brim, clean across the ship’s decks, and struck the
glistening tar spot out of sight.
“Now,” said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, “spos-ee him whale-e eye;
why, dad whale dead.”
“Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close vicinity of
the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway. “Quick, I say, you
Bildad, and get the ship’s papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog,
in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we’ll give ye the ninetieth lay, and
that’s more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.”
So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon enrolled
among the same ship’s company to which I myself belonged.
When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for signing,
he turned to me and said, “I guess, Quohog there don’t know how to write, does
he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name or make thy mark?”
But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken part in
similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the offered pen, copied
upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact counterpart of a queer round
figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so that through Captain Peleg’s
obstinate mistake touching his appellative, it stood something like this:—
Quohog. his X mark.
Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing Queequeg, and at
last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his broad-skirted drab
coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting one entitled “The Latter Day
Coming; or No Time to Lose,” placed it in Queequeg’s hands, and then grasping
them and the book with both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, “Son
of darkness, I must do my duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel
concerned for the souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan
ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman.
Spurn the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind
thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!”
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad’s language, heterogeneously
mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
“Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,” cried
Peleg. “Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers—it takes the shark out of
’em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish. There was young
Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard;
he joined the meeting, and never came to good. He got so frightened about his
plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear of
after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones.”
“Peleg! Peleg!” said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, “thou thyself, as I
myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have
the fear of death; how, then, can’st thou prate in this ungodly guise. Thou
beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her
three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went
mate with Captain Ahab, did’st thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?”
“Hear him, hear him now,” cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting
his hands far down into his pockets,—“hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When
every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the Judgment then? What?
With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and
every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then?
No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was
thinking of; and how to save all hands—how to rig jury-masts—how to get into the
nearest port; that was what I was thinking of.”
Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck, where we
followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some sailmakers who were
mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick up a patch, or
save an end of tarred twine, which otherwise might have been wasted.
CHAPTER 19. The Prophet.
“Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?”
Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from the
water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words
were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive
forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded
jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A
confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like
the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried
up.
“Have ye shipped in her?” he repeated.
“You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,” said I, trying to gain a little more time
for an uninterrupted look at him.
“Aye, the Pequod—that ship there,” he said, drawing back his whole arm, and then
rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed
finger darted full at the object.
“Yes,” said I, “we have just signed the articles.”
“Anything down there about your souls?”
“About what?”
“Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any,” he said quickly. “No matter though, I know
many chaps that hav’n’t got any,—good luck to ’em; and they are all the better
off for it. A soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.”
“What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I.
“He’s got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in other
chaps,” abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he.
“Queequeg,” said I, “let’s go; this fellow has broken loose from somewhere; he’s
talking about something and somebody we don’t know.”
“Stop!” cried the stranger. “Ye said true—ye hav’n’t seen Old Thunder yet, have
ye?”
“Who’s Old Thunder?” said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his
manner.
“Captain Ahab.”
“What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?”
“Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav’n’t seen
him yet, have ye?”
“No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all
right again before long.”
“All right again before long!” laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive
sort of laugh. “Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of
mine will be all right; not before.”
“What do you know about him?”
“What did they tell you about him? Say that!”
“They didn’t tell much of anything about him; only I’ve heard that he’s a good
whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.”
“That’s true, that’s true—yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives
an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that’s the word with Captain Ahab. But
nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he
lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage
with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?—heard nothing about that, eh?
Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his
leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn’t ye hear a word about them
matters and something more, eh? No, I don’t think ye did; how could ye? Who
knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows’ever, mayhap, ye’ve heard tell
about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh
yes, that every one knows a’most—I mean they know he’s only one leg; and that a
parmacetti took the other off.”
“My friend,” said I, “what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don’t know,
and I don’t much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in
the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the
Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg.”
“All about it, eh—sure you do?—all?”
“Pretty sure.”
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like stranger
stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little, turned and
said:—“Ye’ve shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well, what’s
signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t
be, after all. Anyhow, it’s all fixed and arranged a’ready; and some sailors or
other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity ’em!
Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry I
stopped ye.”
“Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell us, out
with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your
game; that’s all I have to say.”
“And it’s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way; you are
just the man for him—the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning! Oh!
when ye get there, tell ’em I’ve concluded not to make one of ’em.”
“Ah, my dear fellow, you can’t fool us that way—you can’t fool us. It is the
easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in
him.”
“Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.”
“Morning it is,” said I. “Come along, Queequeg, let’s leave this crazy man. But
stop, tell me your name, will you?”
“Elijah.”
Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other’s
fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a
humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred
yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should
be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him
struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on
with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner
that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with
what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled
with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now
begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all
connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the
Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him,
when I left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig;
and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy
things.
I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really dogging
us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side
of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us.
This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced
him in my heart, a humbug.
CHAPTER 20. All Astir.
A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not only
were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board, and bolts
of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened that the ship’s
preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went
ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad
did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the
hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall.
On the day following Queequeg’s signing the articles, word was given at all the
inns where the ship’s company were stopping, that their chests must be on board
before night, for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing. So
Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the
last. But it seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the
ship did not sail for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be
done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the
Pequod was fully equipped.
Every one knows what a multitude of things—beds, sauce-pans, knives and forks,
shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the
business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which necessitates a
three-years’ housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from all grocers,
costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And though this also holds true of
merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. For
besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar
to the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at
the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships,
whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially
to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the
voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and
harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain and duplicate ship.
At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the Pequod
had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron
hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there was a continual
fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of things, both large and
small.
Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildad’s
sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit, but
withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing
should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one
time she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward’s pantry;
another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate’s desk, where he kept his
log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some one’s rheumatic
back. Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity—Aunt
Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this
charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand
and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to
all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in
which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars.
But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on board, as
she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer
whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at all
backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a long list of the articles
needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article
upon the paper. Every once in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone
den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the
mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam.
During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft, and as
often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was going to come
on board his ship. To these questions they would answer, that he was getting
better and better, and was expected aboard every day; meantime, the two
captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the
vessel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have
seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way
to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the
absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But
when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already
involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even
from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to
think nothing.
At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly sail.
So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start.
CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.
It was nearly six o’clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh
the wharf.
“There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right,” said I to
Queequeg, “it can’t be shadows; she’s off by sunrise, I guess; come on!”
“Avast!” cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close behind us,
laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating himself between us,
stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering
from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah.
“Going aboard?”
“Hands off, will you,” said I.
“Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go ’way!”
“Ain’t going aboard, then?”
“Yes, we are,” said I, “but what business is that of yours? Do you know, Mr.
Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?”
“No, no, no; I wasn’t aware of that,” said Elijah, slowly and wonderingly
looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable glances.
“Elijah,” said I, “you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We are going
to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be detained.”
“Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?”
“He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I, “come on.”
“Holloa!” cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a few paces.
“Never mind him,” said I, “Queequeg, come on.”
But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder,
said—“Did ye see anything looking like men going towards that ship a while ago?”
Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, “Yes, I
thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be sure.”
“Very dim, very dim,” said Elijah. “Morning to ye.”
Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us; and touching my
shoulder again, said, “See if you can find ’em now, will ye?
“Find who?”
“Morning to ye! morning to ye!” he rejoined, again moving off. “Oh! I was going
to warn ye against—but never mind, never mind—it’s all one, all in the family
too;—sharp frost this morning, ain’t it? Good-bye to ye. Shan’t see ye again
very soon, I guess; unless it’s before the Grand Jury.” And with these cracked
words he finally departed, leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at
his frantic impudence.
At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound quiet,
not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the hatches were all
on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to the forecastle, we
found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a light, we went down, and found
only an old rigger there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at
whole length upon two chests, his face downwards and inclosed in his folded
arms. The profoundest slumber slept upon him.
“Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?” said I, looking
dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the wharf, Queequeg had
not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I would have thought myself to
have been optically deceived in that matter, were it not for Elijah’s otherwise
inexplicable question. But I beat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper,
jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body;
telling him to establish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper’s
rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado, sat
quietly down there.
“Gracious! Queequeg, don’t sit there,” said I.
“Oh! perry dood seat,” said Queequeg, “my country way; won’t hurt him face.”
“Face!” said I, “call that his face? very benevolent countenance then; but how
hard he breathes, he’s heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you are heavy, it’s
grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look, he’ll twitch you off
soon. I wonder he don’t wake.”
Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and lighted his
tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper,
from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him in his broken fashion,
Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land, owing to the absence of
settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally,
were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to
furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten
lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very
convenient on an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs which are
convertible into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant,
and desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in
some damp marshy place.
While narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the tomahawk from me,
he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper’s head.
“What’s that for, Queequeg?”
“Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!”
He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe, which, it
seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed his soul, when we
were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong vapor now completely
filling the contracted hole, it began to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort
of muffledness; then seemed troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or
twice; then sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“Holloa!” he breathed at last, “who be ye smokers?”
“Shipped men,” answered I, “when does she sail?”
“Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. The Captain came aboard
last night.”
“What Captain?—Ahab?”
“Who but him indeed?”
I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when we heard a
noise on deck.
“Holloa! Starbuck’s astir,” said the rigger. “He’s a lively chief mate, that;
good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to.” And so saying he went
on deck, and we followed.
It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes; the
riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged; and several of
the shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board. Meanwhile
Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin.
CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.
At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers, and
after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the
ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift—a
night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare Bible for
the steward—after all this, the two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the
cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg said:
“Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Ahab is all
ready—just spoke to him—nothing more to be got from shore, eh? Well, call all
hands, then. Muster ’em aft here—blast ’em!”
“No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg,” said Bildad, “but
away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.”
How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain Peleg and
Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the quarter-deck, just as if
they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well as to all appearances in port.
And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him was yet to be seen; only, they said he
was in the cabin. But then, the idea was, that his presence was by no means
necessary in getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea.
Indeed, as that was not at all his proper business, but the pilot’s; and as he
was not yet completely recovered—so they said—therefore, Captain Ahab stayed
below. And all this seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchant service
many captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable time after
heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell
merry-making with their shore friends, before they quit the ship for good with
the pilot.
But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain Peleg was
now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and commanding, and not
Bildad.
“Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,” he cried, as the sailors lingered at the
main-mast. “Mr. Starbuck, drive ’em aft.”
“Strike the tent there!”—was the next order. As I hinted before, this whalebone
marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the Pequod, for thirty
years, the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing to
heaving up the anchor.
“Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!—jump!”—was the next command, and the crew
sprang for the handspikes.
Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot is the
forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in
addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed pilots of the port—he
being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket
pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned in, for he never piloted any other
craft—Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows
for the approaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave
of psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a
chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will. Nevertheless, not
three days previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed
on board the Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and Charity, his
sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman’s berth.
Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped and swore
astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he would sink the ship
before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused on my handspike, and
told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we both ran, in starting on
the voyage with such a devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with
the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his
seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my
rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the
act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick.
“Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?” he roared. “Spring, thou
sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don’t ye spring, I say, all of
ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers; spring there,
Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your
eyes out!” And so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his
leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody.
Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day.
At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a
short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found
ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in
ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in
the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast
curving icicles depended from the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old
craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her,
and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard,—
“Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between.”
Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full
of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous
Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed
to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal,
that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.
At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no longer. The
stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging alongside.
It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at this
juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet; very loath to
leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage—beyond both
stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his hard earned dollars were
invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as
old as he, once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw;
loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to
him,—poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran
down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck,
and looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded
by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft;
looked right and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically
coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and
holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much
as to say, “Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can.”
As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all his
philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern came too
near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck—now a word below, and
now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate.
But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about
him,—“Captain Bildad—come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the main-yard there!
Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now! Careful, careful!—come,
Bildad, boy—say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck—luck to ye, Mr. Stubb—luck to
ye, Mr. Flask—good-bye and good luck to ye all—and this day three years I’ll
have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away!”
“God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men,” murmured old Bildad,
almost incoherently. “I hope ye’ll have fine weather now, so that Captain Ahab
may soon be moving among ye—a pleasant sun is all he needs, and ye’ll have
plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful in the hunt, ye mates.
Don’t stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers; good white cedar plank is
raised full three per cent. within the year. Don’t forget your prayers, either.
Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don’t waste the spare staves. Oh! the
sail-needles are in the green locker! Don’t whale it too much a’ Lord’s days,
men; but don’t miss a fair chance either, that’s rejecting Heaven’s good gifts.
Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought.
If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye,
good-bye! Don’t keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it’ll
spoil. Be careful with the butter—twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye,
if—”
“Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,—away!” and with that, Peleg
hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.
Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming
gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted
cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic.
CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore.
Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner,
encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows
into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but
Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in
mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly
push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to
his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield
no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me
only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably
drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is
pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets,
friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the
land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of
land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.
With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst
the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s
landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only
friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable
truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to
keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and
earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as
God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously
dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who
would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain?
Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the
spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
CHAPTER 24. The Advocate.
As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as
this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a
rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to
convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact,
that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a level
with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced into
any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the
general opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer,
say; and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials
S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be
deemed pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring 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 honor. 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 £1,000,000? 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 honor 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
æsthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver
fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say.
The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who wrote the
first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed the first
narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great,
who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian
whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in
Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good
blood in their veins.
No good blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood there.
The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards, by marriage,
Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long
line of Folgers and harpooneers—all kith and kin to noble Benjamin—this day
darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable.
Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory law, the
whale is declared “a royal fish.” *
Oh, that’s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any grand
imposing way.
The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In one of the mighty triumphs
given to a Roman general upon his entering the world’s capital, the bones of a
whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous
object in the cymballed procession.*
*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real dignity in
whaling.
No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus
is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your hat in presence of the
Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know a man that, in his lifetime,
has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account that man more honorable 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
honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my
Harvard.
CHAPTER 25. Postscript.
In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but
substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should
wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his
cause—such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy?
It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a
certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through.
There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor of state.
How they use the salt, precisely—who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king’s
head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be,
though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they
anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity
of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and
contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that
anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that
man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can’t
amount to much in his totality.
But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil is used at
coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil,
nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be,
but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?
Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with
coronation stuff!
CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker
by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed
well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked
biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled
ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon
one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid
summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical
superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token
of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily
blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means
ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and
closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a
revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to
come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a
patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all
climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering
images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A
staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of
action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and
fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in
some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly
conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild
watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to
superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations
seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward
portents and inward presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent
the welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his
young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original
ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences
which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so
often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. “I
will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By
this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was
that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an
utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
“Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as careful a man
as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.” But we shall ere long see what that
word “careful” precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost any
other whale hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a
thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical
occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling,
courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her
bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering
for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much
persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical
ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and
that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his
own father’s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of
his brother?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which could,
nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it was not in
reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible experiences
and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that these things should fail
in latently engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances,
would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as
he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men,
which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or
whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot
withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes
menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.
But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement
of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it
is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the
soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves,
fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man,
in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature,
that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw
their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so
far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone;
bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor
can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings
against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the
dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed
investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a
spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from
God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all
democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter
ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the
most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift
himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman’s arm with some
ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then
against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality,
which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in
it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict,
Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered
leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who
didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a
war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy
mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly
commons; bear me out in it, O God!
CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.
Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, according to
local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor
valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged
in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a
journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he
presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner,
and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable
arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the
snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the
fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling
tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank
with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the
jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no
telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question; but, if he
ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt,
like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble
aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would find out when
he obeyed the order, and not sooner.
What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going, unfearing man,
so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of grave
pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what helped to bring about
that almost impious good-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. For,
like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of
his face. You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk
without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready
loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned
in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end
of the chapter; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb
dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe
into his mouth.
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his peculiar
disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air, whether ashore or
afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless
mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera, some people go
about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all
mortal tribulations, Stubb’s tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of
disinfecting agent.
The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s Vineyard. A short,
stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed
to think that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted
him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them
whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the
many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything
like an apprehension of any possible danger from encountering them; that in his
poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at
least water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small
application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignorant,
unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the matter of
whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a three years’ voyage
round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time. As a
carpenter’s nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may
be similarly divided. Little Flask was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch
tight and last long. They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because,
in form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name
in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers
inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those
battering seas.
Now these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous men. They it
was who by universal prescription commanded three of the Pequod’s boats as
headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which Captain Ahab would probably
marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these three headsmen were as
captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling spears, they
were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of
javelins.
And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of
old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer, who in certain
conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has been badly
twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and moreover, as there generally subsists
between the two, a close intimacy and friendliness; it is therefore but meet,
that in this place we set down who the Pequod’s harpooneers were, and to what
headsman each of them belonged.
First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected for his
squire. But Queequeg is already known.
Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory
of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of
red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many
of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic
name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego’s long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones,
and black rounding eyes—for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but
Antarctic in their glittering expression—all this sufficiently proclaimed him an
inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest
of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests
of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the
woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the
unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires.
To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have
credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half-believed
this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego
was Stubb the second mate’s squire.
Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage,
with a lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two
golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk
of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily
shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And
never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan
harbors most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold
life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of
men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a
giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks.
There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing
before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell,
this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who
looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod’s company,
be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men
before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born,
though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the
American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant
navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American
Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native
American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously
supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the
Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment
their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the
Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands,
to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they
drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to
make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes
too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each
Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one
keel, what a set these Isolatoes were! An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all
the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in
the Pequod to lay the world’s grievances before that bar from which not very
many of them ever come back. Black Little Pip—he never did—oh, no! he went
before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod’s forecastle, ye shall ere long see
him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to
the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his
tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there!
CHAPTER 28. Ahab.
For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen of
Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches, and for
aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the only commanders
of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and
peremptory, that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes,
their supreme lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes
not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin.
Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed aft
to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague disquietude
touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became almost a
perturbation. This was strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijah’s
diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I
could not have before conceived of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as
in other moods I was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that
outlandish prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or
uneasiness—to call it so—which I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in
the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such emotions. For though
the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric,
heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my
previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this—and
rightly ascribed it—to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild
Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was
especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which
was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings, and induce
confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage. Three better,
more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way, could not
readily be found, and they were every one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a
Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her
harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather, though all the time running
away from it to the southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which
we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable
weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy
enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing
through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity,
that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I
levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality
outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck.
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery
from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has
overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one
particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form,
seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s
cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing
right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in
his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled
that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great
tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a
single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off
into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that
mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound,
no one could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little
or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once Tashtego’s
senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not
till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it
came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at
sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman
insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out of
Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old
sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman
with preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously
contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly
laid out—which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered—then, whoever should do
that last office for the dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to
sole.
So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand
which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a
little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon
which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at
sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. “Aye, he was
dismasted off Japan,” said the old Gay-Head Indian once; “but like his dismasted
craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of
’em.”
I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of the
Pequod’s quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an
auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg
steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab
stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There
was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness,
in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he
spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest
gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful,
consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody
stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the
nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.
Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after
that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his
pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck.
As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became
still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home,
nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded.
And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but,
as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he
seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making a
passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives needing
supervision the mates were fully competent to, so that there was little or
nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for
that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as
ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant,
holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as
when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry,
misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will
at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted
visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of
that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look,
which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.
CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went rolling
through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost perpetually reigns on the
threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing,
perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian
sherbet, heaped up—flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately
nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely
pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!
For sleeping man, ’twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such
seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely
lend new spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the
soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her
crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these
subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab’s texture.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has
to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards
will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with
Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that
truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the
planks. “It feels like going down into one’s tomb,”—he would mutter to
himself—“for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go
to my grave-dug berth.”
So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were set, and
the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below; and when if a rope
was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely down, as
by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing
their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to
prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere
long the old man would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his
crippled way. Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like
these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his
wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would
have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams
would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the mood was on him
too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was
measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came
up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that
if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but
there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly
and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the ivory
heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.
“Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb,” said Ahab, “that thou wouldst wad me that fashion?
But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave; where such as ye
sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last.—Down, dog, and
kennel!”
Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old
man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, “I am not used to be
spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir.”
“Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to
avoid some passionate temptation.
“No, sir; not yet,” said Stubb, emboldened, “I will not tamely be called a dog,
sir.”
“Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone, or I’ll
clear the world of thee!”
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his
aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
“I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,” muttered
Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. “It’s very queer. Stop,
Stubb; somehow, now, I don’t well know whether to go back and strike him,
or—what’s that?—down here on my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was the
thought coming up in me; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. It’s
queer; very queer; and he’s queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he’s about
the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!—his eyes like
powder-pans! is he mad? Anyway there’s something on his mind, as sure as there
must be something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more
than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don’t sleep then. Didn’t that
Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man’s
hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and
the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as
though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old man! I guess he’s got what some
folks ashore call a conscience; it’s a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say—worse nor
a toothache. Well, well; I don’t know what it is, but the Lord keep me from
catching it. He’s full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the after hold
for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what’s that for, I should
like to know? Who’s made appointments with him in the hold? Ain’t that queer,
now? But there’s no telling, it’s the old game—Here goes for a snooze. Damn me,
it’s worth a fellow’s while to be born into the world, if only to fall right
asleep. And now that I think of it, that’s about the first thing babies do, and
that’s a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of
’em. But that’s against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment;
and sleep when you can, is my twelfth—So here goes again. But how’s that? didn’t
he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of
jackasses on top of that! He might as well have kicked me, and done with it.
Maybe he did kick me, and I didn’t observe it, I was so taken all aback with his
brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil’s the matter with
me? I don’t stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of
turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though—How?
how? how?—but the only way’s to stash it; so here goes to hammock again; and in
the morning, I’ll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight.”
CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.
When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks; and
then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent
him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the
binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and
smoked.
In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated,
saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then,
seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it
symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of
Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor 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 vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine.
I’ll smoke no more—”
He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves; the
same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched
hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.
CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.
Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.
“Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man’s ivory leg,
well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back, upon my
soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a
pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still more
curious, Flask—you know how curious all dreams are—through all this rage that I
was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was not
much of an insult, that kick from Ahab. ‘Why,’ thinks I, ‘what’s the row? It’s
not a real leg, only a false leg.’ And there’s a mighty difference between a
living thump and a dead thump. That’s what makes a blow from the hand, Flask,
fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member—that
makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself all the while,
mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid—so
confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to
myself, ‘what’s his leg now, but a cane—a whalebone cane. Yes,’ thinks I, ‘it
was only a playful cudgelling—in fact, only a whaleboning that he gave me—not a
base kick. Besides,’ thinks I, ‘look at it once; why, the end of it—the foot
part—what a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad footed farmer kicked
me, there’s a devilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled down to a point
only.’ But now comes the greatest joke of the dream, Flask. While I was
battering away at the pyramid, a sort of badger-haired old merman, with a hump
on his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews me round. ‘What are you
’bout?’ says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened. Such a phiz! But, somehow,
next moment I was over the fright. ‘What am I about?’ says I at last. ‘And what
business is that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do you want a
kick?’ By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round his
stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout—what
do you think, I saw?—why thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck full of
marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second thoughts, ‘I guess I won’t
kick you, old fellow.’ ‘Wise Stubb,’ said he, ‘wise Stubb;’ and kept muttering
it all the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he
wasn’t going to stop saying over his ‘wise Stubb, wise Stubb,’ I thought I might
as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot
for it, when he roared out, ‘Stop that kicking!’ ‘Halloa,’ says I, ‘what’s the
matter now, old fellow?’ ‘Look ye here,’ says he; ‘let’s argue the insult.
Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I—‘right here it was.’
‘Very good,’ says he—‘he used his ivory leg, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I.
‘Well then,’ says he, ‘wise Stubb, what have you to complain of? Didn’t he kick
with right good will? it wasn’t a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it?
No, you were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It’s
an honor; I consider it an honor. 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
honors; and on no account kick back; for you can’t help yourself, wise Stubb.
Don’t you see that pyramid?’ With that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in
some queer fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I
was in my hammock! Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask?”
“I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.’”
“May be; may be. But it’s made a wise man of me, Flask. D’ye see Ahab standing
there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best thing you can do, Flask,
is to let the old man alone; never speak to him, whatever he says. Halloa!
What’s that he shouts? Hark!”
“Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!
“If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!
“What do you think of that now, Flask? ain’t there a small drop of something
queer about that, eh? A white whale—did ye mark that, man? Look ye—there’s
something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask. Ahab has that that’s
bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this way.”
CHAPTER 32. Cetology.
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its
unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the Pequod’s weedy
hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset
it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough
appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and
allusions of all sorts which are to follow.
It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, that I
would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The classification of the
constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the best
and latest authorities have laid down.
“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology,”
says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
“It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry as to
the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families. * * * Utter
confusion exists among the historians of this animal” (sperm whale), says
Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.
“Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.” “Impenetrable
veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.” “A field strewn with thorns.” “All
these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists.”
Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those
lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be
little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree, with
cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the men, small and great, old and
new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in little, written of the whale.
Run over a few:—The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir
Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi;
Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacépède; 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,
Linnæus 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 Linnæus’s express edict, were still found dividing the
possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnæus 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 naturæ 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, Linnæus has given you those items. But in brief, they
are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold
blooded.
Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as
conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then, a whale is a
spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him. However contracted,
that definition is the result of expanded meditation. A walrus spouts much like
a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious. But the last
term of the definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost
any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a
flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the
tail, though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal
position.
By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude from the
leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified with the whale by
the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish
hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.* Hence, all the smaller, spouting,
and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology.
Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host.
*I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and Dugongs
(Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included by many
naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a noisy, contemptible
set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and
especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as whales; and have
presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS
(subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both small
and large.
I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.
As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale; of the OCTAVO, the Grampus;
of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise.
FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:—I. The Sperm Whale;
II. the Right Whale; III. the Fin-Back Whale; IV. the Hump-backed Whale; V. the
Razor Back Whale; VI. the Sulphur Bottom Whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER I. (Sperm Whale).—This whale, among the English of old
vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed
whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans,
and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest
inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the
most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he
being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is
obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It
is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically considered, it is
absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in
his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained
from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly
supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in
England as the Greenland or Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same
spermaceti was that quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first
syllable of the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was
exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment and
medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an
ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true nature of
spermaceti became known, its original name was still retained by the dealers; no
doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity.
And so the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from
which this spermaceti was really derived.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II. (Right Whale).—In one respect this is the most
venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by man. It
yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and the oil specially
known as “whale oil,” an inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he
is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles: The Whale; the
Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right
Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus
multitudinously baptised. What then is the whale, which I include in the second
species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the
Greenland Whale of the English whalemen; the Baleine Ordinaire of the French
whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale which for more
than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic
seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen have long pursued in the
Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor’ West Coast, and various other
parts of the world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.
Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the English and
the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree in all their grand
features; nor has there yet been presented a single determinate fact upon which
to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless subdivisions based upon the
most inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history become
so repellingly intricate. The right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some
length, with reference to elucidating the sperm whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER III. (Fin-Back).—Under this head I reckon a monster
which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and Long-John, has been
seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often
descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In
the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right
whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to
olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting,
slanting folds of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin,
from which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is some
three or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of
an angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest
other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be seen
plainly projecting from the surface. When the sea is moderately calm, and
slightly marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and
casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery
circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy
hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. The
Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters.
Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the
remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a
tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power and
velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this leviathan
seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that
style upon his back. From having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is
sometimes included with the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated
Whalebone whales, that is, whales with baleen. Of these so called Whalebone
whales, there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are
little known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched
whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are the fishermen’s names for a
few sorts.
In connection with this appellative of “Whalebone whales,” it is of great
importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be convenient in
facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a
clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his baleen, or hump,
or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very
obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of
Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his
kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are
things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of
whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other
and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale,
each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then, this same humpbacked
whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the
similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned.
In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular combinations; or, in the
case of any one of them detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterly to
defy all general methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one
of the whale-naturalists has split.
But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the whale, in
his anatomy—there, at least, we shall be able to hit the right classification.
Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the Greenland whale’s anatomy more
striking than his baleen? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is impossible
correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of
the various leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part
as available to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated. What
then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire
liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographical
system here adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it
alone is practicable. To proceed.
BOOK I. (Folio) CHAPTER IV. (Hump Back).—This whale is often seen on the
northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and towed into
harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you might call him the
Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular name for him does not
sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump though a
smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the most
gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white
water generally than any other of them.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER V. (Razor Back).—Of this whale little is known but his
name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring nature, he
eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he has never yet shown
any part of him but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I
know little more of him, nor does anybody else.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER VI. (Sulphur Bottom).—Another retiring gentleman, with
a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some
of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen; at least I have never seen him
except in the remoter southern seas, and then always at too great a distance to
study his countenance. He is never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of
line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more
that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer.
Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins BOOK II. (Octavo).
OCTAVOES.*—These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which present
may be numbered:—I., the Grampus; II., the Black Fish; III., the Narwhale; IV.,
the Thrasher; V., the Killer.
*Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. Because,
while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former order,
nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the
bookbinder’s Quarto volume in its dimensioned form does not preserve the shape
of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER I. (Grampus).—Though this fish, whose loud sonorous
breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well
known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But
possessing all the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists
have recognised him for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen
to twenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist.
He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable
in quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is
regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER II. (Black Fish).—I give the popular fishermen’s
names for all these fish, for generally they are the best. Where any name
happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do
so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called, because blackness is the rule among
almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is
well known, and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are
curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This
whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost
all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in
swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more profitably
employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up
the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment—as some frugal housekeepers, in
the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves, burn unsavory tallow
instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber is very thin, some of these whales
will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER III. (Narwhale), that is, Nostril whale.—Another
instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from his peculiar horn
being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is some sixteen feet
in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and even
attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk,
growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the horizontal. But
it is only found on the sinister side, which has an ill effect, giving its owner
something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What precise
purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would be hard to say. It does not
seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some
sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the
bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer;
for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted
with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot prove
either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that however this
one-sided horn may really be used by the Narwhale—however that may be—it would
certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets. The
Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn
whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism to be found in almost
every kingdom of animated nature. From certain cloistered old authors I have
gathered that this same sea-unicorn’s horn was in ancient days regarded as the
great antidote against poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense
prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same
way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally
it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me
that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did
gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as
his bold ship sailed down the Thames; “when Sir Martin returned from that
voyage,” saith Black Letter, “on bended knees he presented to her highness a
prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in the
castle at Windsor.” An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended
knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land
beast of the unicorn nature.
The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a milk-white
ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black. His oil is very
superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it, and he is seldom hunted. He
is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER IV. (Killer).—Of this whale little is precisely known
to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed naturalist. From what I
have seen of him at a distance, I should say that he was about the bigness of a
grampus. He is very savage—a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great
Folio whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is
worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he
has. Exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the
ground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea;
Bonapartes and Sharks included.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER V. (Thrasher).—This gentleman is famous for his tail,
which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He mounts the Folio whale’s
back, and as he swims, he works his passage by flogging him; as some
schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar process. Still less is known
of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.
Thus ends BOOK II. (Octavo), and begins BOOK III. (Duodecimo).
DUODECIMOES.—These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza Porpoise. II. The
Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.
To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may possibly
seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five feet should be
marshalled among WHALES—a word, which, in the popular sense, always conveys an
idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly
whales, by the terms of my definition of what a whale is—i.e. a spouting fish,
with a horizontal tail.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER 1. (Huzza Porpoise).—This is the common porpoise
found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own bestowal; for there are
more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish them.
I call him thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the
broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd.
Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine
spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward. They are the
lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted a lucky omen. If you
yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then
heaven help ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump
Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and
delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request
among jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is
good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts.
Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the
next time you have a chance, watch him; and you will then see the great Sperm
whale himself in miniature.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. (Algerine Porpoise).—A pirate. Very savage.
He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the Huzza
Porpoise, but much of the same general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to
a shark. I have lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him captured.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER III. (Mealy-mouthed Porpoise).—The largest kind
of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it is known. The only
English name, by which he has hitherto been designated, is that of the
fishers—Right-Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in
the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza
Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat
and gentleman-like figure. He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises
have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his
mealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a
deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship’s hull, called
the “bright waist,” that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate
colours, black above and white below. The white comprises part of his head, and
the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just escaped from a
felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and mealy aspect! His oil is much
like that of the common porpoise.
* * * * * *
Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the Porpoise is
the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the Leviathans of note. But
there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, as an
American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate
them by their fore-castle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable
to future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If any of
the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily
be incorporated into this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo
magnitude:—The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the
Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered
Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale;
etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted
other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I
omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for mere
sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here, and at
once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word. But I now
leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great
Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the
uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first
architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God
keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but
the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder.
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 Specksnyder.
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 Specksnyder 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 honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more
through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine
Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass.
Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political
superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility
they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the
ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the
plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the
tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep
and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as
the one now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness and
shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal
that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore,
all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what
shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived
for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!
CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.
It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face
from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and master; who, sitting in
the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the sun; and is now
mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved
for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete
inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his
menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to
the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, “Dinner, Mr. Starbuck,”
disappears into the cabin.
When the last echo of his sultan’s step has died away, and Starbuck, the first
Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from
his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep into
the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness, “Dinner, Mr. Stubb,” and
descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then
slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all right with that
important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid “Dinner,
Mr. Flask,” follows after his predecessors.
But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to
feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing
winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a
sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk’s head; and
then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf,
he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck,
reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere
stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether,
and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab’s presence, in
the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.
It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness
of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon
provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their
commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to
their customary dinner in that same commander’s cabin, and straightway their
inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at
the head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore
this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of
Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein
certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the
rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table
of invited guests, that man’s unchallenged power and dominion of individual
influence for the time; that man’s royalty of state transcends Belshazzar’s, for
Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted
what it is to be Cæsar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no
withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy
of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that
peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the
white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs. In his
own proper turn, each officer waited to be served. They were as little children
before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social
arrogance. With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man’s
knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the
world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even
upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when reaching out his knife and
fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab thereby motioned
Starbuck’s plate towards him, the mate received his meat as though receiving
alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed
against the plate; and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without
circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German
Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals
were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab
forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a relief it was to
choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. And poor
little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this weary family
party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would have been the
drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this must have seemed to
him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had he helped himself at that
table, doubtless, never more would he have been able to hold his head up in this
honest world; nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had
Flask helped himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it.
Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought
the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear,
sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such
marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a
subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!
Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask is the
first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask’s dinner was badly jammed in point of
time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him; and yet they also have the
privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than
Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of
concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than
three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede
Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that
ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he had
never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he
ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and
satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an
officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the
forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There’s the fruits of
promotion now; there’s the vanity of glory: there’s the insanity of life!
Besides, if it were so that any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against
Flask in Flask’s official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to
obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask
through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.
Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table in the
Pequod’s cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted order to their
arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried
order by the pallid steward. And then the three harpooneers were bidden to the
feast, they being its residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary
servants’ hall of the high and mighty cabin.
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible
domineerings of the captain’s table, was the entire care-free license and ease,
the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers. While
their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own
jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a
report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships
all day loading with spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and
Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the
pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly
quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not
go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of
accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo,
seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up
bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while
Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping
him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this
bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And
what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical
tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy’s whole life was one
continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all
things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his little pantry
adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till
all was over.
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing his filed
teeth to the Indian’s: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the floor, for a
bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at every
motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when
an African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro
was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by
such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused
through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble
savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through
his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or
by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric
smack of the lip in eating—an ugly sound enough—so much so, that the trembling
Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean
arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself,
that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the
crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor
did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their
lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would
ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at all tend to
tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his Island days,
Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial
indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon
cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time,
though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart;
to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them
at every step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.
But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived there;
still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were scarcely ever in
it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed through
it to their own peculiar quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale captains,
who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights the ship’s cabin
belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is, at any
time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the
Pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than in it.
For when they did enter it, it was something as a street-door enters a house;
turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a
permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the
cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally
included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in
the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as
when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying
himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own
paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved
trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!
CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head.
It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other
seamen my first mast-head came round.
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with
the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles,
and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. And if, after a
three, four, or five years’ voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty
in her—say, an empty vial even—then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last;
and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she
altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.
Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient
and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it, that the
earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my
researches, I find none prior to them. For though their progenitors, the
builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the
loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was
put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the
board, in the dread gale of God’s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel
builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of
mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among
archæologists, 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 honor 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
Phædon 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 honorable
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 Cranmer’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!
CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.
(Enter Ahab: Then, all.)
It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly
after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck.
There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after
the same meal, take a few turns in the garden.
Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds,
upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like
geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze,
too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger
foot-prints—the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.
But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous
step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that
at every uniform turn that he made, now at the main-mast and now at the
binnacle, you could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace
in him as he paced; so completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed
the inward mould of every outer movement.
“D’ye mark him, Flask?” whispered Stubb; “the chick that’s in him pecks the
shell. ’Twill soon be out.”
The hours wore on;—Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing the deck,
with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.
It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and
inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping a
shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft.
“Sir!” said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on ship-board
except in some extraordinary case.
“Send everybody aft,” repeated Ahab. “Mast-heads, there! come down!”
When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and with curious and not wholly
unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather
horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over the
bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew, started from his standpoint;
and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck.
With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the
wondering whispering among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask,
that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a
pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:—
“What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?”
“Sing out for him!” was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices.
“Good!” cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty
animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them.
“And what do ye next, men?”
“Lower away, and after him!”
“And what tune is it ye pull to, men?”
“A dead whale or a stove boat!”
More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the countenance of
the old man at every shout; while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each
other, as if marvelling how it was that they themselves became so excited at
such seemingly purposeless questions.
But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his
pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost
convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:—
“All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white whale.
Look ye! d’ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?”—holding up a broad bright coin to
the sun—“it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D’ye see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me
yon top-maul.”
While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly
rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its
lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself,
producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the
mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast with the
hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a high
raised voice exclaiming: “Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a
wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed
whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of
ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!”
“Huzza! huzza!” cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the
act of nailing the gold to the mast.
“It’s a white whale, I say,” resumed Ahab, as he threw down the topmaul: “a
white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white water; if ye see
but a bubble, sing out.”
All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even more
intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled
brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately touched by some
specific recollection.
“Captain Ahab,” said Tashtego, “that white whale must be the same that some call
Moby Dick.”
“Moby Dick?” shouted Ahab. “Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?”
“Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?” said the
Gay-Header deliberately.
“And has he a curious spout, too,” said Daggoo, “very bushy, even for a
parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?”
“And he have one, two, three—oh! good many iron in him hide, too, Captain,”
cried Queequeg disjointedly, “all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him—him—” faltering
hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking a
bottle—“like him—him—”
“Corkscrew!” cried Ahab, “aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and
wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole shock of
wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual
sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall.
Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen—Moby Dick—Moby Dick!”
“Captain Ahab,” said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been
eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed struck with a
thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. “Captain Ahab, I have heard of
Moby Dick—but it was not Moby Dick that took off thy leg?”
“Who told thee that?” cried Ahab; then pausing, “Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties
all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this
dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,” he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal
sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose; “Aye, aye! it was that accursed white
whale that razed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then
tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and
I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway
Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what
ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and
over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say
ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.”
“Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the excited
old man: “A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!”
“God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob and half shout. “God bless ye, men.
Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what’s this long face about, Mr.
Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for Moby Dick?”
“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if
it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt
whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield
thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our
Nantucket market.”
“Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little
lower layer. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have
computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, one
to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance will
fetch a great premium here!”
“He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb, “what’s that for? methinks it rings most
vast, but hollow.”
“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from
blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems
blasphemous.”
“Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as
pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there,
some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features
from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!
How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me,
the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s
naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him
outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable
thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white
whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy,
man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could
I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy
presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play.
Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than
fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat
has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that
thing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I
meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted
tawn—living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards—the
unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for
the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all
with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder
Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one
tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. ’Tis but to help
strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor
hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back,
when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize thee;
I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!—Aye, aye! thy silence, then,
that voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has
inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without
rebellion.”
“God keep me!—keep us all!” murmured Starbuck, lowly.
But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab did not
hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the hold; nor yet the
presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the
sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in. For again
Starbuck’s downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the
subterranean laugh died away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship
heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not
when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not
so much predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things
within. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in
our being, these still drive us on.
“The measure! the measure!” cried Ahab.
Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he ordered them
to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the capstan, with
their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his side with
their lances, and the rest of the ship’s company formed a circle round the
group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But
those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the
eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison;
but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.
“Drink and pass!” he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest
seaman. “The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short draughts—long
swallows, men; ’tis hot as Satan’s hoof. So, so; it goes round excellently. It
spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost
drained. That way it went, this way it comes. Hand it me—here’s a hollow! Men,
ye seem the years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!
“Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and ye mates,
flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there with your irons; and
ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble custom of
my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will yet see that—Ha! boy, come back?
bad pennies come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming
again, wer’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 honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my
valiant harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the great Pope washes the feet
of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own
condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your
seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!”
Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the detached
iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him.
“Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye not the
goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance. The irons!
take them; hold them while I fill!” Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to
the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.
“Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow them, ye
who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed
is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers!
drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat’s bow—Death to Moby
Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!” The long,
barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the
white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck
paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter
went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they
all dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.
CHAPTER 37. Sunset.
The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out.
I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The
envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.
Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold
brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun—slow dived from noon—goes down; my soul
mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that
I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the
wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that
dazzlingly confounds. ’Tis iron—that I know—not gold. ’Tis split, too—that I
feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid
metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most
brain-battering fight!
Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so
the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness
is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I
lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned
in the midst of Paradise! Good night—good night! (waving his hand, he moves from
the window.)
’Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my
one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if
you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me; and I
their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be
wasting! What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think
me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness
that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be
dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my
dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That’s more than
ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye
pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do
to bullies—Take some one of your own size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve knocked me
down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your
cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab’s compliments to ye;
come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve
yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid
with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges,
through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush!
Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!
CHAPTER 38. Dusk.
By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.
My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned; and by a madman! Insufferable
sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But he drilled deep down,
and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel
that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to
him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who’s over
him, he cries;—aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it
over all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserable office,—to obey, rebelling; and
worse yet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe
would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The
hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has
its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside. I would up
heart, were it not like lead. But my whole clock’s run down; my heart the
all-controlling weight, I have no key to lift again.
[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]
Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human mothers
in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white whale is their
demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward! mark the
unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life. Foremost through the
sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark
Ahab after it, where he broods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead
water of the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long
howl thrills me through! Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life! ’tis
in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,—as wild,
untutored things are forced to feed—Oh, life! ’tis now that I do feel the latent
horror in thee! but ’tis not me! that horror’s out of me! and with the soft
feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom
futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!
CHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch.
Fore-Top.
(Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)
Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!—I’ve been thinking over it ever since, and
that ha, ha’s the final consequence. Why so? Because a laugh’s the wisest,
easiest answer to all that’s queer; and come what will, one comfort’s always
left—that unfailing comfort is, it’s all predestinated. I heard not all his talk
with Starbuck; but to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other
evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it;
had had the gift, might readily have prophesied it—for when I clapped my eye
upon his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, wise Stubb—that’s my title—well, Stubb,
what of it, Stubb? Here’s a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be
it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all
your horribles! I feel funny. Fa, la! lirra, skirra! What’s my juicy little pear
at home doing now? Crying its eyes out?—Giving a party to the last arrived
harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a frigate’s pennant, and so am I—fa, la! lirra,
skirra! Oh—
We’ll drink to-night with hearts as light, To love, as gay and fleeting As
bubbles that swim, on the beaker’s brim, And break on the lips while
meeting.
A brave stave that—who calls? Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye, sir—(Aside) he’s my
superior, he has his too, if I’m not mistaken.—Aye, aye, sir, just through with
this job—coming.
CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.
HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.
(Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning, and lying
in various attitudes, all singing in chorus.)
Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies! Farewell and adieu to you,
ladies of Spain! Our captain’s commanded.—
1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental; it’s bad for the
digestion! Take a tonic, follow me!
(Sings, and all follow.)
Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy-glass in his hand, A viewing of those
gallant whales That blew at every strand. Oh, your tubs in your boats, my
boys, And by your braces stand, And we’ll have one of those fine whales,
Hand, boys, over hand! So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!
MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there, forward!
2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d’ye hear, bell-boy?
Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch. I’ve
the sort of mouth for that—the hogshead mouth. So, so, (thrusts his head down
the scuttle,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight bells there below! Tumble up!
DUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I mark this in
our old Mogul’s wine; it’s quite as deadening to some as filliping to others. We
sing; they sleep—aye, lie down there, like ground-tier butts. At ’em again!
There, take this copper-pump, and hail ’em through it. Tell ’em to avast
dreaming of their lasses. Tell ’em it’s the resurrection; they must kiss their
last, and come to judgment. That’s the way—that’s it; thy throat ain’t spoiled
with eating Amsterdam butter.
FRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! let’s have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in
Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip!
little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!
PIP. (Sulky and sleepy.) Don’t know where it is.
FRENCH SAILOR. Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I say;
merry’s the word; hurrah! Damn me, won’t you dance? Form, now, Indian-file, and
gallop into the double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs! legs!
ICELAND SAILOR. I don’t like your floor, maty; it’s too springy to my taste. I’m
used to ice-floors. I’m sorry to throw cold water on the subject; but excuse me.
MALTESE SAILOR. Me too; where’s your girls? Who but a fool would take his left
hand by his right, and say to himself, how d’ye do? Partners! I must have
partners!
SICILIAN SAILOR. Aye; girls and a green!—then I’ll hop with ye; yea, turn
grasshopper!
LONG-ISLAND SAILOR. Well, well, ye sulkies, there’s plenty more of us. Hoe corn
when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here comes the music; now
for it!
AZORE SAILOR. (Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle.) Here you
are, Pip; and there’s the windlass-bitts; up you mount! Now, boys! (The half of
them dance to the tambourine; some go below; some sleep or lie among the coils
of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.)
AZORE SAILOR. (Dancing) Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it,
quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!
PIP. Jinglers, you say?—there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.
CHINA SAILOR. Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of thyself.
FRENCH SAILOR. Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it! Split
jibs! tear yourselves!
TASHTEGO. (Quietly smoking.) That’s a white man; he calls that fun: humph! I
save my sweat.
OLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are
dancing over. I’ll dance over your grave, I will—that’s the bitterest threat of
your night-women, that beat head-winds round corners. O Christ! to think of the
green navies and the green-skulled crews! Well, well; belike the whole world’s a
ball, as you scholars have it; and so ’tis right to make one ballroom of it.
Dance on, lads, you’re young; I was once.
3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!—whew! this is worse than pulling after whales in
a calm—give us a whiff, Tash.
(They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantime the sky darkens—the wind
rises.)
LASCAR SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, it’ll be douse sail soon. The sky-born,
high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!
MALTESE SAILOR. (Reclining and shaking his cap.) It’s the waves—the snow’s caps
turn to jig it now. They’ll shake their tassels soon. Now would all the waves
were women, then I’d go drown, and chassee with them evermore! There’s naught so
sweet on earth—heaven may not match it!—as those swift glances of warm, wild
bosoms in the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting
grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR. (Reclining.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad—fleet interlacings
of the limbs—lithe swayings—coyings—flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all graze:
unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come satiety. Eh, Pagan?
(Nudging.)
TAHITAN SAILOR. (Reclining on a mat.) Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing
girls!—the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I still rest me on
thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! green
the first day I brought ye thence; now worn and wilted quite. Ah me!—not thou
nor I can bear the change! How then, if so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I
the roaring streams from Pirohitee’s peak of spears, when they leap down the
crags and drown the villages?—The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it!
(Leaps to his feet.)
PORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashing ’gainst the side! Stand by for
reefing, hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell they’ll go
lunging presently.
DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest!
Well done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He’s no more afraid than the
isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, on
which the sea-salt cakes!
4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell him
he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a
pistol—fire your ship right into it!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old man’s a grand old cove! We are the lads to
hunt him up his whale!
ALL. Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort of tree
to live when shifted to any other soil, and here there’s none but the crew’s
cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort of weather when brave
hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our captain has his
birthmark; look yonder, boys, there’s another in the sky—lurid-like, ye see, all
else pitch black.
DAGGOO. What of that? Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me! I’m quarried out of
it!
SPANISH SAILOR. (Aside.) He wants to bully, ah!—the old grudge makes me touchy
(Advancing.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side of
mankind—devilish dark at that. No offence.
DAGGOO (grimly). None.
ST. JAGO’S SAILOR. That Spaniard’s mad or drunk. But that can’t be, or else in
his one case our old Mogul’s fire-waters are somewhat long in working.
5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. What’s that I saw—lightning? Yes.
SPANISH SAILOR. No; Daggoo showing his teeth.
DAGGOO (springing). Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!
SPANISH SAILOR (meeting him). Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!
ALL. A row! a row! a row!
TASHTEGO (with a whiff). A row a’low, and a row aloft—Gods and men—both
brawlers! Humph!
BELFAST SAILOR. A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge in with
ye!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard’s knife! A ring, a ring!
OLD MANX SAILOR. Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring Cain
struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad’st thou the ring?
MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails!
Stand by to reef topsails!
ALL. The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (They scatter.)
PIP (shrinking under the windlass). Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish,
crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes
the royal yard! It’s worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of the
year! Who’d go climbing after chestnuts now? But there they go, all cursing, and
here I don’t. Fine prospects to ’em; they’re on the road to heaven. Hold on
hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But those chaps there are worse yet—they are your
white squalls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I heard
all their chat just now, and the white whale—shirr! shirr!—but spoken of once!
and only this evening—it makes me jingle all over like my tambourine—that
anaconda of an old man swore ’em in to hunt him! Oh, thou big white God aloft
there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here;
preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!
CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick.
I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath
had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and
clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical
feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I
learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others
had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.
For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied, secluded White
Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale
fishermen. But not all of them knew of his existence; only a few of them,
comparatively, had knowingly seen him; while the number who as yet had actually
and knowingly given battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large
number of whale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire
watery circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest along
solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or more on a
stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any sort; the inordinate
length of each separate voyage; the irregularity of the times of sailing from
home; all these, with other circumstances, direct and indirect, long obstructed
the spread through the whole world-wide whaling-fleet of the special
individualizing tidings concerning Moby Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, that
several vessels reported to have encountered, at such or such a time, or on such
or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which
whale, after doing great mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped
them; to some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in
question must have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as of late the Sperm Whale
fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent instances of great
ferocity, cunning, and malice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that
those who by accident ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters,
perhaps, for the most part, were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred,
more, as it were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the
individual cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and
the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded.
And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by chance caught
sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had every one of them, almost,
as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any other whale of that
species. But at length, such calamities did ensue in these assaults—not
restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs, or devouring
amputations—but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous
repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick; those things
had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story of
the White Whale had eventually come.
Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify
the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do fabulous rumors
naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,—as the
smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in
that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality
for them to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the
whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness
and fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are
whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary
to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly
brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face
to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to
them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles,
and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone,
or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and
longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by
influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.
No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over the
widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale did in the end
incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and half-formed fœtal
suggestions of supernatural agencies, which eventually invested Moby Dick with
new terrors unborrowed from anything that visibly appears. So that in many cases
such a panic did he finally strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had
heard of the White Whale, few of those hunters were willing to encounter the
perils of his jaw.
But there were still other and more vital practical influences at work. Not even
at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm Whale, as fearfully
distinguished from all other species of the leviathan, died out of the minds of
the whalemen as a body. There are those this day among them, who, though
intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right
whale, would perhaps—either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or
timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are plenty
of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing under the
American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose
sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively
pursued in the North; seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a
childish fireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern
whaling. Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere
more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which stem him.
And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary times
thrown its shadow before it; we find some book naturalists—Olassen and
Povelson—declaring the Sperm Whale not only to be a consternation to every other
creature in the sea, but also to be so incredibly ferocious as continually to be
athirst for human blood. Nor even down to so late a time as Cuvier’s, were these
or almost similar impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, the Baron
himself affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included) are
“struck with the most lively terrors,” and “often in the precipitancy of their
flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to cause
instantaneous death.” And however the general experiences in the fishery may
amend such reports as these; yet in their full terribleness, even to the
bloodthirsty item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in them is, in some
vicissitudes of their vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters.
So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a few of the
fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier days of the Sperm
Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to induce long practised Right
whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring warfare; such men
protesting that although other leviathans might be hopefully pursued, yet to
chase and point lance at such an apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for
mortal man. That to attempt it, would be inevitably to be torn into a quick
eternity. On this head, there are some remarkable documents that may be
consulted.
Nevertheless, some there were, who even in the face of these things were ready
to give chase to Moby Dick; and a still greater number who, chancing only to
hear of him distantly and vaguely, without the specific details of any certain
calamity, and without superstitious accompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not
to flee from the battle if offered.
One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked with the
White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly
conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been encountered in
opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time.
Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit altogether without
some faint show of superstitious probability. For as the secrets of the currents
in the seas have never yet been divulged, even to the most erudite research; so
the hidden ways of the Sperm Whale when beneath the surface remain, in great
part, unaccountable to his pursuers; and from time to time have originated the
most curious and contradictory speculations regarding them, especially
concerning the mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he
transports himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points.
It is a thing well known to both American and English whale-ships, and as well a
thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby, that some whales
have been captured far north in the Pacific, in whose bodies have been found the
barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas. Nor is it to be gainsaid, that
in some of these instances it has been declared that the interval of time
between the two assaults could not have exceeded very many days. Hence, by
inference, it has been believed by some whalemen, that the Nor’ West Passage, so
long a problem to man, was never a problem to the whale. So that here, in the
real living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old times of the
inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake
in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface); and that still more
wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters were
believed to have come from the Holy Land by an underground passage); these
fabulous narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.
Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and knowing that
after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped alive; it cannot
be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in their
superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for
immortality is but ubiquity in time); that though groves of spears should be
planted in his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should
ever be made to spout thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly
deception; for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his
unsullied jet would once more be seen.
But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough in the
earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike the
imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his uncommon bulk that
so much distinguished him from other sperm whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown
out—a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump.
These were his prominent features; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless,
uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew
him.
The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with the same
shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive appellation of the
White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by his vivid aspect, when seen
gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy
foam, all spangled with golden gleamings.
Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his deformed
lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural terror, as that
unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had
over and over again evinced in his assaults. More than all, his treacherous
retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else. For, when swimming
before his exulting pursuers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had
several times been known to turn round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them,
either stave their boats to splinters, or drive them back in consternation to
their ship.
Already several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar disasters,
however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the fishery; yet, in
most instances, such seemed the White Whale’s infernal aforethought of ferocity,
that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as
having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent.
Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of his more
desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed boats, and the
sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white curds of the whale’s
direful wrath into the serene, exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a
birth or a bridal.
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies;
one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the
whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade
to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it
was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick
had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No
turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more
seeming malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that
almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the
whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to
identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and
spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac
incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in
them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That
intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even
the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites
of the east reverenced in their statue devil;—Ahab did not fall down and worship
it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale,
he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and
torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all
that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and
thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically
assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the
general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his
chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the
precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster, knife
in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity; and
when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing
bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn
towards home, and for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay
stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling
Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one
another; and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on the
homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems
all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was a
raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet
lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that
his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his
hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And,
when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun’sails
spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old
man’s delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came
forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he bore
that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once again;
and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now gone; even then, Ahab, in
his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline
thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some
still subtler form. Ahab’s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted;
like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly, but
unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing
monomania, not one jot of Ahab’s broad madness had been left behind; so in that
broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That
before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope
may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and
turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having
lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more
potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object.
This is much; yet Ahab’s larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But vain
to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding far down from
within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand—however
grand and wonderful, now quit it;—and take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to
those vast Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers of
man’s upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded
state; an antique buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a
broken throne, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he
patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind
ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad king! A family
likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from your grim
sire only will the old State-secret come.
Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means are sane,
my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to kill, or change, or shun the
fact; he likewise knew that to mankind he did long dissemble; in some sort, did
still. But that thing of his dissembling was only subject to his perceptibility,
not to his will determinate. Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that
dissembling, that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer
thought him otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with
the terrible casualty which had overtaken him.
The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly ascribed to
a kindred cause. And so too, all the added moodiness which always afterwards, to
the very day of sailing in the Pequod on the present voyage, sat brooding on his
brow. Nor is it so very unlikely, that far from distrusting his fitness for
another whaling voyage, on account of such dark symptoms, the calculating people
of that prudent isle were inclined to harbor the conceit, that for those very
reasons he was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full
of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorched
without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an
one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his
lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to
be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem superlatively
competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as
it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up
and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one
only and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of his
old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how
soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a
fiendish man! They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted
down in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and
supernatural revenge.
Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job’s
whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel
renegades, and castaways, and cannibals—morally enfeebled also, by the
incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the
invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the
pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially
picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac
revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man’s ire—by
what evil magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost
theirs; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came
to be—what the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious
understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the
gliding great demon of the seas of life,—all this to explain, would be to dive
deeper than Ishmael can go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can
one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his
pick? Who does not feel the irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a
seventy-four can stand still? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of
the time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could
see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill.
CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale.
What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he was to me,
as yet remains unsaid.
Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not
but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought,
or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity
completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable
was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the
whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to
explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must,
else all these chapters might be naught.
Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if
imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls;
and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal
preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the
title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their other magniloquent
ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same
snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the
one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Cæsarian,
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
honor; 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 honorable, 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 snow-howdahed
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 colorless in itself, and if operating without
medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own
blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and
like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring
glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the
monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these
things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
CHAPTER 43. Hark!
“HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”
It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a cordon,
extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the scuttle-butt
near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill the
scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts of the
quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet. From hand to
hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence, only broken by the occasional
flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel.
It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon, whose post
was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a Cholo, the words above.
“Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”
“Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d’ye mean?”
“There it is again—under the hatches—don’t you hear it—a cough—it sounded like a
cough.”
“Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket.”
“There again—there it is!—it sounds like two or three sleepers turning over,
now!”
“Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? It’s the three soaked biscuits ye eat
for supper turning over inside of ye—nothing else. Look to the bucket!”
“Say what ye will, shipmate; I’ve sharp ears.”
“Aye, you are the chap, ain’t ye, that heard the hum of the old Quakeress’s
knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; you’re the chap.”
“Grin away; we’ll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody down in
the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I suspect our old Mogul
knows something of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask, one morning watch, that
there was something of that sort in the wind.”
“Tish! the bucket!”
CHAPTER 44. The Chart.
Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that took
place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose with his
crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom, and bringing out a
large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread them before him on his
screwed-down table. Then seating himself before it, you would have seen him
intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with
slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were
blank. At intervals, he would refer to piles of old log-books beside him,
wherein were set down the seasons and places in which, on various former voyages
of various ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen.
While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his head,
continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw shifting
gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed that
while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some
invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart
of his forehead.
But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his cabin, Ahab
thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were brought out; almost
every night some pencil marks were effaced, and others were substituted. For
with the charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab was threading a maze of
currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that
monomaniac thought of his soul.
Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans, it might
seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in the
unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the
sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating the driftings of the
sperm whale’s food; and, also, calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons
for hunting him in particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises,
almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this
or that ground in search of his prey.
So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the sperm
whale’s resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that, could he be
closely observed and studied throughout the world; were the logs for one voyage
of the entire whale fleet carefully collated, then the migrations of the sperm
whale would be found to correspond in invariability to those of the
herring-shoals or the flights of swallows. On this hint, attempts have been made
to construct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale.*
*Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an
official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory,
Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it appears that precisely
such a chart is in course of completion; and portions of it are presented
in the circular. “This chart divides the ocean into districts of five
degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude; perpendicularly through
each of which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months; and
horizontally through each of which districts are three lines; one to show
the number of days that have been spent in each month in every district,
and the two others to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or
right, have been seen.”
Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the sperm
whales, guided by some infallible instinct—say, rather, secret intelligence from
the Deity—mostly swim in veins, as they are called; continuing their way along a
given ocean-line with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her
course, by any chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in
these cases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor’s
parallel, and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own
unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is
said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width (more or less, as the
vein is presumed to expand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweep from
the whale-ship’s mast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone.
The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth and along that path,
migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for.
And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate
feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing the
widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his art, so place
and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly without prospect of a
meeting.
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his delirious
but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality, perhaps. Though the
gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds, yet
in general you cannot conclude that the herds which haunted such and such a
latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn out to be identically the same
with those that were found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar
and unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In
general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the
solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So that though Moby
Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on what is called the
Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet
it did not follow, that were the Pequod to visit either of those spots at any
subsequent corresponding season, she would infallibly encounter him there. So,
too, with some other feeding grounds, where he had at times revealed himself.
But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to
speak, not his places of prolonged abode. And where Ahab’s chances of
accomplishing his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been
made to whatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a
particular set time or place were attained, when all possibilities would become
probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next thing to
a certainty. That particular set time and place were conjoined in the one
technical phrase—the Season-on-the-Line. For there and then, for several
consecutive years, Moby Dick had been periodically descried, lingering in those
waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted
interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of the
deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place; there the waves were
storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old
man had found the awful motive to his vengeance. But in the cautious
comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding
soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his
hopes upon the one crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be
to those hopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his
unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest.
Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the
Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her commander to make
the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then running down sixty
degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time to cruise there.
Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the premature hour of
the Pequod’s sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected by Ahab, with a view
to this very complexion of things. Because, an interval of three hundred and
sixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval which, instead of
impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by
chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote from his
periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian
Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his
race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor’-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but
the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag
world-circle of the Pequod’s circumnavigating wake.
But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not but a
mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary whale, even if
encountered, should be thought capable of individual recognition from his
hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged thoroughfares of
Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his
snow-white hump, could not but be unmistakable. And have I not tallied the
whale, Ahab would mutter to himself, as after poring over his charts till long
after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries—tallied him, and shall he
escape? His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep’s ear! And
here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race; till a weariness and
faintness of pondering came over him; and in the open air of the deck he would
seek to recover his strength. Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man
endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with
clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.
Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams
of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried
them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round and round
in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became
insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual
throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in
him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends
beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath
him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab
would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire.
Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent
weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its
intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast
hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the
agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the
eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time
dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for
its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching
contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an
integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore
it must have been that, in Ahab’s case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies
to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will,
forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent
being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to
which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered
birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what
seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a
formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an
object to colour, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man,
thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus
makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture
the very creature he creates.
CHAPTER 45. The Affidavit.
So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as
indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the
habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as
important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter of it
requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be
adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a
profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the
natural verity of the main points of this affair.
I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall be content to
produce the desired impression by separate citations of items, practically or
reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from these citations, I take it—the
conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself.
First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after receiving a
harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval (in one instance
of three years), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain; when the two
irons, both marked by the same private cypher, have been taken from the body. In
the instance where three years intervened between the flinging of the two
harpoons; and I think it may have been something more than that; the man who
darted them happening, in the interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to
Africa, went ashore there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated far into the
interior, where he travelled for a period of nearly two years, often endangered
by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other common
perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions. Meanwhile, the
whale he had struck must also have been on its travels; no doubt it had thrice
circumnavigated the globe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa;
but to no purpose. This man and this whale again came together, and the one
vanquished the other. I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to
this; that is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the second
attack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them, afterwards
taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance, it so fell out that I was
in the boat both times, first and last, and the last time distinctly recognised
a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale’s eye, which I had observed there
three years previous. I say three years, but I am pretty sure it was more than
that. Here are three instances, then, which I personally know the truth of; but
I have heard of many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter
there is no good ground to impeach.
Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however ignorant the
world ashore may be of it, that there have been several memorable historical
instances where a particular whale in the ocean has been at distant times and
places popularly cognisable. Why such a whale became thus marked was not
altogether and originally owing to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished
from other whales; for however peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be,
they soon put an end to his peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down
into a peculiarly valuable oil. No: the reason was this: that from the fatal
experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about
such a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen
were content to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would
be discovered lounging by them on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more
intimate acquaintance. Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an
irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the
street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a
summary thump for their presumption.
But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
celebrity—Nay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he famous in
life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death, but he was admitted
into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name; had as much a name
indeed as Cambyses or Cæsar. 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 manœuvres which he
made were necessary. His aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated
resentment and fury. He came directly from the shoal which we had just before
entered, and in which we had struck three of his companions, as if fired with
revenge for their sufferings.” Again: “At all events, the whole circumstances
taken together, all happening before my own eyes, and producing, at the time,
impressions in my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the part of the
whale (many of which impressions I cannot now recall), induce me to be
satisfied that I am correct in my opinion.”
Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a black night
in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any hospitable shore. “The
dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the fears of being swallowed up by
some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary
subjects of fearful contemplation, seemed scarcely entitled to a moment’s
thought; the dismal looking wreck, and the horrid aspect and revenge of the
whale, wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again made its appearance.”
In another place—p. 45,—he speaks of “the mysterious and mortal attack of the
animal.”
Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807 totally lost
off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic particulars of this
catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter, though from the whale hunters I
have now and then heard casual allusions to it.
Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J——, then commanding an
American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be dining with a party of
whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in the harbor of Oahu, Sandwich
Islands. Conversation turning upon whales, the Commodore was pleased to be
sceptical touching the amazing strength ascribed to them by the professional
gentlemen present. He peremptorily denied for example, that any whale could so
smite his stout sloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful.
Very good; but there is more coming. Some weeks after, the Commodore set sail in
this impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he was stopped on the way by a portly
sperm whale, that begged a few moments’ confidential business with him. That
business consisted in fetching the Commodore’s craft such a thwack, that with
all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest port to heave down and
repair. I am not superstitious, but I consider the Commodore’s interview with
that whale as providential. Was not Saul of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a
similar fright? I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense.
I will now refer you to Langsdorff’s Voyages for a little circumstance in point,
peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you must know by the
way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern’s famous Discovery
Expedition in the beginning of the present century. Captain Langsdorff thus
begins his seventeenth chapter:
“By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next day we were
out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather was very clear and fine,
but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on our fur clothing. For
some days we had very little wind; it was not till the nineteenth that a brisk
gale from the northwest sprang up. An uncommon large whale, the body of which
was larger than the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of the water, but was
not perceived by any one on board till the moment when the ship, which was in
full sail, was almost upon him, so that it was impossible to prevent its
striking against him. We were thus placed in the most imminent danger, as this
gigantic creature, setting up its back, raised the ship three feet at least out
of the water. The masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether, while we who were
below all sprang instantly upon the deck, concluding that we had struck upon
some rock; instead of this we saw the monster sailing off with the utmost
gravity and solemnity. Captain D’Wolf applied immediately to the pumps to
examine whether or not the vessel had received any damage from the shock, but we
found that very happily it had escaped entirely uninjured.”
Now, the Captain D’Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in question, is a
New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual adventures as a sea-captain,
this day resides in the village of Dorchester near Boston. I have the honor of
being a nephew of his. I have particularly questioned him concerning this
passage in Langsdorff. He substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by no
means a large one: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast, and purchased by
my uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home.
In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full, too, of
honest wonders—the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient Dampier’s old chums—I
found a little matter set down so like that just quoted from Langsdorff, that I
cannot forbear inserting it here for a corroborative example, if such be needed.
Lionel, it seems, was on his way to “John Ferdinando,” as he calls the modern
Juan Fernandes. “In our way thither,” he says, “about four o’clock in the
morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues from the Main of
America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which put our men in such consternation
that they could hardly tell where they were or what to think; but every one
began to prepare for death. And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent,
that we took it for granted the ship had struck against a rock; but when the
amazement was a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no ground.
* * * * * The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages, and
several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks. Captain Davis, who lay
with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his cabin!” Lionel then goes on to
impute the shock to an earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputation by
stating that a great earthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually do
great mischief along the Spanish land. But I should not much wonder if, in the
darkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock was after all caused by an
unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath.
I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to me, of
the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more than one
instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats back to their
ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand all the lances hurled
at him from its decks. The English ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that
head; and, as for his strength, let me say, that there have been examples where
the lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to
the ship, and secured there; the whale towing her great hull through the water,
as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if the
sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not so often
with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of destruction to his
pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his character,
that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth, and retain it in
that dread expansion for several consecutive minutes. But I must be content with
only one more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant
one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous
event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that
these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for
the millionth time we say amen with Solomon—Verily there is nothing new under
the sun.
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate of
Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius general.
As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work every way of
uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always been considered a most
trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two particulars,
not at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned.
Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term of his
prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in the
neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vessels at
intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years. A fact thus set
down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any reason
it should be. Of what precise species this sea-monster was, is not mentioned.
But as he destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must have been a
whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you
why. For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in
the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now I am certain
that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the present constitution
of things, a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further
investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern times there have been
isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am
told, on good authority, that on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the
British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war
readily passes through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same
route, pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.
In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance called
brit is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I have every reason to
believe that the food of the sperm whale—squid or cuttle-fish—lurks at the
bottom of that sea, because large creatures, but by no means the largest of that
sort, have been found at its surface. If, then, you properly put these
statements together, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that,
according to all human reasoning, Procopius’s sea-monster, that for half a
century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a
sperm whale.
CHAPTER 46. Surmises.
Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and
actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick; though he seemed
ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion; nevertheless it may
have been that he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery
whaleman’s ways, altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage.
Or at least if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much
more influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even
considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White
Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales,
and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances
that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he
hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still
additional considerations which, though not so strictly according with the
wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him.
To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the
shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for example,
that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet
that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere
corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely
spiritual, the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation.
Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced will were Ahab’s, so long as Ahab kept
his magnet at Starbuck’s brain; still he knew that for all this the chief mate,
in his soul, abhorred his captain’s quest, and could he, would joyfully
disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long
interval would elapse ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval
Starbuck would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his
captain’s leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial
influences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle insanity
of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly manifested than in
his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the present, the
hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness
which naturally invested it; that the full terror of the voyage must be kept
withdrawn into the obscure background (for few men’s courage is proof against
protracted meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long
night watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of
than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed
the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less
capricious and unreliable—they live in the varying outer weather, and they
inhale its fickleness—and when retained for any object remote and blank in the
pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all
things requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and
hold them healthily suspended for the final dash.
Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion mankind
disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent. The permanent
constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness.
Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew,
and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous
knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it they give chase to
Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common, daily appetites. For
even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to
traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without
committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by
the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object—that
final and romantic object, too many would have turned from in disgust. I will
not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash—aye, cash. They may
scorn cash now; but let some months go by, and no perspective promise of it to
them, and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same
cash would soon cashier Ahab.
Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to Ahab
personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps somewhat prematurely
revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod’s voyage, Ahab was now
entirely conscious that, in so doing, he had indirectly laid himself open to the
unanswerable charge of usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and
legal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all
further obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From
even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible consequences
of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must of course have been
most anxious to protect himself. That protection could only consist in his own
predominating brain and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating
attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his
crew to be subjected to.
For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be verbally
developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good degree continue
true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod’s voyage; observe all
customary usages; and not only that, but force himself to evince all his well
known passionate interest in the general pursuit of his profession.
Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three
mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit
reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.
CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about the
decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters. Queequeg and I
were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional
lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the
scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent
sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self.
I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept
passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of
the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways,
ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking
off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so
strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the
sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as
if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving
and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject
to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration
merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its
own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my
own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,
Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly,
or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this
difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the
final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword, thought I, which thus
finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword
must be chance—aye, chance, free will, and necessity—nowise incompatible—all
interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be
swerved from its ultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only
tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;
and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity,
and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by
both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so strange, long
drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from
my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a
wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body
was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief
sudden intervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very
moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s
look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that
accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the
Indian’s.
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly
peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer
beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming.
“There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”
“Where-away?”
“On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!”
Instantly all was commotion.
The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and reliable
uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other tribes of his
genus.
“There go flukes!” was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales disappeared.
“Quick, steward!” cried Ahab. “Time! time!”
Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact minute to
Ahab.
The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling before it.
Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to leeward, we
confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of our bows. For that
singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale when, sounding with his head
in one direction, he nevertheless, while concealed beneath the surface, mills
round, and swiftly swims off in the opposite quarter—this deceitfulness of his
could not now be in action; for there was no reason to suppose that the fish
seen by Tashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our
vicinity. One of the men selected for shipkeepers—that is, those not appointed
to the boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The
sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their
places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three boats
swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the
bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was
expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war’s men
about to throw themselves on board an enemy’s ship.
But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took every eye
from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five
dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.
CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.
The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side of the
deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles and bands
of the boat which swung there. This boat had always been deemed one of the spare
boats, though technically called the captain’s, on account of its hanging from
the starboard quarter. The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart,
with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled
Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers
of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening
white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon
his head. Less swart in aspect, the companions of this figure were of that
vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the
Manillas;—a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by some
honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential
agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose
to be elsewhere.
While yet the wondering ship’s company were gazing upon these strangers, Ahab
cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their head, “All ready there,
Fedallah?”
“Ready,” was the half-hissed reply.
“Lower away then; d’ye hear?” shouting across the deck. “Lower away there, I
say.”
Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the men sprang
over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with a wallow, the three
boats dropped into the sea; while, with a dexterous, off-handed daring, unknown
in any other vocation, the sailors, goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship’s
side into the tossed boats below.
Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship’s lee, when a fourth keel, coming
from the windward side, pulled round under the stern, and showed the five
strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern, loudly hailed Starbuck,
Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely, so as to cover a large expanse of
water. But with all their eyes again riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his
crew, the inmates of the other boats obeyed not the command.
“Captain Ahab?—” said Starbuck.
“Spread yourselves,” cried Ahab; “give way, all four boats. Thou, Flask, pull
out more to leeward!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his great
steering oar. “Lay back!” addressing his crew. “There!—there!—there again! There
she blows right ahead, boys!—lay back!”
“Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy.”
“Oh, I don’t mind ’em, sir,” said Archy; “I knew it all before now. Didn’t I
hear ’em in the hold? And didn’t I tell Cabaco here of it? What say ye, Cabaco?
They are stowaways, Mr. Flask.”
“Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little ones,”
drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom still showed
signs of uneasiness. “Why don’t you break your backbones, my boys? What is it
you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They are only five more hands
come to help us—never mind from where—the more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull;
never mind the brimstone—devils are good fellows enough. So, so; there you are
now; that’s the stroke for a thousand pounds; that’s the stroke to sweep the
stakes! Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men—all
hearts alive! Easy, easy; don’t be in a hurry—don’t be in a hurry. Why don’t you
snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so, then:—softly,
softly! That’s it—that’s it! long and strong. Give way there, give way! The
devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye
sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull, can’t ye? pull, won’t ye? Why in the
name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don’t ye pull?—pull and break something! pull,
and start your eyes out! Here!” whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle;
“every mother’s son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his
teeth. That’s it—that’s it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my
steel-bits. Start her—start her, my silver-spoons! Start her, marling-spikes!”
Stubb’s exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had rather a
peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in inculcating the
religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this specimen of his
sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions with his congregation.
Not at all; and therein consisted his chief peculiarity. He would say the most
terrific things to his crew, in a tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury,
and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman
could hear such queer invocations without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling
for the mere joke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easy and
indolent himself, so loungingly managed his steering-oar, and so broadly
gaped—open-mouthed at times—that the mere sight of such a yawning commander, by
sheer force of contrast, acted like a charm upon the crew. Then again, Stubb was
one of those odd sort of humorists, whose jollity is sometimes so curiously
ambiguous, as to put all inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them.
In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely across
Stubb’s bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty near to each
other, Stubb hailed the mate.
“Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye please!”
“Halloa!” returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he spoke; still
earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set like a flint from
Stubb’s.
“What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!”
“Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong, boys!)” in
a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: “A sad business, Mr. Stubb!
(seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind, Mr. Stubb, all for the best.
Let all your crew pull strong, come what will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There’s
hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that’s what ye came for. (Pull, my
boys!) Sperm, sperm’s the play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in
hand.”
“Aye, aye, I thought as much,” soliloquized Stubb, when the boats diverged, “as
soon as I clapt eye on ’em, I thought so. Aye, and that’s what he went into the
after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long suspected. They were hidden down
there. The White Whale’s at the bottom of it. Well, well, so be it! Can’t be
helped! All right! Give way, men! It ain’t the White Whale to-day! Give way!”
Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant as the
lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably awakened a sort
of superstitious amazement in some of the ship’s company; but Archy’s fancied
discovery having some time previous got abroad among them, though indeed not
credited then, this had in some small measure prepared them for the event. It
took off the extreme edge of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb’s
confident way of accounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed
from superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room for
all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab’s precise agency in the matter
from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had
seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the
enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.
Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the furthest to
windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a circumstance bespeaking
how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed
all steel and whalebone; like five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular
strokes of strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a
horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was
seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and
displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale,
clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon; while at
the other end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a fencer’s, thrown half
backward into the air, as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip; Ahab was
seen steadily managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the
White Whale had torn him. All at once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar
motion and then remained fixed, while the boat’s five oars were seen
simultaneously peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the
three spread boats in the rear paused on their way. The whales had irregularly
settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of
the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it.
“Every man look out along his oars!” cried Starbuck. “Thou, Queequeg, stand up!”
Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage stood
erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the
chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where
it was also triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was
seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip
of a craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.
Not very far distant Flask’s boat was also lying breathlessly still; its
commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout sort of
post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the level of the stern
platform. It is used for catching turns with the whale line. Its top is not more
spacious than the palm of a man’s hand, and standing upon such a base as that,
Flask seemed perched at the mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her
trucks. But little King-Post was small and short, and at the same time little
King-Post was full of a large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead
stand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.
“I can’t see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to that.”
Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way, swiftly
slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders for a
pedestal.
“Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?”
“That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you fifty feet
taller.”
Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the boat, the
gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to Flask’s foot, and
then putting Flask’s hand on his hearse-plumed head and bidding him spring as he
himself should toss, with one dexterous fling landed the little man high and dry
on his shoulders. And here was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm
furnishing him with a breastband to lean against and steady himself by.
At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous habitude
of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect posture in his boat,
even when pitched about by the most riotously perverse and cross-running seas.
Still more strange to see him giddily perched upon the loggerhead itself, under
such circumstances. But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo
was yet more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy,
unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea
harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed
a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious,
tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience;
but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro’s lordly chest. So have
I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth
did not alter her tides and her seasons for that.
Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes. The
whales might have made one of their regular soundings, not a temporary dive from
mere fright; and if that were the case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it
seems, was resolved to solace the languishing interval with his pipe. He
withdrew it from his hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He
loaded it, and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had he
ignited his match across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego, his
harpooneer, whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars,
suddenly dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat, crying out in a
quick phrensy of hurry, “Down, down all, and give way!—there they are!”
To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been visible at
that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white water, and thin
scattered puffs of vapor 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 vapor 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 vapor 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 vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled
like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were
tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall,
whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the
iron, escaped.
Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we
picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled back
to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the water covering every
rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a
coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean.
The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together; the
whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white fire upon the
prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal in these jaws of death!
In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar to the live coals down the
chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the
driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night; no sign of
the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the
boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the office of
life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many
failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching
it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn
hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that
almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without
faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat, we lifted
up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over the sea, the empty
lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat. Suddenly Queequeg started to his
feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes
and yards hitherto muffled by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the
thick mists were dimly parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang
into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us
within a distance of not much more than its length.
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it tossed
and gaped beneath the ship’s bows like a chip at the base of a cataract; and
then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more till it came up
weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed against it by the seas, and
were at last taken up and safely landed on board. Ere the squall came close to,
the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good
time. The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light
upon some token of our perishing,—an oar or a lance pole.
CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call
life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the
wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at
nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems
worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and
persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an
ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for
small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life
and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits,
and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old
joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in
some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness,
so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now
seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of
whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and
with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White
Whale its object.
“Queequeg,” said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and I
was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water; “Queequeg, my fine
friend, does this sort of thing often happen?” Without much emotion, though
soaked through just like me, he gave me to understand that such things did often
happen.
“Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his oil-jacket,
was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; “Mr. Stubb, I think I have heard
you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by
far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then, that going plump on a flying
whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman’s
discretion?”
“Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape Horn.”
“Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing close by;
“you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you tell me whether it
is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his
own back pulling himself back-foremost into death’s jaws?”
“Can’t you twist that smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s the law. I should like
to see a boat’s crew backing water up to a whale face foremost. Ha, ha! the
whale would give them squint for squint, mind that!”
Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement of the
entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings in the water
and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of common occurrence in this
kind of life; considering that at the superlatively critical instant of going on
to the whale I must resign my life into the hands of him who steered the
boat—oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon
the point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings; considering
that the particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to be
imputed to Starbuck’s driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall,
and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great
heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to this uncommonly
prudent Starbuck’s boat; and finally considering in what a devil’s chase I was
implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all things together, I say, I
thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will. “Queequeg,”
said I, “come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee.”
It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last
wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that
diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I had done the same
thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon the present occasion, I felt all
the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart. Besides, all the days I
should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his
resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case
might be. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest. I
looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean
conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault.
Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock, here goes
for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the devil fetch the
hindmost.
CHAPTER 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
“Who would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; “if I had but one leg you would
not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with my timber toe.
Oh! he’s a wonderful old man!”
“I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” said Flask. “If his
leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing. That would disable
him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other left, you know.”
“I don’t know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.”
Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering the
paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is right for a
whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils of the chase. So
Tamerlane’s soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes, whether that
invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight.
But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that with two
legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger; considering that the
pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties; that
every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; under these
circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt?
As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought
not.
Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of his
entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the chase, for
the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his orders in person, yet
for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him as a regular
headsman in the hunt—above all for Captain Ahab to be supplied with five extra
men, as that same boat’s crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never
entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod. Therefore he had not solicited a
boat’s crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head.
Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all that matter.
Until Cabaco’s published discovery, the sailors had little foreseen it, though
to be sure when, after being a little while out of port, all hands had concluded
the customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service; when some time
after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of
making thole-pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one of the spare
boats, and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the
line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this was
observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of
sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the
pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety he evinced in exactly
shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called, the
horizontal piece in the boat’s bow for bracing the knee against in darting or
stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how often he stood up in that boat
with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and
with the carpenter’s chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a
little there; all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity
at the time. But almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative
heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick;
for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person.
But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any
boat’s crew being assigned to that boat.
Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away; for in
a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and
ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the
earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often
pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on
planks, bits of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and
what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the
cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable
excitement in the forecastle.
But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms
soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct
from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the
last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this, by what sort of
unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with Ahab’s peculiar
fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted influence; Heaven
knows, but it might have been even authority over him; all this none knew. But
one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a
creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the
unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the
continent—those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in
these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s
primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct
recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each
other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created
and to what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted
with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins,
indulged in mundane amours.
CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.
Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept
across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the Cape de
Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata;
and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from St. Helena.
It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight
night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft,
suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such
a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the
bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering
god uprising from the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these
moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a
look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And yet, though
herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred would venture
a lowering for them. You may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld
this old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon,
companions in one sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval there for
several successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this
silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet,
every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted
in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. “There she blows!” Had the trump of
judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no
terror; rather pleasure. For though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so
impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on
board instinctively desired a lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the t’gallant
sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best man in the ship
must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled
down before the wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail
breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to
feel like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two
antagonistic influences were struggling in her—one to mount direct to heaven,
the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab’s
face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things
were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every
stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old
man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like
arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night.
Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.
This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days after,
lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it was descried by
all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it had
never been. And so it served us night after night, till no one heeded it but to
wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the
case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and
somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and
further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.
Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance with the
preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested the Pequod, were
there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and wherever descried;
at however remote times, or in however far apart latitudes and longitudes, that
unnearable spout was cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For
a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting
apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that
the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and
most savage seas.
These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous potency
from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath all its blue
blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days and days we
voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in
repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our
urn-like prow.
But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling around
us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there; when the
ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in her
madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her
bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to
sights more dismal than before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither before
us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And every morning,
perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and spite of our hootings,
for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship
some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore
fit roosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still
unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and
the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and
suffering it had bred.
Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoso, as called of yore;
for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended us, we
found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings
transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on
everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air without any
horizon. But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain of
feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet would
at times be descried.
During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for the time
the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck, manifested the
gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever addressed his mates. In tempestuous
times like these, after everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing
more can be done but passively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and
crew become practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into its
accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and
hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet
or snow would all but congeal his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew
driven from the forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly
broke over its bows, stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the
better to guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened belt.
Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by painted
sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness
of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks
of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still
wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding
repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget
the old man’s aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the
barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his
floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he
had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and
coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and
currents which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his
tightly clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back so
that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that swung
from a beam in the ceiling.*
*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the compass
at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the course of the
ship.
Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this gale, still
thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.
CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.
South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising ground
for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she
slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head, I had a good view
of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean fisheries—a whaler at
sea, and long absent from home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the skeleton of a
stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral appearance was traced with
long channels of reddened rust, while all her spars and her rigging were like
the thick branches of trees furred over with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails
were set. A wild sight it was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three
mast-heads. They seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the
raiment that had survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops
nailed to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea; and though,
when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the air came so
nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one
ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing
us as they passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, while the
quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.
“Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?”
But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the act of
putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand into the sea;
and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make himself heard without
it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the distance between. While in
various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance of
this ominous incident at the first mere mention of the White Whale’s name to
another ship, Ahab for a moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have
lowered a boat to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But
taking advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and
knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly
bound home, he loudly hailed—“Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the
world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean! and this
time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to ——”
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in
accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for
some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what
seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with the stranger’s
flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before
have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles
capriciously carry meanings.
“Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There
seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless
sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced. But turning to the
steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish her
headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,—“Up helm! Keep her off round the
world!”
Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but
whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils
to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure,
were all the time before us.
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever
reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any
Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But
in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that
demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while
chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or
midway leave us whelmed.
CHAPTER 53. The Gam.
The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had spoken
was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had this not been the
case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded her—judging by his
subsequent conduct on similar occasions—if so it had been that, by the process
of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer to the question he put. For, as it
eventually turned out, he cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any
stranger captain, except he could contribute some of that information he so
absorbingly sought. But all this might remain inadequately estimated, were not
something said here of the peculiar usages of whaling-vessels when meeting each
other in foreign seas, and especially on a common cruising-ground.
If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the equally
desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering each other in such
inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of them, cannot well avoid a
mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment to interchange the news; and,
perhaps, sitting down for a while and resting in concert: then, how much more
natural that upon the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea,
two whaling vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth—off lone
Fanning’s Island, or the far away King’s Mills; how much more natural, I say,
that under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, but
come into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And especially would
this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport,
and whose captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to
each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk
about.
For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on board; at
any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date a year or two
later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files. And in return for
that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the latest whaling
intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of
the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concerning
whaling vessels crossing each other’s track on the cruising-ground itself, even
though they are equally long absent from home. For one of them may have received
a transfer of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel; and some of
those letters may be for the people of the ship she now meets. Besides, they
would exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would
they meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar
congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared privations and
perils.
Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference; that is, so
long as both parties speak one language, as is the case with Americans and
English. Though, to be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such
meetings do not very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be
a sort of shyness between them; for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your
Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides,
the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the
American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript
provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority in the
English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the
Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English,
collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the English
whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably,
because he knows that he has a few foibles himself.
So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers have
most reason to be sociable—and they are so. Whereas, some merchant ships
crossing each other’s wake in the mid-Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on without
so much as a single word of recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high
seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps,
in finical criticism upon each other’s rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance
to meet at sea, they first go through such a string of silly bowings and
scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much
right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As touching
Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run away
from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to
cross each other’s cross-bones, the first hail is—“How many skulls?”—the same
way that whalers hail—“How many barrels?” And that question once answered,
pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides,
and don’t like to see overmuch of each other’s villanous likenesses.
But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in
any sort of decent weather? She has a “Gam,” a thing so utterly unknown to all
other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should
hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about “spouters” and
“blubber-boilers,” and such like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all
Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War’s men, and Slave-ship
sailors, cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question
it would be hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like
to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It
sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And
besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation
for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be
high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to
stand on.
But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the
columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson never attained to
that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same
expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen
thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be
incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it.
GAM. NOUN—A social meeting of two (or more) Whaleships, generally on a
cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats’
crews: the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the
two chief mates on the other.
There is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten here. All
professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so has the whale
fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when the captain is rowed
anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable,
sometimes cushioned seat there, and often steers himself with a pretty little
milliner’s tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has
no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. High times
indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty
old aldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits
of any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete boat’s crew must
leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number,
that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain, having no
place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pine tree. And
often you will notice that being conscious of the eyes of the whole visible
world resting on him from the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is
all alive to the importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs.
Nor is this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting
steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the after-oar
reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus completely wedged before
and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by settling down on his
stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far to
topple him, because length of foundation is nothing without corresponding
breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up.
Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of the world’s riveted eyes, it
would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying himself
the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as
token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands in his
trowsers’ pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he
carries them there for ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well
authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly
critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say—to seize hold of the nearest
oarsman’s hair, and hold on there like grim death.
CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story.
(As told at the Golden Inn.)
The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is much like
some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more travellers than
in any other part.
It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound
whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by
Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick.
To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a
circumstance of the Town-Ho’s story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the
whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called
judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter
circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called
the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of
Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown to the
captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three confederate
white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego
with Romish injunctions of secrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in
his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he
could not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this
thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it,
and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this
matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired
abaft the Pequod’s main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker
thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this
strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.
*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head, still
used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.
For my humor’s sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it at
Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one saint’s eve, smoking upon
the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the
young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer terms with me; and hence the
interluding questions they occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the
time.
“Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about
rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was
cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days’ sail eastward from the eaves
of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of the Line. One
morning upon handling the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that
she made more water in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish had
stabbed her, gentlemen. But the captain, having some unusual reason for
believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore
being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then considered at all
dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as
low down as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her
cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no
good luck came; more days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered,
but it sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain,
making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the islands, there to
have his hull hove out and repaired.
“Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance favoured,
he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way, because his pumps
were of the best, and being periodically relieved at them, those six-and-thirty
men of his could easily keep the ship free; never mind if the leak should double
on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very
prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety
at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for
the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly
provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.
“‘Lakeman!—Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?’ said Don
Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.
“On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but—I crave your courtesy—may be,
you shall soon hear further of all that. Now, gentlemen, in square-sail brigs
and three-masted ships, well-nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out
of your old Callao to far Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our
America, had yet been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions
popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate,
those grand fresh-water seas of ours,—Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and
Superior, and Michigan,—possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the
ocean’s noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of
climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the
Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting
nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our
numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted all round their banks; here
and there are frowned upon by batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of
lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories; at
intervals, they yield their beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces
flash from out their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by
ancient and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of
kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of
prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors;
they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago
villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of
the State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and
dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what
shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full
many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an
inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an
audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid
him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in
after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative
Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the
backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives.
Yet was this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman,
a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness,
only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest
slave’s right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and
docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made
mad, and Steelkilt—but, gentlemen, you shall hear.
“It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow for
her island haven, that the Town-Ho’s leak seemed again increasing, but only so
as to require an hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a
settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think
little of pumping their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night,
should the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the
probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on
account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and
savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual
for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a
voyage of considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible
coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a
leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters, some really
landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little anxious.
“Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found gaining
once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by several of her
company; especially by Radney the mate. He commanded the upper sails to be well
hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this
Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort
of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking
creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine, gentlemen.
Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of
the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner in
her. So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was on this head
no small gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood with their feet
continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any mountain
spring, gentlemen—that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, and poured
itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.
“Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional world of
ours—watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his
fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general
pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable
dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize
that subaltern’s tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of
mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal
with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings
of your last viceroy’s snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in
him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to
Charlemagne’s father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as hardy, as
stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.
“Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest, the
Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his gay banterings.
“‘Aye, aye, my merry lads, it’s a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of ye,
and let’s have a taste. By the Lord, it’s worth bottling! I tell ye what, men,
old Rad’s investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part of the hull
and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began the job; he’s
come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and
what not; and the whole posse of ’em are now hard at work cutting and slashing
at the bottom; making improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I’d
tell him to jump overboard and scatter ’em. They’re playing the devil with his
estate, I can tell him. But he’s a simple old soul,—Rad, and a beauty too. Boys,
they say the rest of his property is invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if
he’d give a poor devil like me the model of his nose.’
“‘Damn your eyes! what’s that pump stopping for?’ roared Radney, pretending not
to have heard the sailors’ talk. ‘Thunder away at it!’
“‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. ‘Lively, boys, lively,
now!’ And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the men tossed
their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard
which denotes the fullest tension of life’s utmost energies.
“Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went forward
all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes
bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening fiend
it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that
corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably
striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down
the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon
allowing a pig to run at large.
“Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship’s deck at sea is a piece of household work
which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it
has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time.
Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of
neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing
their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province
of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the
Town-Ho that had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being
the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned
captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any
trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the case
with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you may understand
exactly how this affair stood between the two men.
“But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as plainly
meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat in his face. Any
man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand this; and all this and
doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate uttered his
command. But as he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the
mate’s malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him
and the slow-match silently burning along towards them; as he instinctively saw
all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper
passionateness in any already ireful being—a repugnance most felt, when felt at
all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved—this nameless phantom feeling,
gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.
“Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily exhaustion
he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that sweeping the deck was not his
business, and he would not do it. And then, without at all alluding to the
shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customary sweepers; who, not being
billeted at the pumps, had done little or nothing all day. To this, Radney
replied with an oath, in a most domineering and outrageous manner
unconditionally reiterating his command; meanwhile advancing upon the still
seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper’s club hammer which he had snatched from
a cask near by.
“Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his
first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook
this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within
him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the
incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously
commanding him to do his bidding.
“Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily followed by
the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated his intention not to
obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had not the slightest effect, by an
awful and unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish
and infatuated man; but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two went once
slowly round the windlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat,
bethinking him that he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the
Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:
“‘Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to yourself.’
But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where the Lakeman stood
fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth; meanwhile
repeating a string of insufferable maledictions. Retreating not the thousandth
part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his
glance, Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it
back, told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt)
would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter by
the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant the lower
jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like
a whale.
“Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays leading far
aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their mastheads. They were both
Canallers.
“‘Canallers!’ cried Don Pedro. ‘We have seen many whale-ships in our harbours,
but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon: who and what are they?’
“‘Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You must
have heard of it.’
“‘Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we
know but little of your vigorous North.’
“‘Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha’s very fine; and ere
proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such information
may throw side-light upon my story.’
“For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth of the
state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most thriving villages;
through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated fields,
unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar-room; through the
holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun
and shade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery
of those noble Mohawk counties; and especially, by rows of snow-white chapels,
whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of
Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There’s your true Ashantee,
gentlemen; there howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you;
under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronising lee of churches. For by
some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters
that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most
abound in holiest vicinities.
“‘Is that a friar passing?’ said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the crowded
plazza, with humorous concern.
“‘Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella’s Inquisition wanes in Lima,’
laughed Don Sebastian. ‘Proceed, Senor.’
“‘A moment! Pardon!’ cried another of the company. ‘In the name of all us
Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no means
overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Venice in
your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look surprised; you know the proverb
all along this coast—“Corrupt as Lima.” It but bears out your saying, too;
churches more plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open—and “Corrupt as
Lima.” So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed
evangelist, St. Mark!—St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill;
now, you pour out again.’
“Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would make a fine
dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he. Like Mark Antony,
for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats,
openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon
the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise
which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat
betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages
through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in
cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of
these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is
often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at
times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder
a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is
emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so many of
its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney
men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish
the curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and
young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal
furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field,
and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.
“‘I see! I see!’ impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha upon his
silvery ruffles. ‘No need to travel! The world’s one Lima. I had thought, now,
that at your temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the
hills.—But the story.’
“I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly had he done
so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four harpooneers,
who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets,
the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it
towards the forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt,
and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm’s way, the valiant
captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to
manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At
intervals, he ran close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying
into the heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his
resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all; they
succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing about three or
four large casks in a line with the windlass, these sea-Parisians entrenched
themselves behind the barricade.
“‘Come out of that, ye pirates!’ roared the captain, now menacing them with a
pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. ‘Come out of that, ye
cut-throats!’
“Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there, defied the
worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to understand distinctly, that
his (Steelkilt’s) death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part
of all hands. Fearing in his heart lest this might prove but too true, the
captain a little desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to
return to their duty.
“‘Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?’ demanded their ringleader.
“‘Turn to! turn to!—I make no promise;—to your duty! Do you want to sink the
ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!’ and he once more raised a
pistol.
“‘Sink the ship?’ cried Steelkilt. ‘Aye, let her sink. Not a man of us turns to,
unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say ye, men?’ turning
to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.
“The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye on the
Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:—‘It’s not our fault; we didn’t
want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy’s business; he might
have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have
broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain’t those mincing knives down in
the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by
God, look to yourself; say the word; don’t be a fool; forget it all; we are
ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we’re your men; but we won’t be
flogged.’
“‘Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!’
“‘Look ye, now,’ cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him, ‘there are
a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped for the cruise, d’ye
see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor
is down; so we don’t want a row; it’s not our interest; we want to be peaceable;
we are ready to work, but we won’t be flogged.’
“‘Turn to!’ roared the Captain.
“Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:—‘I tell you what it is
now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we
won’t lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word
about not flogging us, we don’t do a hand’s turn.’
“‘Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I’ll keep ye there till ye’re
sick of it. Down ye go.’
“‘Shall we?’ cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against it; but
at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark
den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave.
“As the Lakeman’s bare head was just level with the planks, the Captain and his
posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide of the scuttle,
planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly called for the steward to bring
the heavy brass padlock belonging to the companionway. Then opening the slide a
little, the Captain whispered something down the crack, closed it, and turned
the key upon them—ten in number—leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus
far had remained neutral.
“All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and aft,
especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which last place
it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through the bulkhead
below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the men who still remained at
their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals
through the dreary night dismally resounded through the ship.
“At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck, summoned the
prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was then lowered down to
them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it; when again
turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the Captain returned to the
quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days this was repeated; but on the
fourth morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the
customary summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the
forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air,
and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had
constrained them to surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain
reiterated his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific
hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth
morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate
arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left.
“‘Better turn to, now?’ said the Captain with a heartless jeer.
“‘Shut us up again, will ye!’ cried Steelkilt.
“‘Oh certainly,’ said the Captain, and the key clicked.
“It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of seven of his
former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last hailed him, and
maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of despair; it
was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two Canallers, thus far apparently of
one mind with him, to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the
garrison; and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy
implements with a handle at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the
taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship.
For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was
the last night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no
opposition on the part of the other two; they swore they were ready for that, or
for any other mad thing, for anything in short but a surrender. And what was
more, they each insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make
the rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely objected, reserving
that priority for himself; particularly as his two comrades would not yield, the
one to the other, in the matter; and both of them could not be first, for the
ladder would but admit one man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of
these miscreants must come out.
“Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own separate soul
had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely:
to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three, though
the last of the ten, to surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of
pardon such conduct might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination
still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of
villany, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader
fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three sentences;
and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out
for the Captain at midnight.
“Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and all his
armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a few minutes the
scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling ringleader
was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who at once claimed the
honor 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 lightnings 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-Fés 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 honor the story I have told ye, gentlemen, is in
substance and its great items, true. I know it to be true; it happened on this
ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and talked with Steelkilt
since the death of Radney.’”
CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something like
the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman
when in his own absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale-ship so
that he can be fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth while, therefore,
previously to advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down
to the present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time
to set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will be found
among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For ever since those
inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of temples, the
pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin
was drawn in scales of chain-armor like Saladin’s, and a helmeted head like St.
George’s; ever since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed,
not only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific
presentations of him.
Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be the
whale’s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The
Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial
pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were
prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being. No wonder then,
that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there
shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of
the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan,
learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and
half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of
him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the
broad palms of the true whale’s majestic flukes.
But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter’s
portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian Hindoo.
It is Guido’s picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea-monster or
whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a strange creature as that? Nor
does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his own “Perseus Descending,” make
out one whit better. The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on
the surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its
back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, might
be taken for the Traitors’ Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower.
Then, there are the Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah’s whale,
as depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall
be said of these? As for the book-binder’s whale winding like a vine-stalk round
the stock of a descending anchor—as stamped and gilded on the backs and
title-pages of many books both old and new—that is a very picturesque but purely
fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on antique vases.
Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call this book-binder’s
fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended when the device was first
introduced. It was introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere about the
15th century, during the Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down
to a comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a species
of the Leviathan.
In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you will at
times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all manner of spouts,
jets d’eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up
from his unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the original edition of the
“Advancement of Learning” you will find some curious whales.
But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those pictures
of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by those who know.
In old Harris’s collection of voyages there are some plates of whales extracted
from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671, entitled “A Whaling Voyage to
Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland,
master.” In one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are
represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running over their living
backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the
whale with perpendicular flukes.
Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett, a Post
Captain in the English navy, entitled “A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South
Seas, for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries.” In this book
is an outline purporting to be a “Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale,
drawn by scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted
on deck.” I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for the
benefit of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let me say that it
has an eye which applied, according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown
sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet long.
Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!
Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the benefit
of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake. Look at that
popular work “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” In the abridged London edition of
1807, there are plates of an alleged “whale” and a “narwhale.” I do not wish to
seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and,
as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this
nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any
intelligent public of schoolboys.
Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacépède, a great naturalist,
published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are several pictures of
the different species of the Leviathan. All these are not only incorrect, but
the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale (that is to say, the Right
whale), even Scoresby, a long experienced man as touching that species, declares
not to have its counterpart in nature.
But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was reserved
for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous Baron. In 1836, he
published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls a picture
of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer, you had best
provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier’s
Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had the
benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he derived that
picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor in the
same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions; that is, from a
Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are,
many queer cups and saucers inform us.
As for the sign-painters’ whales seen in the streets hanging over the shops of
oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally Richard III. whales,
with dromedary humps, and very savage; breakfasting on three or four sailor
tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their deformities floundering in
seas of blood and blue paint.
But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very surprising
after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been taken from the
stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship,
with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all its
undashed pride of hull and spars. Though elephants have stood for their
full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for his
portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be
seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of
sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a
thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air, so
as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations. And, not to speak of the
highly presumable difference of contour between a young sucking whale and a
full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of one of those young
sucking whales hoisted to a ship’s deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like,
limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself
could not catch.
But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale,
accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all. For it is one
of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very
little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy Bentham’s skeleton, which hangs
for candelabra in the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the
idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other
leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred
from any leviathan’s articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the
mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and
padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes
it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this
book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in the side
fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand,
minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle,
ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy
covering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering. “However recklessly
the whale may sometimes serve us,” said humorous Stubb one day, “he can never be
truly said to handle us without mittens.”
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude
that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain
unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than
another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So
there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks
like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his
living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no
small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me
you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.
CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of
Whaling Scenes.
In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly tempted here
to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to be found
in certain books, both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas,
Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass that matter by.
I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale; Colnett’s,
Huggins’s, Frederick Cuvier’s, and Beale’s. In the previous chapter Colnett and
Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins’s is far better than theirs; but, by great
odds, Beale’s is the best. All Beale’s drawings of this whale are good,
excepting the middle figure in the picture of three whales in various attitudes,
capping his second chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales,
though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is
admirably correct and life-like in its general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale
drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they are
wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though.
Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they are
drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has but one
picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because it is by such
pictures only, when at all well done, that you can derive anything like a
truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living hunters.
But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details not the
most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be anywhere found,
are two large French engravings, well executed, and taken from paintings by one
Garnery. Respectively, they represent attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In
the first engraving a noble Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might,
just risen beneath the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high
in the air upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of
the boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the monster’s
spine; and standing in that prow, for that one single incomputable flash of
time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the
whale, and in the act of leaping, as if from a precipice. The action of the
whole thing is wonderfully good and true. The half-emptied line-tub floats on
the whitened sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it;
the heads of the swimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting
expressions of affright; while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing
down upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details of
this whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I could not draw so
good a one.
In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside the
barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his black weedy bulk
in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian cliffs. His jets are
erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so abounding a smoke in the
chimney, you would think there must be a brave supper cooking in the great
bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other
sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his
pestilent back. And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through
the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the
slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of
an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; but behind, in
admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping
unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a
conquered fortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole
inserted into his spout-hole.
Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he was either
practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously tutored by some
experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for painting action. Go and gaze
upon all the paintings of Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of
living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at
Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the
consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the
Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a
charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are
these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.
The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of things
seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of
their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England’s experience in the fishery,
and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they have nevertheless
furnished both nations with the only finished sketches at all capable of
conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt. For the most part, the English and
American whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical
outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as
picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the
profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after
giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical
engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the
microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering
world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no
disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him for a veteran), but in so
important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every
crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.
In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other French
engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes himself “H. Durand.” One
of them, though not precisely adapted to our present purpose, nevertheless
deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of
the Pacific; a French whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking
water on board; the loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms
in the background, both drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is
very fine, when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen
under one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is quite
a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of
the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act of
cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a boat, hurriedly
pushing off from this scene of activity, is about giving chase to whales in the
distance. The harpoons and lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just
setting the mast in its hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little
craft stands half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship,
the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a
village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of
squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.
CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in
Mountains; in Stars.
On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a crippled
beggar (or kedger, as the sailors say) holding a painted board before him,
representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg. There are three whales
and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed to contain the missing leg in
all its original integrity) is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale.
Any time these ten years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and
exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification
has now come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in
Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will
find in the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never
a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands
ruefully contemplating his own amputation.
Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor,
you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the
fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies’ busks wrought out of the
Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the
numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough
material, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of
dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering
business. But, in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with
that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you
please, in the way of a mariner’s fancy.
Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that
condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery. Your true
whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage, owning no
allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel
against him.
Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic hours, is
his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian war-club or
spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as great a
trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but a bit of broken
sea-shell or a shark’s tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has
been achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady application.
As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the same
marvellous patience, and with the same single shark’s tooth, of his one poor
jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite as workmanlike,
but as close packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles’s
shield; and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that
fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer.
Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the noble
South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of American
whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy.
At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by the
tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy, the
anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom
remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned churches you
will see sheet-iron whales placed there for weather-cocks; but they are so
elevated, and besides that are to all intents and purposes so labelled with
“Hands off!” you cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit.
In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken cliffs
masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain, you will often
discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in
grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges.
Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually girdled
by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point of view you
will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the
undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and
not only that, but if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure
and take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first
stand-point, else so chance-like are such observations of the hills, that your
precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery; like the
Soloma Islands, which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna
trod them and old Figuera chronicled them.
Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out great
whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as when long filled
with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in battle among the
clouds. Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with
the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to me. And beneath
the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the
chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the
Flying Fish.
With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs,
would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the
fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my
mortal sight!
CHAPTER 58. Brit.
Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows of brit,
the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale largely feeds. For
leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to be sailing
through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat.
On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from the
attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam through
the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind
in their mouths, was in that manner separated from the water that escaped at the
lip.
As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their scythes
through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these monsters swam, making
a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving behind them endless swaths of blue
upon the yellow sea.*
*That part of the sea known among whalemen as the “Brazil Banks” does not bear
that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there being shallows and
soundings there, but because of this remarkable meadow-like appearance, caused
by the vast drifts of brit continually floating in those latitudes, where the
Right Whale is often chased.
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all
reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they paused
and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more like
lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in the great hunting
countries of India, the stranger at a distance will sometimes pass on the plains
recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such, taking them for bare,
blackened elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who for the first
time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised
at last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that
such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the
same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse.
Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep with
the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old
naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind in
the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the thing, this may very well
be; yet coming to specialties, where, for example, does the ocean furnish any
fish that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog? The
accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear comparative
analogy to him.
But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever
been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know
the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over
numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though,
by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and
indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone
upon the waters; though but a moment’s consideration will teach, that however
baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering
future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the
crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest,
stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these
very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which
aboriginally belongs to it.
The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese vengeance
had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a widow. That same ocean
rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships of last year. Yea,
foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world
it yet covers.
Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a miracle
upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews, when under the
feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened and swallowed them up for
ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in precisely the same manner the live
sea swallows up ships and crews.
But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is also
a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host who murdered his own
guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savage
tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even
the mightiest whales against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with
the split wrecks of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting
and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless
ocean overruns the globe.
Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under
water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the
loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of
many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many
species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea;
all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the
world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth;
consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy
to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant
land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and
joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee!
Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!
CHAPTER 59. Squid.
Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way
north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so
that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to
that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide
intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen.
But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural spread
over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when the long burnished
sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid across them, enjoining some
secrecy; when the slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran on; in
this profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo
from the main-mast-head.
In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and higher,
and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before our prow like a
snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a moment, as slowly it
subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and silently gleamed. It seemed not a
whale; and yet is this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down,
but on re-appearing once more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man
from his nod, the negro yelled out—“There! there again! there she breaches!
right ahead! The White Whale, the White Whale!”
Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time the bees rush
to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab stood on the bowsprit, and
with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave his orders to the helmsman,
cast his eager glance in the direction indicated aloft by the outstretched
motionless arm of Daggoo.
Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had gradually
worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect the ideas of mildness
and repose with the first sight of the particular whale he pursued; however this
was, or whether his eagerness betrayed him; whichever way it might have been, no
sooner did he distinctly perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he
instantly gave orders for lowering.
The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab’s in advance, and all swiftly
pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with oars suspended,
we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same spot where it sank, once more
it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we
now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto
revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a
glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms
radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as
if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or
front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but
undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition
of life.
As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing
at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed—“Almost
rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white
ghost!”
“What was it, Sir?” said Flask.
“The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and
returned to their ports to tell of it.”
But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel; the rest
as silently following.
Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected with the
sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it being so very unusual,
that circumstance has gone far to invest it with portentousness. So rarely is it
beheld, that though one and all of them declare it to be the largest animated
thing in the ocean, yet very few of them have any but the most vague ideas
concerning its true nature and form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish
to the sperm whale his only food. For though other species of whales find their
food above water, and may be seen by man in the act of feeding, the spermaceti
whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones below the surface; and only by
inference is it that any one can tell of what, precisely, that food consists. At
times, when closely pursued, he will disgorge what are supposed to be the
detached arms of the squid; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and
thirty feet in length. They fancy that the monster to which these arms belonged
ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean; and that the sperm whale,
unlike other species, is supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it.
There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop Pontoppodan
may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in which the Bishop
describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with some other particulars he
narrates, in all this the two correspond. But much abatement is necessary with
respect to the incredible bulk he assigns it.
By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious creature,
here spoken of, it is included among the class of cuttle-fish, to which, indeed,
in certain external respects it would seem to belong, but only as the Anak of
the tribe.
CHAPTER 60. The Line.
With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as for the
better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to
speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.
The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly vapored
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 æsthetics in all things), is much more handsome and becoming to the boat,
than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a
golden-haired Circassian to behold.
The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight, you
would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one and fifty
yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; so that the
whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In length, the common
sperm whale-line measures something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern
of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a
still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded
“sheaves,” or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the
“heart,” or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least
tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody’s
arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line
in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this
business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a
block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possible
wrinkles and twists.
In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line being
continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this; because these
twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into the boat, and do not strain
it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of
proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are
but one half-inch in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like
critical ice, which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very
much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the
American line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious
great wedding-cake to present to the whales.
Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an eye-splice or
loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub, and hanging over its
edge completely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of the lower end is
necessary on two accounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of
an additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should
sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to
the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug of
ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the first boat always
hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensable
for common safety’s sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached
to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a
single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the
doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of
the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.
Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken aft
from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again carried forward
the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of
every man’s oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing
between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded
chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or
skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the
chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the
boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon
the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further
aft, and is then attached to the short-warp—the rope which is immediately
connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes
through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and
writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in
its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as
Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs.
Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those
hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that
at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible
contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus
circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to
quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit
accomplish?—Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter
repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the
half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman’s nooses;
and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing
the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you
may say.
Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those repeated
whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of this man or that
man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the line is
darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of
the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam,
and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless
in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you
are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a
certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can
you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun
himself could never pierce you out.
Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the
storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but
the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the
seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the
explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about
the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries
more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say
more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round
their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that
mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a
philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one
whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,
and not a harpoon, by your side.
CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to Queequeg
it was quite a different object.
“When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his
hoisted boat, “then you quick see him ’parm whale.”
The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to
engage them, the Pequod’s crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by
such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were
voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer
glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of
more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground
off Peru.
It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning
against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an
enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all
consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still
continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it
is withdrawn.
Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the
main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at last all three of us
lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made there was a
nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their
indolent crests; and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and
the sun over all.
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my hands
grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me; with a shock
I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not forty fathoms off, a
gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the capsized hull of a
frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun’s
rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and
anon tranquilly spouting his vapory 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 honor of the capture. It was obvious, now, that
the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. All silence of
cautiousness was therefore no longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came
loudly into play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to
the assault.
Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy, he was
going “head out”; that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he
brewed.*
*It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the entire
interior of the sperm whale’s enormous head consists. Though apparently the
most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him. So that with ease
he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so when going at his utmost
speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part of the front of his head,
and such the tapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that by obliquely
elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform himself from a
bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New York pilot-boat.
“Start her, start her, my men! Don’t hurry yourselves; take plenty of time—but
start her; start her like thunder-claps, that’s all,” cried Stubb, spluttering
out the smoke as he spoke. “Start her, now; give ’em the long and strong stroke,
Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy—start her, all; but keep cool, keep
cool—cucumbers is the word—easy, easy—only start her like grim death and
grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves,
boys—that’s all. Start her!”
“Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!” screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some old war-whoop
to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat involuntarily bounced
forward with the one tremendous leading stroke which the eager Indian gave.
But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. “Kee-hee! Kee-hee!”
yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger
in his cage.
“Ka-la! Koo-loo!” howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful of
Grenadier’s steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea.
Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men to the
onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they
tugged and they strained, till the welcome cry was heard—“Stand up,
Tashtego!—give it to him!” The harpoon was hurled. “Stern all!” The oarsmen
backed water; the same moment something went hot and hissing along every one of
their wrists. It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly
caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of
its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled
with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed round and round the
loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed
through and through both of Stubb’s hands, from which the hand-cloths, or
squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally
dropped. It was like holding an enemy’s sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and
that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch.
“Wet the line! wet the line!” cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated by the
tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it.* More turns were
taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew through the
boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places—stem
for stern—a staggering business truly in that rocking commotion.
*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated, that,
in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running line with water;
in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for that purpose.
Your hat, however, is the most convenient.
From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of the
boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you would have
thought the craft had two keels—one cleaving the water, the other the air—as the
boat churned on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade
played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest
motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft
canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with
might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and
the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order
to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed
as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened his
flight.
“Haul in—haul in!” cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round towards the
whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet the boat was being
towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the
clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of
command, the boat alternately sterning out of the way of the whale’s horrible
wallow, and then ranging up for another fling.
The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a hill.
His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed
for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing upon this crimson
pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all
glowed to each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jet of white
smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff
after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in
upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again
and again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent
it into the whale.
“Pull up—pull up!” he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale relaxed in
his wrath. “Pull up!—close to!” and the boat ranged along the fish’s flank. When
reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the
fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously
seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and
which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch
he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for,
starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his “flurry,” the
monster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable,
mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had
much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air
of the day.
And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging
from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with
sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red
gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air;
and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea.
His heart had burst!
“He’s dead, Mr. Stubb,” said Daggoo.
“Yes; both pipes smoked out!” and withdrawing his own from his mouth, Stubb
scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully
eyeing the vast corpse he had made.
CHAPTER 62. The Dart.
A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.
According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes off from
the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary steersman, and the
harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar, the one known as the
harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to strike the first iron into
the fish; for often, in what is called a long dart, the heavy implement has to
be flung to the distance of twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged and
exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to
the uttermost; indeed, he is expected to set an example of superhuman activity
to the rest, not only by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid
exclamations; and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one’s compass, while
all the other muscles are strained and half started—what that is none know but
those who have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work very
recklessly at one and the same time. In this straining, bawling state, then,
with his back to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the
exciting cry—“Stand up, and give it to him!” He now has to drop and secure his
oar, turn round on his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and
with what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the
whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of
fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so many
hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some of them
actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm
whalemen are absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many ship
owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer that makes the
voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how can you expect to find it
there when most wanted!
Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant, that is,
when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and harpooneer likewise start to
running fore and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of themselves and every one else.
It is then they change places; and the headsman, the chief officer of the little
craft, takes his proper station in the bows of the boat.
Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish and
unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from first to last; he should
both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever should be expected
of him, except under circumstances obvious to any fisherman. I know that this
would sometimes involve a slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience
in various whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much the
speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that has
caused them.
To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this world
must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.
CHAPTER 63. The Crotch.
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive
subjects, grow the chapters.
The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention. It is a
notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length, which is
perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for the
purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoon, whose
other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow. Thereby the weapon is
instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest as
a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is customary to have two
harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called the first and second irons.
But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with the line;
the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one instantly after the
other into the same whale; so that if, in the coming drag, one should draw out,
the other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling of the chances. But it very
often happens that owing to the instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of
the whale upon receiving the first iron, it becomes impossible for the
harpooneer, however lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the second iron
into him. Nevertheless, as the second iron is already connected with the line,
and the line is running, hence that weapon must, at all events, be
anticipatingly tossed out of the boat, somehow and somewhere; else the most
terrible jeopardy would involve all hands. Tumbled into the water, it
accordingly is in such cases; the spare coils of box line (mentioned in a
preceding chapter) making this feat, in most instances, prudently practicable.
But this critical act is not always unattended with the saddest and most fatal
casualties.
Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown overboard, it
thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror, skittishly curvetting about
both boat and whale, entangling the lines, or cutting them, and making a
prodigious sensation in all directions. Nor, in general, is it possible to
secure it again until the whale is fairly captured and a corpse.
Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging one
unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these qualities in
him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of such an audacious
enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be simultaneously dangling about
him. For, of course, each boat is supplied with several harpoons to bend on to
the line should the first one be ineffectually darted without recovery. All
these particulars are faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to
elucidate several most important, however intricate passages, in scenes
hereafter to be painted.
CHAPTER 64. Stubb’s Supper.
Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm; so,
forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow business of towing the
trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men with our thirty-six arms, and
one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon
that inert, sluggish corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all,
except at long intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness
of the mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever they
call it, in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will draw a bulky
freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but this grand argosy we towed
heavily forged along, as if laden with pig-lead in bulk.
Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod’s main-rigging
dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab dropping one of several
more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment,
he issued the usual orders for securing it for the night, and then handing his
lantern to a seaman, went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again
until morning.
Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had evinced his
customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the creature was dead, some
vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed working in him; as if
the sight of that dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and
though a thousand other whales were brought to his ship, all that would not one
jot advance his grand, monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought from
the sound on the Pequod’s decks, that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in
the deep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck, and thrust rattling
out of the port-holes. But by those clanking links, the vast corpse itself, not
the ship, is to be moored. Tied by the head to the stern, and by the tail to the
bows, the whale now lies with its black hull close to the vessel’s and seen
through the darkness of the night, which obscured the spars and rigging aloft,
the two—ship and whale, seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof
one reclines while the other remains standing.*
*A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most reliable hold
which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside, is by the flukes or
tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier than any
other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to
sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from
the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is
ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at
its outer end, and a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to
the ship. By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other
side of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily
made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last locked fast
round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with its broad
flukes or lobes.
If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known on deck,
Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an unusual but still
good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was he in that the staid
Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned to him for the time the sole
management of affairs. One small, helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb,
was soon made strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat
intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.
“A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut me one
from his small!”
Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a general thing,
and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy defray the current
expenses of the war (at least before realizing the proceeds of the voyage), yet
now and then you find some of these Nantucketers who have a genuine relish for
that particular part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb; comprising the
tapering extremity of the body.
About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two lanterns of
sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper at the capstan-head,
as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on whale’s
flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings with his own mastications, thousands
on thousands of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on
its fatness. The few sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the
sharp slapping of their tails against the hull, within a few inches of the
sleepers’ hearts. Peering over the side you could just see them (as before you
heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and turning over on their
backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a
human head. This particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous. How at
such an apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out such
symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all things.
The mark they thus leave on the whale, may best be likened to the hollow made by
a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be
seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like hungry dogs round a table
where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is
tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are
thus cannibally carving each other’s live meat with carving-knives all gilded
and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are
quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were
you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same
thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and
though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the
Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to
be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or
two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and
occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast;
yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such
countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm
whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seen that sight,
then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the
expediency of conciliating the devil.
But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was going on so
nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his own epicurean lips.
“Cook, cook!—where’s that old Fleece?” he cried at length, widening his legs
still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper; and, at the same
time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; “cook, you
cook!—sail this way, cook!”
The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously roused from
his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his
galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his
knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old
Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step
with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron
hoops; this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of command,
came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb’s sideboard; when, with both
hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched
back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as to
bring his best ear into play.
“Cook,” said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his mouth, “don’t
you think this steak is rather overdone? You’ve been beating this steak too
much, cook; it’s too tender. Don’t I always say that to be good, a whale-steak
must be tough? There are those sharks now over the side, don’t you see they
prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk
to ’em; tell ’em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation,
but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and
deliver my message. Here, take this lantern,” snatching one from his sideboard;
“now then, go and preach to ’em!”
Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck to the
bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low over the sea, so as to
get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand he solemnly flourished
his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing
the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.
“Fellow-critters: I’se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam noise dare.
You hear? Stop dat dam smackin’ ob de lip! 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-preachin’ 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 de sea, go
fast to sleep on de coral, and can’t hear not’ing 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, cook;—here, hand me those tongs;—now take that bit of steak there,
and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be? Take it, I
say”—holding the tongs towards him—“take it, and taste it.”
Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old negro muttered,
“Best cooked ’teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy.”
“Cook,” said Stubb, squaring himself once more; “do you belong to the church?”
“Passed one once in Cape-Down,” said the old man sullenly.
“And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town, where you
doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his beloved
fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here, and tell me such a
dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?” said Stubb. “Where do you expect to go
to, cook?”
“Go to bed berry soon,” he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.
“Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It’s an awful question. Now what’s
your answer?”
“When dis old brack man dies,” said the negro slowly, changing his whole air and
demeanor, “he hisself won’t go nowhere; but some bressed angel will come and
fetch him.”
“Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah? And fetch him
where?”
“Up dere,” said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and keeping it
there very solemnly.
“So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook, when you are
dead? But don’t you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets? Main-top,
eh?”
“Didn’t say dat t’all,” said Fleece, again in the sulks.
“You said up there, didn’t you? and now look yourself, and see where your tongs
are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by crawling through the
lubber’s hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you don’t get there, except you go the
regular way, round by the rigging. It’s a ticklish business, but must be done,
or else it’s no go. But none of us are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and
hear my orders. Do ye hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t’other a’top of
your heart, when I’m giving my orders, cook. What! that your heart,
there?—that’s your gizzard! Aloft! aloft!—that’s it—now you have it. Hold it
there now, and pay attention.”
“All ’dention,” said the old black, with both hands placed as desired, vainly
wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at one and the same
time.
“Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad, that I have
put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that, don’t you? Well, for the
future, when you cook another whale-steak for my private table here, the
capstan, I’ll tell you what to do so as not to spoil it by overdoing. Hold the
steak in one hand, and show a live coal to it with the other; that done, dish
it; d’ye hear? And now to-morrow, cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure
you stand by to get the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle. As for the
ends of the flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now ye may go.”
But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.
“Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch. D’ye hear?
away you sail, then.—Halloa! stop! make a bow before you go.—Avast heaving
again! Whale-balls for breakfast—don’t forget.”
“Wish, by gor! whale eat him, ’stead of him eat whale. I’m bressed if he ain’t
more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself,” muttered the old man, limping away; with
which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.
CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish.
That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like
Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so outlandish a
thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it.
It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was
esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there. Also,
that in Henry VIIIth’s time, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome
reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten with barbacued porpoises,
which, you remember, are a species of whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day
considered fine eating. The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard
balls, and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or
veal balls. The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a
great porpoise grant from the crown.
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be
considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit
down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your
appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men like Stubb, nowadays partake of
cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious. We all know how they
live upon whales, and have rare old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda,
one of their most famous doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as
being exceedingly juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain
Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling
vessel—that these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of
whales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among the Dutch
whalemen these scraps are called “fritters”; which, indeed, they greatly
resemble, being brown and crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam
housewives’ dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They have such an eatable look
that the most self-denying stranger can hardly keep his hands off.
But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his exceeding
richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be delicately good.
Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as the buffalo’s (which is
esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of fat. But the
spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; like the transparent,
half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of its growth, yet far
too rich to supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a
method of absorbing it into some other substance, and then partaking of it. In
the long try watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip
their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile. Many a
good supper have I thus made.
In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The
casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes
being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are then mixed
with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat
resembling calves’ head, which is quite a dish among some epicures; and every
one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon
calves’ brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be
able to tell a calf’s head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires
uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with an
intelligent looking calf’s head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights
you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an “Et tu
Brute!” expression.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that
landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to
result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man
should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light.
But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer;
perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly
would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the
meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at
the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the
cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more
tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against
a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in
the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who
nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy
paté-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 patronize
nothing but steel pens.
CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.
When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil,
is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at least,
customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. For that
business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed; and
requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the common usage is to take in
all sail; lash the helm a’lee; and then send every one below to his hammock till
daylight, with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches shall be
kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall
mount the deck to see that all goes well.
But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will not
answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather round the moored
carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more than
the skeleton would be visible by morning. In most other parts of the ocean,
however, where these fish do not so largely abound, their wondrous voracity can
be at times considerably diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp
whaling-spades, a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only
seems to tickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the
present case with the Pequod’s sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed
to such sights, to have looked over her side that night, would have almost
thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in
it.
Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was
concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck,
no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the
cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast
long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long
whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks,* by striking the
keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the
foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not
always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible
ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s
disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till
those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be
oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle
with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic
vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be
called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake
of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg’s hand off, when he
tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.
*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel; is about
the bigness of a man’s spread hand; and in general shape, corresponds to the
garden implement after which it is named; only its sides are perfectly flat,
and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower. This weapon is always
kept as sharp as possible; and when being used is occasionally honed, just like
a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is
inserted for a handle.
“Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” said the savage, agonizingly lifting
his hand up and down; “wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made
shark must be one dam Ingin.”
CHAPTER 67. Cutting In.
It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio professors
of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what
seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were
offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.
In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous things
comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and which no single man
can possibly lift—this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up to the main-top and
firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the strongest point anywhere above a
ship’s deck. The end of the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies,
was then conducted to the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was
swung over the whale; to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one
hundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages over the side,
Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their long spades, began cutting a
hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two
side-fins. This done, a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook
is inserted, and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now
commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire
ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nail-heads of
an old house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted
mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every
gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows;
till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship
rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into
sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of
blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an
orange, so is it stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes
stripped by spiralizing it. For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass
continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the water, and as the
blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the “scarf,”
simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates; and just as
fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the
time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the
main-top; the men at the windlass then cease heaving, and for a moment or two
the prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky,
and every one present must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else it
may box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard.
One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen weapon called a
boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously slices out a considerable
hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into this hole, the end of the
second alternating great tackle is then hooked so as to retain a hold upon the
blubber, in order to prepare for what follows. Whereupon, this accomplished
swordsman, warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at
the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate, lunging slicings, severs it
completely in twain; so that while the short lower part is still fast, the long
upper strip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready for
lowering. The heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one tackle is
peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other is slowly
slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway right
beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room. Into this twilight
apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long blanket-piece as if it
were a great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus the work proceeds; the two
tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving,
the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the
ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the
general friction.
CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.
I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the
whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen afloat, and
learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains unchanged; but it is
only an opinion.
The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you know what
his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence of firm,
close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from eight
or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.
Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature’s skin as
being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point of fact these are
no arguments against such a presumption; because you cannot raise any other
dense enveloping layer from the whale’s body but that same blubber; and the
outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be
but the skin? True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may scrape off
with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat resembling
the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as
satin; that is, previous to being dried, when it not only contracts and
thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits,
which I use for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before;
and being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself with
fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read
about whales through their own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving
at here is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit,
invests the entire body of the whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin
of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply
ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and
more tender than the skin of a new-born child. But no more of this.
Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in
the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels
of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that
oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths, and not the entire substance
of the coat; some idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated
mass, a mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that.
Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only
three quarters of the stuff of the whale’s skin.
In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many
marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and
re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those
in the finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be
impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen
through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In
some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a
veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are
hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of
pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present
connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in
particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian
characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the
Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains
undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing.
Besides all the other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents,
he not seldom displays the back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in
great part of the regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude
scratches, altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those
New England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of
violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs—I should say, that those
rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular. It also
seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made by hostile
contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them in the large,
full-grown bulls of the species.
A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the whale.
It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long pieces, called
blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. For
the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane;
or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his
extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale
is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and
tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy
seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are
found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed,
are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators;
creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in
winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and
warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies. How wonderful is it then—except after
explanation—that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as
indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home,
immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall
overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen
into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more
surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a
Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.
It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual
vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior
spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too,
remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be
cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of
St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a
temperature of thine own.
But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections, how few
are domed like St. Peter’s! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!
CHAPTER 69. The Funeral.
“Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!”
The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded
whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not
perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats more
and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and
the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are
like so many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom
floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what
seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din.
For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen.
Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant
sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on,
till lost in infinite perspectives.
There’s a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious
mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few
of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it;
but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible
vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.
Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and
hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or blundering
discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls,
nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray
heaving high against it; straightway the whale’s unharming corpse, with
trembling fingers is set down in the log—shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts:
beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it
as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there
when a stick was held. There’s your law of precedents; there’s your utility of
traditions; there’s the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never
bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There’s orthodoxy!
Thus, while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror to his
foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world.
Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the
Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them.
CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.
It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping the body
of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the Sperm Whale is a
scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale surgeons very much
pride themselves: and not without reason.
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck; on the
contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that very place, is
the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must operate from
above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him and his subject, and that
subject almost hidden in a discoloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and
bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has
to cut many feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without so
much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he
must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly
divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into the skull. Do
you not marvel, then, at Stubb’s boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to
behead a sperm whale?
When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable till
the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale it is hoisted on
deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full grown leviathan this is
impossible; for the sperm whale’s head embraces nearly one third of his entire
bulk, and completely to suspend such a burden as that, even by the immense
tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch
barn in jewellers’ scales.
The Pequod’s whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head was hoisted
against the ship’s side—about half way out of the sea, so that it might yet in
great part be buoyed up by its native element. And there with the strained craft
steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the enormous downward drag from the
lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on that side projecting like a crane over
the waves; there, that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod’s waist like the
giant Holofernes’s from the girdle of Judith.
When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went below to
their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but now deserted deck.
An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more
unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.
A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone from his
cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze over the side,
then slowly getting into the main-chains he took Stubb’s long spade—still
remaining there after the whale’s decapitation—and striking it into the lower
part of the half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm,
and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a
calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable
head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and
there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret
thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head
upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations.
Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where
in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of
the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home.
Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s
side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou
saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart
they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed
false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the
midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw;
and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the
neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched,
longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an
infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”
“Sail ho!” cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.
“Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself, while
whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. “That lively cry upon this
deadly calm might almost convert a better man.—Where away?”
“Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to us!
“Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way, and to my
breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all
utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives on
matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.”
CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story.
Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than the ship,
and soon the Pequod began to rock.
By and by, through the glass the stranger’s boats and manned mast-heads proved
her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and shooting by, apparently
making a passage to some other ground, the Pequod could not hope to reach her.
So the signal was set to see what response would be made.
Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships of the
American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which signals being
collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels attached, every
captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale commanders are enabled to
recognise each other upon the ocean, even at considerable distances and with no
small facility.
The Pequod’s signal was at last responded to by the stranger’s setting her own;
which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring her yards, she
bore down, ranged abeam under the Pequod’s lee, and lowered a boat; it soon drew
nigh; but, as the side-ladder was being rigged by Starbuck’s order to
accommodate the visiting captain, the stranger in question waved his hand from
his boat’s stern in token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It
turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew,
her captain, was fearful of infecting the Pequod’s company. For, though himself
and boat’s crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot
off, and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between; yet
conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily
refused to come into direct contact with the Pequod.
But this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an interval of
some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam’s boat by the
occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to the Pequod, as she
heavily forged through the sea (for by this time it blew very fresh), with her
main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times by the sudden onset of a large
rolling wave, the boat would be pushed some way ahead; but would be soon
skilfully brought to her proper bearings again. Subject to this, and other the
like interruptions now and then, a conversation was sustained between the two
parties; but at intervals not without still another interruption of a very
different sort.
Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam’s boat, was a man of a singular appearance, even
in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities make up all totalities.
He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles,
and wearing redundant yellow hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a
faded walnut tinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled
up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.
So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed—“That’s he!
that’s he!—the long-togged scaramouch the Town-Ho’s company told us of!” Stubb
here alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among
her crew, some time previous when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to
this account and what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in
question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the
Jeroboam. His story was this:
He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna Shakers,
where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret meetings having
several times descended from heaven by the way of a trap-door, announcing the
speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he carried in his vest-pocket; but,
which, instead of containing gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with
laudanum. A strange, apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for
Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady,
common-sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the
Jeroboam’s whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway upon the ship’s
getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet. He announced
himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard.
He published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the deliverer of the
isles of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness
with which he declared these things;—the dark, daring play of his sleepless,
excited imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united
to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew, with
an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such a man,
however, was not of much practical use in the ship, especially as he refused to
work except when he pleased, the incredulous captain would fain have been rid of
him; but apprised that that individual’s intention was to land him in the first
convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and vials—devoting
the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, in case this intention was
carried out. So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the crew, that at
last in a body they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel was sent from
the ship, not a man of them would remain. He was therefore forced to relinquish
his plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated, say or do what
he would; so that it came to pass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of the
ship. The consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared little or
nothing for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had broken out, he
carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the plague, as he called it, was
at his sole command; nor should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure.
The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before him; in
obedience to his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a
god. Such things may seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true. Nor
is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the measureless
self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless power of deceiving and
bedevilling so many others. But it is time to return to the Pequod.
“I fear not thy epidemic, man,” said Ahab from the bulwarks, to Captain Mayhew,
who stood in the boat’s stern; “come on board.”
But now Gabriel started to his feet.
“Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the horrible plague!”
“Gabriel! Gabriel!” cried Captain Mayhew; “thou must either—” But that instant a
headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its seethings drowned all speech.
“Hast thou seen the White Whale?” demanded Ahab, when the boat drifted back.
“Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the horrible tail!”
“I tell thee again, Gabriel, that—” But again the boat tore ahead as if dragged
by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a succession of riotous
waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional caprices of the seas were
tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted sperm whale’s head jogged about
very violently, and Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness
than his archangel nature seemed to warrant.
When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story concerning Moby
Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from Gabriel, whenever his
name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed leagued with him.
It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking a
whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and
the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly
warned the captain against attacking the White Whale, in case the monster should
be seen; in his gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a
being than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when,
some year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads,
Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him; and the captain
himself being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all the
archangel’s denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five
men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and
many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron
fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one
arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the
sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was
standing up in his boat’s bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was
venting his wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance
for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick,
fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen.
Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily
into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the
distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of
any oarsman’s head; but the mate for ever sank.
It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the Sperm-Whale
Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any. Sometimes, nothing is
injured but the man who is thus annihilated; oftener the boat’s bow is knocked
off, or the thigh-board, in which the headsman stands, is torn from its place
and accompanies the body. But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more
instances than one, when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of
violence is discernible; the man being stark dead.
The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly descried from
the ship. Raising a piercing shriek—“The vial! the vial!” Gabriel called off the
terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of the whale. This terrible event
clothed the archangel with added influence; because his credulous disciples
believed that he had specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a
general prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one
of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror to the
ship.
Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions to him, that the
stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he intended to hunt the
White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which Ahab answered—“Aye.”
Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started to his feet, glaring upon the old
man, and vehemently exclaimed, with downward pointed finger—“Think, think of the
blasphemer—dead, and down there!—beware of the blasphemer’s end!”
Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, “Captain, I have just bethought
me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy officers, if I mistake
not. Starbuck, look over the bag.”
Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various ships, whose
delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed, depends upon the mere
chance of encountering them in the four oceans. Thus, most letters never reach
their mark; and many are only received after attaining an age of two or three
years or more.
Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely tumbled, damp,
and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in consequence of being kept in a
dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might well have been
the post-boy.
“Can’st not read it?” cried Ahab. “Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it’s but a dim
scrawl;—what’s this?” As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long
cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the
letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any
closer to the ship.
Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, “Mr. Har—yes, Mr. Harry—(a woman’s
pinny hand,—the man’s wife, I’ll wager)—Aye—Mr. Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam;—why
it’s Macey, and he’s dead!”
“Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife,” sighed Mayhew; “but let me have
it.”
“Nay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab; “thou art soon going that way.”
“Curses throttle thee!” yelled Ahab. “Captain Mayhew, stand by now to receive
it”; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck’s hands, he caught it in the
slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the boat. But as he did so, the
oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat drifted a little towards the
ship’s stern; so that, as if by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with
Gabriel’s eager hand. He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and
impaling the letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at
Ahab’s feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their
oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod.
As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of the
whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild affair.
CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.
In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much
running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and
then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at
one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same
with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way
a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back,
the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of
the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed
in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty
it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special
purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the
harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping
operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely
submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten
feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on
the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill
beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland
costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon
advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be
seen.
Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his
boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him
while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have
seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the
ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is
technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of
canvas belted round his waist.
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed
further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to
Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for
better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg
sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of
cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated
Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor
could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond
entailed.
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while
earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own
individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will
had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might
plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here
was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could
have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him
now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam
him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the
precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one
way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If
your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in
your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may
possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But
handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so,
that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do
what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.*
*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod that the
monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This improvement upon the
original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb, in order to afford
the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible guarantee for the faithfulness
and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder.
I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the whale and
the ship—where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant rolling and
swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy he was exposed to.
Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the night, the sharks now
freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent blood which began to flow
from the carcass—the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive.
And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them aside with
his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were it not that attracted
by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneously carnivorous shark
will seldom touch a man.
Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a ravenous
finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them. Accordingly,
besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then jerked the poor fellow from
too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark—he
was provided with still another protection. Suspended over the side in one of
the stages, Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of
keen whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could
reach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterested and
benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg’s best happiness, I admit; but in their
hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that both he and the
sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet
spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tail. But poor
Queequeg, I suppose, straining and gasping there with that great iron hook—poor
Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life into the
hands of his gods.
Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in and then
slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea—what matters it, after all? Are
you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That
unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades,
your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and
peril, poor lad.
But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg. For now, as with
blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last climbs up the chains
and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling over the side; the steward
advances, and with a benevolent, consolatory glance hands him—what? Some hot
Cognac? No! hands him, ye gods! hands him a cup of tepid ginger and water!
“Ginger? Do I smell ginger?” suspiciously asked Stubb, coming near. “Yes, this
must be ginger,” peering into the as yet untasted cup. Then standing as if
incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards the astonished steward slowly
saying, “Ginger? ginger? and will you have the goodness to tell me, Mr.
Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of ginger? Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel
you use, Dough-boy, to kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal? Ginger!—what
the devil is ginger? Sea-coal? firewood?—lucifer
matches?—tinder?—gunpowder?—what the devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this
cup to our poor Queequeg here.”
“There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this business,” he
suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just come from forward. “Will
you look at that kannakin, sir: smell of it, if you please.” Then watching the
mate’s countenance, he added, “The steward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer
that calomel and jalap to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the
steward an apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters by
which he blows back the life into a half-drowned man?”
“I trust not,” said Starbuck, “it is poor stuff enough.”
“Aye, aye, steward,” cried Stubb, “we’ll teach you to drug a harpooneer; none of
your apothecary’s medicine here; you want to poison us, do ye? You have got out
insurances on our lives and want to murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, do
ye?”
“It was not me,” cried Dough-Boy, “it was Aunt Charity that brought the ginger
on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits, but only this
ginger-jub—so she called it.”
“Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with ye to the
lockers, and get something better. I hope I do no wrong, Mr. Starbuck. It is the
captain’s orders—grog for the harpooneer on a whale.”
“Enough,” replied Starbuck, “only don’t hit him again, but—”
“Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something of that
sort; and this fellow’s a weazel. What were you about saying, sir?”
“Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself.”
When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and a sort of
tea-caddy in the other. The first contained strong spirits, and was handed to
Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity’s gift, and that was freely given to the
waves.
CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over Him.
It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale’s prodigious
head hanging to the Pequod’s side. But we must let it continue hanging there a
while till we can get a chance to attend to it. For the present other matters
press, and the best we can do now for the head, is to pray heaven the tackles
may hold.
Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually drifted into a
sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit, gave unusual tokens of the
vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the Leviathan that but few supposed to be
at this particular time lurking anywhere near. And though all hands commonly
disdained the capture of those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not
commissioned to cruise for them at all, and though she had passed numbers of
them near the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale had
been brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the announcement
was made that a Right Whale should be captured that day, if opportunity offered.
Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two boats,
Stubb’s and Flask’s, were detached in pursuit. Pulling further and further away,
they at last became almost invisible to the men at the mast-head. But suddenly
in the distance, they saw a great heap of tumultuous white water, and soon after
news came from aloft that one or both the boats must be fast. An interval passed
and the boats were in plain sight, in the act of being dragged right towards the
ship by the towing whale. So close did the monster come to the hull, that at
first it seemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly going down in a
maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he wholly disappeared from view, as
if diving under the keel. “Cut, cut!” was the cry from the ship to the boats,
which, for one instant, seemed on the point of being brought with a deadly dash
against the vessel’s side. But having plenty of line yet in the tubs, and the
whale not sounding very rapidly, they paid out abundance of rope, and at the
same time pulled with all their might so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few
minutes the struggle was intensely critical; for while they still slacked out
the tightened line in one direction, and still plied their oars in another, the
contending strain threatened to take them under. But it was only a few feet
advance they sought to gain. And they stuck to it till they did gain it; when
instantly, a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel, as the
strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under her bows,
snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its drippings, that the drops fell
like bits of broken glass on the water, while the whale beyond also rose to
sight, and once more the boats were free to fly. But the fagged whale abated his
speed, and blindly altering his course, went round the stern of the ship towing
the two boats after him, so that they performed a complete circuit.
Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close flanking him on
both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for lance; and thus round and round
the Pequod the battle went, while the multitudes of sharks that had before swum
round the Sperm Whale’s body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled,
thirstily drinking at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new
bursting fountains that poured from the smitten rock.
At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he turned
upon his back a corpse.
While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his flukes, and in
other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing, some conversation ensued
between them.
“I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard,” said Stubb, not
without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so ignoble a leviathan.
“Wants with it?” said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat’s bow, “did you
never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm Whale’s head hoisted on her
starboard side, and at the same time a Right Whale’s on the larboard; did you
never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never afterwards capsize?”
“Why not?
“I don’t know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so, and he
seems to know all about ships’ charms. But I sometimes think he’ll charm the
ship to no good at last. I don’t half like that chap, Stubb. Did you ever notice
how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snake’s head, Stubb?”
“Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of a dark
night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by; look down there,
Flask”—pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of both hands—“Aye, will I!
Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in disguise. Do you believe that
cock and bull story about his having been stowed away on board ship? He’s the
devil, I say. The reason why you don’t see his tail, is because he tucks it up
out of sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now
that I think of it, he’s always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his
boots.”
“He sleeps in his boots, don’t he? He hasn’t got any hammock; but I’ve seen him
lay of nights in a coil of rigging.”
“No doubt, and it’s because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye see, in
the eye of the rigging.”
“What’s the old man have so much to do with him for?”
“Striking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose.”
“Bargain?—about what?”
“Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and the devil
there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away his silver watch, or
his soul, or something of that sort, and then he’ll surrender Moby Dick.”
“Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?”
“I don’t know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked one, I tell
ye. Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the old flag-ship once,
switching his tail about devilish easy and gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the
old governor was at home. Well, he was at home, and asked the devil what he
wanted. The devil, switching his hoofs, up and says, ‘I want John.’ ‘What for?’
says the old governor. ‘What business is that of yours,’ says the devil, getting
mad,—‘I want to use him.’ ‘Take him,’ says the governor—and by the Lord, Flask,
if the devil didn’t give John the Asiatic cholera before he got through with
him, I’ll eat this whale in one mouthful. But look sharp—ain’t you all ready
there? Well, then, pull ahead, and let’s get the whale alongside.”
“I think I remember some such story as you were telling,” said Flask, when at
last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden towards the ship,
“but I can’t remember where.”
“Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three bloody-minded soldadoes? Did ye read
it there, Flask? I guess ye did?”
“No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell me, Stubb, do you
suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now, was the same you say is
now on board the Pequod?”
“Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn’t the devil live for ever;
who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see any parson a wearing
mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a latch-key to get into the
admiral’s cabin, don’t you suppose he can crawl into a porthole? Tell me that,
Mr. Flask?”
“How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?”
“Do you see that mainmast there?” pointing to the ship; “well, that’s the figure
one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod’s hold, and string along in a row with
that mast, for oughts, do you see; well, that wouldn’t begin to be Fedallah’s
age. Nor all the coopers in creation couldn’t show hoops enough to make oughts
enough.”
“But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that you meant to
give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance. Now, if he’s so old as all
those hoops of yours come to, and if he is going to live for ever, what good
will it do to pitch him overboard—tell me that?
“Give him a good ducking, anyhow.”
“But he’d crawl back.”
“Duck him again; and keep ducking him.”
“Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though—yes, and drown
you—what then?”
“I should like to see him try it; I’d give him such a pair of black eyes that he
wouldn’t dare to show his face in the admiral’s cabin again for a long while,
let alone down in the orlop there, where he lives, and hereabouts on the upper
decks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil, Flask; so you suppose I’m afraid
of the devil? Who’s afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn’t catch
him and put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about
kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people the
devil kidnapped, he’d roast for him? There’s a governor!”
“Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?”
“Do I suppose it? You’ll know it before long, Flask. But I am going now to keep
a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything very suspicious going on, I’ll
just take him by the nape of his neck, and say—Look here, Beelzebub, you don’t
do it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord I’ll make a grab into his pocket
for his tail, take it to the capstan, and give him such a wrenching and heaving,
that his tail will come short off at the stump—do you see; and then, I rather
guess when he finds himself docked in that queer fashion, he’ll sneak off
without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tail between his legs.”
“And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?”
“Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;—what else?”
“Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along, Stubb?”
“Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship.”
The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side, where fluke
chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing him.
“Didn’t I tell you so?” said Flask; “yes, you’ll soon see this right whale’s
head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti’s.”
In good time, Flask’s saying proved true. As before, the Pequod steeply leaned
over towards the sperm whale’s head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she
regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when
on one side you hoist in Locke’s head, you go over that way; but now, on the
other side, hoist in Kant’s and you come back again; but in very poor plight.
Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these
thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.
In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the ship, the
same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the case of a sperm
whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is cut off whole, but in the
former the lips and tongue are separately removed and hoisted on deck, with all
the well known black bone attached to what is called the crown-piece. But
nothing like this, in the present case, had been done. The carcases of both
whales had dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule
carrying a pair of overburdening panniers.
Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale’s head, and ever and anon
glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own hand. And Ahab
chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee’s
shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab’s. As
the crew toiled on, Laplandish speculations were bandied among them, concerning
all these passing things.
CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us join them,
and lay together our own.
Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are
by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. To
the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all the known varieties of the
whale. As the external difference between them is mainly observable in their
heads; and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod’s side; and
as we may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across the
deck:—where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better chance to study
practical cetology than here?
In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these heads.
Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain mathematical
symmetry in the Sperm Whale’s which the Right Whale’s sadly lacks. There is more
character in the Sperm Whale’s head. As you behold it, you involuntarily yield
the immense superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present
instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt colour of his
head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short,
he is what the fishermen technically call a “grey-headed whale.”
Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads—namely, the two most
important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side of the head, and low
down, near the angle of either whale’s jaw, if you narrowly search, you will at
last see a lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a young colt’s eye; so out
of all proportion is it to the magnitude of the head.
Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale’s eyes, it is plain that
he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more than he can one
exactly astern. In a word, the position of the whale’s eyes corresponds to that
of a man’s ears; and you may fancy, for yourself, how it would fare with you,
did you sideways survey objects through your ears. You would find that you could
only command some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-line
of sight; and about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking
straight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be able
to see him, any more than if he were stealing upon you from behind. In a word,
you would have two backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts
(side fronts): for what is it that makes the front of a man—what, indeed, but
his eyes?
Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are so
planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one
picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale’s eyes,
effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers
between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of
course, must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ
imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this side, and
another distinct picture on that side; while all between must be profound
darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look out on the
world from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window. But with the
whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two distinct windows,
but sadly impairing the view. This peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is a thing
always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in
some subsequent scenes.
A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this visual
matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with a hint. So long as
a man’s eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing is involuntary; that is,
he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever objects are before him.
Nevertheless, any one’s experience will teach him, that though he can take in an
undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossible for him,
attentively, and completely, to examine any two things—however large or however
small—at one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side by side
and touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two objects, and
surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one of
them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be
utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it, then, with the
whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must simultaneously act; but is his
brain so much more comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man’s, that he can
at the same moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on
one side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he can, then
is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultaneously to go
through the demonstrations of two distinct problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly
investigated, is there any incongruity in this comparison.
It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when beset by
three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer frights, so common to
such whales; I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the helpless
perplexity of volition, in which their divided and diametrically opposite powers
of vision must involve them.
But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an entire
stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads for hours, and never
discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf whatever; and into the hole
itself you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a
little behind the eye. With respect to their ears, this important difference is
to be observed between the sperm whale and the right. While the ear of the
former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly
covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from without.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world
through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller
than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel’s great
telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make
him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try
to “enlarge” your mind? Subtilize it.
Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant over the
sperm whale’s head, that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending by a ladder to
the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and were it not that the body is now
completely separated from it, with a lantern we might descend into the great
Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and
look about us where we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth!
from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a glistening white
membrane, glossy as bridal satins.
But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems like the
long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one end, instead of
one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose its rows of
teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such, alas! it proves to many a poor
wight in the fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force. But far
more terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky
whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet
long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world
like a ship’s jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of
sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have
relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all
his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.
In most cases this lower jaw—being easily unhinged by a practised artist—is
disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth,
and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen
fashion all sorts of curious articles, including canes, umbrella-stocks, and
handles to riding-whips.
With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an anchor;
and when the proper time comes—some few days after the other work—Queequeg,
Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set to drawing teeth.
With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down
to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth,
as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are
generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed;
nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs,
and piled away like joists for building houses.
CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right Whale’s head.
As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale’s head may be compared to a Roman
war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a
broad view, the Right Whale’s head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a
gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened
its shape to that of a shoemaker’s last. And in this same last or shoe, that old
woman of the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be
lodged, she and all her progeny.
But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different aspects,
according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit and look at these
two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take the whole head for an enormous
bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in its sounding-board. Then,
again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested, comb-like incrustation on
the top of the mass—this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the
“crown,” and the Southern fishers the “bonnet” of the Right Whale; fixing your
eyes solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak,
with a bird’s nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those live crabs
that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur to
you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the technical term “crown”
also bestowed upon it; in which case you will take great interest in thinking
how this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose green
crown has been put together for him in this marvellous manner. But if this whale
be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that
hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by
carpenter’s measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and
pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.
A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped. The
fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an important interval
was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape.
Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon
my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian
wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve
feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular
ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us with those
wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred
on a side, which depending from the upper part of the head or crown bone, form
those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges
of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale
strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when
openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central
blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious
marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the
creature’s age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty
of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical
probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to
the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.
In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning
these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous “whiskers” inside
of the whale’s mouth;* another, “hogs’ bristles”; a third old gentleman in
Hackluyt uses the following elegant language: “There are about two hundred and
fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his tongue on
each side of his mouth.”
*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or rather a
moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the upper part of the
outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these tufts impart a rather brigandish
expression to his otherwise solemn countenance.
As every one knows, these same “hogs’ bristles,” “fins,” “whiskers,” “blinds,”
or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other stiffening
contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has long been on the decline.
It was in Queen Anne’s time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale
being then all the fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though
in the jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like
thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the
umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.
But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, standing in the
Right Whale’s mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing all these colonnades of bone
so methodically ranged about, would you not think you were inside of the great
Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we
have a rug of the softest Turkey—the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the
floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in
hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I
should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that amount
of oil.
Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started with—that the
Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely different heads. To sum up,
then: in the Right Whale’s there is no great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at
all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale’s. Nor in
the Sperm Whale are there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and
scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external
spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.
Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie
together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be
very long in following.
Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale’s there? It is the same he died
with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I
think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a
speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head’s expression. See
that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel’s side, so as
firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous
practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a
Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his
latter years.
CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.
Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale’s head, I would have you, as a
sensible physiologist, simply—particularly remark its front aspect, in all its
compacted collectedness. I would have you investigate it now with the sole view
of forming to yourself some unexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever
battering-ram power may be lodged there. Here is a vital point; for you must
either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an
infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events, perhaps
anywhere to be found in all recorded history.
You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm Whale, the front
of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the water; you observe
that the lower part of that front slopes considerably backwards, so as to
furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which receives the boom-like lower
jaw; you observe that the mouth is entirely under the head, much in the same
way, indeed, as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin. Moreover
you observe that the whale has no external nose; and that what nose he has—his
spout hole—is on the top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears are at
the sides of his head, nearly one third of his entire length from the front.
Wherefore, you must now have perceived that the front of the Sperm Whale’s head
is a dead, blind wall, without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort
whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme,
lower, backward sloping part of the front of the head, is there the slightest
vestige of bone; and not till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do you
come to the full cranial development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass
is as one wad. Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly
comprise the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of
the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy. In some
previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the body of the
whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head; but with this
difference: about the head this envelope, though not so thick, is of a boneless
toughness, inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed
harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently
rebounds from it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved
with horses’ hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.
Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded Indiamen chance
to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, what do the sailors do? They
do not suspend between them, at the point of coming contact, any merely hard
substance, like iron or wood. No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and
cork, enveloped in the thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and
uninjured takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and
iron crow-bars. By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive
at. But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as
ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at
will, of distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know,
has no such provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable
manner in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the surface, and
anon swims with it high elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed
elasticity of its envelope; considering the unique interior of his head; it has
hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs
there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with the
outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and contraction. If
this be so, fancy the irresistibleness of that might, to which the most
impalpable and destructive of all elements contributes.
Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and
this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous
life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is—by the cord; and all
obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter
detail to you all the specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere
lurking in this expansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more
inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all ignorant
incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a
passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific,
you would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow. For unless you own the whale,
you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing
for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the
provincials then? What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess’s
veil at Lais?
CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must know
something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated upon.
Regarding the Sperm Whale’s head as a solid oblong, you may, on an inclined
plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower is the bony
structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass wholly
free from bones; its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent
forehead of the whale. At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this
upper quoin, and then you have two almost equal parts, which before were
naturally divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance.
*Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical mathematics. I
know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a solid which differs from
a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the steep inclination of one side,
instead of the mutual tapering of both sides.
The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil,
formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of
tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole extent. The upper part, known as
the Case, may be regarded as the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And
as that famous great tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale’s vast
plaited forehead forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical
adornment of his wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always
replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the
tun of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages;
namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid, and
odoriferous state. Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed in any other
part of the creature. Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon
exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to concrete; sending forth
beautiful crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just
forming in water. A large whale’s case generally yields about five hundred
gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances, considerable of it is
spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the
ticklish business of securing what you can.
I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun was coated
within, but in superlative richness that coating could not possibly have
compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like the lining of a fine
pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm Whale’s case.
It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale embraces the
entire length of the entire top of the head; and since—as has been elsewhere set
forth—the head embraces one third of the whole length of the creature, then
setting that length down at eighty feet for a good sized whale, you have more
than twenty-six feet for the depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up
and down against a ship’s side.
As in decapitating the whale, the operator’s instrument is brought close to the
spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the spermaceti magazine; he
has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest a careless, untimely stroke
should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out its invaluable contents. It is
this decapitated end of the head, also, which is at last elevated out of the
water, and retained in that position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose
hempen combinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness of ropes in that
quarter.
Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous and—in this
particular instance—almost fatal operation whereby the Sperm Whale’s great
Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.
CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.
Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect posture,
runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it
exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a light tackle
called a whip, consisting of only two parts, travelling through a single-sheaved
block. Securing this block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings
one end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then,
hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till
dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. There—still high elevated above
the rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries—he seems some Turkish
Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A
short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the
proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds very
heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding the walls to find
where the gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search is over, a stout
iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of
the whip; while the other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by
two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the
Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this
pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it
entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the whip, up comes
the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid’s pail of new milk. Carefully
lowered from its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed
hand, and quickly emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes
through the same round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the
end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper
into the Tun, until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down.
Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way; several
tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once a queer accident
happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian, was so heedless and
reckless as to let go for a moment his one-handed hold on the great cabled
tackles suspending the head; or whether the place where he stood was so
treacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out
so, without stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no
telling now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came
suckingly up—my God! poor Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating bucket in a
veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh,
and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!
“Man overboard!” cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first came to
his senses. “Swing the bucket this way!” and putting one foot into it, so as the
better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself, the hoisters ran him
high up to the top of the head, almost before Tashtego could have reached its
interior bottom. Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side,
they saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface
of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was
only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous
depth to which he had sunk.
At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing the
whip—which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles—a sharp cracking
noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all, one of the two enormous
hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a vast vibration the enormous mass
sideways swung, till the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an
iceberg. The one remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now depended,
seemed every instant to be on the point of giving way; an event still more
likely from the violent motions of the head.
“Come down, come down!” yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand holding
on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he would still remain
suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line, rammed down the bucket into
the now collapsed well, meaning that the buried harpooneer should grasp it, and
so be hoisted out.
“In heaven’s name, man,” cried Stubb, “are you ramming home a cartridge
there?—Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on top of
his head? Avast, will ye!”
“Stand clear of the tackle!” cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket.
Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into
the sea, like Niagara’s Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved
hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper; and all caught
their breath, as half swinging—now over the sailors’ heads, and now over the
water—Daggoo, through a thick mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the
pendulous tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to
the bottom of the sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a
naked figure with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen
hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave
Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and
every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either
the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat
alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.
“Ha! ha!” cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch
overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust upright
from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust forth from the
grass over a grave.
“Both! both!—it is both!”—cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and soon
after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and with the other
clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the waiting boat, they were
quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg
did not look very brisk.
Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the slowly
descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its
bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust
his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head.
He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well
knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great
trouble;—he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had
wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth
in the good old way—head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was doing
as well as could be expected.
And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the
deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in
the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments; which
is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same
course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.
I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s will be sure to seem
incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have either seen or
heard of some one’s falling into a cistern ashore; an accident which not seldom
happens, and with much less reason too than the Indian’s, considering the
exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the Sperm Whale’s well.
But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought the
tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and most corky
part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of a far greater
specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at all, but I have ye; for
at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter
contents, leaving little but the dense tendinous wall of the well—a double
welded, hammered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea
water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to
rapid sinking in this substance was in the present instance materially
counteracted by the other parts of the head remaining undetached from it, so
that it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair
chance for performing his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it
was a running delivery, so it was.
Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing;
smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined,
hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the
whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an
Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such
exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he
died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head,
and sweetly perished there?
CHAPTER 79. The Prairie.
To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this Leviathan;
this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken.
Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to have
scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a
ladder and manipulated the Dome of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of
his, Lavater not only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively
studies the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail
upon the modifications of expression discernible therein. Nor have Gall and his
disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the phrenological
characteristics of other beings than man. Therefore, though I am but ill
qualified for a pioneer, in the application of these two semi-sciences to the
whale, I will do my endeavor. I try all things; I achieve what I can.
Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature. He has no
proper nose. And since the nose is the central and most conspicuous of the
features; and since it perhaps most modifies and finally controls their combined
expression; hence it would seem that its entire absence, as an external
appendage, must very largely affect the countenance of the whale. For as in
landscape gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed
almost indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no face can be
physiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose.
Dash the nose from Phidias’s marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder!
Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so
stately, that the same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were hideous, in
him is no blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale
would have been impertinent. As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his
vast head in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted
by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit, which so
often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal beadle
on his throne.
In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to be had of
the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head. This aspect is sublime.
In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the morning.
In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has a touch of the
grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles, the elephant’s brow is
majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is as that great golden seal
affixed by the German emperors to their decrees. It signifies—“God: done this
day by my hand.” But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow
is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line. Few are the
foreheads which like Shakespeare’s or Melancthon’s rise so high, and descend so
low, that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and
all above them in the forehead’s wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered
thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow
prints of the deer. But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like
dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in
that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than
in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no one point
precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth;
no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a
forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and
ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that
way viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly
perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the forehead’s middle,
which, in man, is Lavater’s mark of genius.
But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book,
spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing
particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And
this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient
World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified
the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm
Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable
of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back
to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them
again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure,
exalted to Jove’s high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no
Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face.
Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then,
Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest
peasant’s face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered
Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put that
brow before you. Read it if you can.
CHAPTER 80. The Nut.
If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain
seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square.
In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in
length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as the side of
a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base. But in life—as
we have elsewhere seen—this inclined plane is angularly filled up, and almost
squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high
end the skull forms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while under the long
floor of this crater—in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length and
as many in depth—reposes the mere handful of this monster’s brain. The brain is
at least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hidden away
behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within the amplified
fortifications of Quebec. So like a choice casket is it secreted in him, that I
have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale has any
other brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the cubic-yards of his
sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions, to their
apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea of his general might to
regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his intelligence.
It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in the
creature’s living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his true brain,
you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things
that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world.
If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view of its
rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its resemblance to the
human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from the same point of view.
Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down to the human magnitude) among a
plate of men’s skulls, and you would involuntarily confound it with them; and
remarking the depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you
would say—This man had no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by those
negations, considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and
power, you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the most
exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is.
But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale’s proper brain, you deem it
incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another idea for you. If you
attentively regard almost any quadruped’s spine, you will be struck with the
resemblance of its vertebræ to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing
rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit, that the
vertebræ 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 vertebræ 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
vertebræ 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 vertebræ,
and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer convex mould of it. From its relative
situation then, I should call this high hump the organ of firmness or
indomitableness in the Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable,
you will yet have reason to know.
CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick De
Deer, master, of Bremen.
At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and Germans are
now among the least; but here and there at very wide intervals of latitude and
longitude, you still occasionally meet with their flag in the Pacific.
For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects. While yet
some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping a boat, her captain
was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in the bows instead of the stern.
“What has he in his hand there?” cried Starbuck, pointing to something wavingly
held by the German. “Impossible!—a lamp-feeder!”
“Not that,” said Stubb, “no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he’s coming
off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don’t you see that big tin can there
alongside of him?—that’s his boiling water. Oh! he’s all right, is the Yarman.”
“Go along with you,” cried Flask, “it’s a lamp-feeder and an oil-can. He’s out
of oil, and has come a-begging.”
However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the
whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb
about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really happens;
and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a
lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.
As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all heeding what
he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German soon evinced his
complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately turning the conversation to
his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some remarks touching his having to turn into
his hammock at night in profound darkness—his last drop of Bremen oil being
gone, and not a single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency;
concluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is
technically called a clean one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name
of Jungfrau or the Virgin.
His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his ship’s
side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the mast-heads of both
vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that without pausing to put his
oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed round his boat and made after the
leviathan lamp-feeders.
Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German boats that
soon followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod’s keels. There were
eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger, they were going all abreast
with great speed straight before the wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so
many spans of horses in harness. They left a great, wide wake, as though
continually unrolling a great wide parchment upon the sea.
Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge, humped old
bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as by the unusual
yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted with the jaundice, or
some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed
questionable; for it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all
social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their back water
must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was
a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet. His spout
was short, slow, and laborious; coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and
spending itself in torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in
him, which seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the
waters behind him to upbubble.
“Who’s got some paregoric?” said Stubb, “he has the stomach-ache, I’m afraid.
Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse winds are holding
mad Christmas in him, boys. It’s the first foul wind I ever knew to blow from
astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so before? it must be, he’s lost his
tiller.”
As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck load of
frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her way; so did this
old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly turning over on his
cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious wake in the unnatural stump
of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born
without it, it were hard to say.
“Only wait a bit, old chap, and I’ll give ye a sling for that wounded arm,”
cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.
“Mind he don’t sling thee with it,” cried Starbuck. “Give way, or the German
will have him.”
With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this one fish,
because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most valuable whale, but
he was nearest to them, and the other whales were going with such great
velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for the time. At this juncture the
Pequod’s keels had shot by the three German boats last lowered; but from the
great start he had had, Derick’s boat still led the chase, though every moment
neared by his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being
already so nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron before they
could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quite confident
that this would be the case, and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook his
lamp-feeder at the other boats.
“The ungracious and ungrateful dog!” cried Starbuck; “he mocks and dares me with
the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes ago!”—then in his old
intense whisper—“Give way, greyhounds! Dog to it!”
“I tell ye what it is, men”—cried Stubb to his crew—“it’s against my religion to
get mad; but I’d like to eat that villainous Yarman—Pull—won’t ye? Are ye going
to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to
the best man. Come, why don’t some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who’s that been
dropping an anchor overboard—we don’t budge an inch—we’re becalmed. Halloo,
here’s grass growing in the boat’s bottom—and by the Lord, the mast there’s
budding. This won’t do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short and long of it is,
men, will ye spit fire or not?”
“Oh! see the suds he makes!” cried Flask, dancing up and down—“What a hump—Oh,
do pile on the beef—lays like a log! Oh! my lads, do spring—slap-jacks and
quahogs for supper, you know, my lads—baked clams and muffins—oh, do, do,
spring,—he’s a hundred barreller—don’t lose him now—don’t oh, don’t!—see that
Yarman—Oh, won’t ye pull for your duff, my lads—such a sog! such a sogger! Don’t
ye love sperm? There goes three thousand dollars, men!—a bank!—a whole bank! The
bank of England!—Oh, do, do, do!—What’s that Yarman about now?”
At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the
advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double view of retarding
his rivals’ way, and at the same time economically accelerating his own by the
momentary impetus of the backward toss.
“The unmannerly Dutch dogger!” cried Stubb. “Pull now, men, like fifty thousand
line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d’ye say, Tashtego; are you
the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces for the honor 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 vapors of foam and white-fire! The three boats, in the first
fury of the whale’s headlong rush, bumped the German’s aside with such force,
that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by
the three flying keels.
“Don’t be afraid, my butter-boxes,” cried Stubb, casting a passing glance upon
them as he shot by; “ye’ll be picked up presently—all right—I saw some sharks
astern—St. Bernard’s dogs, you know—relieve distressed travellers. Hurrah! this
is the way to sail now. Every keel a sunbeam! Hurrah!—Here we go like three tin
kettles at the tail of a mad cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an
elephant in a tilbury on a plain—makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you
fasten to him that way; and there’s danger of being pitched out too, when you
strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he’s going to Davy
Jones—all a rush down an endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries the
everlasting mail!”
But the monster’s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he tumultuously
sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew round the loggerheads with
such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them; while so fearful were the
harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust the lines, that using
all their dexterous might, they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to
hold on; till at last—owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-lined
chocks of the boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue—the
gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water, while the three sterns
tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for some time they
remained in that attitude, fearful of expending more line, though the position
was a little ticklish. But though boats have been taken down and lost in this
way, yet it is this “holding on,” as it is called; this hooking up by the sharp
barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is that often torments the
Leviathan into soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to
speak of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is
always the best; for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the
stricken whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to
the enormous surface of him—in a full grown sperm whale something less than 2000
square feet—the pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an
astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here,
above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on his
back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at least equal the weight
of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty
line-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on board.
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its
eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, nay, not so
much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would have
thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the
seas was writhing and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope
were visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the
great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock.
Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it
was once so triumphantly said—“Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or
his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the
spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot
make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a
spear!” This the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the
prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had
run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod’s
fish-spears!
In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats sent down
beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad enough to shade half
Xerxes’ army. Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale must have been
such huge phantoms flitting over his head!
“Stand by, men; he stirs,” cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly vibrated
in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by magnetic wires, the
life and death throbs of the whale, so that every oarsman felt them in his seat.
The next moment, relieved in great part from the downward strain at the bows,
the boats gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense
herd of white bears are scared from it into the sea.
“Haul in! Haul in!” cried Starbuck again; “he’s rising.”
The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand’s breadth could have
been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all dripping into the
boats, and soon the whale broke water within two ship’s lengths of the hunters.
His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land animals there
are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins, whereby when wounded,
the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off in certain directions.
Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities it is to have an entire
non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so
small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole
arterial system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressure of
water at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said to pour from
him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so
distant and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and
bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will flow,
whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. Even
now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew over his swaying
flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by steady jets
from the new made wound, which kept continually playing, while the natural
spout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending its
affrighted moisture into the air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because
no vital part of him had thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly
call it, was untouched.
As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part of his form,
with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly revealed. His eyes, or
rather the places where his eyes had been, were beheld. As strange misgrown
masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the
points which the whale’s eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs,
horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his
one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to
light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the
solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. Still
rolling in his blood, at last he partially disclosed a strangely discoloured
bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.
“A nice spot,” cried Flask; “just let me prick him there once.”
“Avast!” cried Starbuck, “there’s no need of that!”
But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an ulcerous jet
shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more than sufferable anguish,
the whale now spouting thick blood, with swift fury blindly darted at the craft,
bespattering them and their glorying crews all over with showers of gore,
capsizing Flask’s boat and marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by
this time, so spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from
the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his
stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up
the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous,
that last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn
off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the
spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground—so the last long dying spout of the
whale.
Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body showed
symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled. Immediately, by Starbuck’s
orders, lines were secured to it at different points, so that ere long every
boat was a buoy; the sunken whale being suspended a few inches beneath them by
the cords. By very heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was
transferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by the stiffest
fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially upheld, the body would
at once sink to the bottom.
It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade, the entire
length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part
of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently
found in the dead bodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed
around them, and no prominence of any kind to denote their place; therefore,
there must needs have been some other unknown reason in the present case fully
to account for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of
a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the
flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when? It
might have been darted by some Nor’ West Indian long before America was
discovered.
What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous cabinet there
is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further discoveries, by the ship’s
being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea, owing to the body’s
immensely increasing tendency to sink. However, Starbuck, who had the ordering
of affairs, hung on to it to the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that
when at length the ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking
arms with the body; then, when the command was given to break clear from it,
such was the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which the fluke-chains
and cables were fastened, that it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime
everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was
like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped.
Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their
places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought
to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the
timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could
not be at all approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed
added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going over.
“Hold on, hold on, won’t ye?” cried Stubb to the body, “don’t be in such a devil
of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do something or go for it. No use
prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer
book and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains.”
“Knife? Aye, aye,” cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter’s heavy hatchet, he
leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing at the largest
fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were given, when the exceeding
strain effected the rest. With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the
ship righted, the carcase sank.
Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm Whale is a
very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately accounted for it.
Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy, with its side or belly
considerably elevated above the surface. If the only whales that thus sank were
old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all
their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that
this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so sinking,
consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it is not so. For
young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with noble aspirations,
prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of life, with all their panting
lard about them; even these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.
Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this accident
than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do.
This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in no small degree to the
greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale; his Venetian blinds alone sometimes
weighing more than a ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free.
But there are instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several days,
the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this
is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious magnitude;
becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him
under then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand,
when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty
of rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to look for it
when it shall have ascended again.
It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from the
Pequod’s mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering her boats;
though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species
of uncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of swimming.
Nevertheless, the Fin-Back’s spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale’s, that by
unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all
his host were now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding
all sail, made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to
leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.
Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.
CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the
very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its great
honorableness 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 honor 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
honorable 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 versâ; certainly they are very similar. If I
claim the demi-god then, why not the prophet?
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of
our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old
times, we find the head waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great
gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the
Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the
godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our
Lord;—Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever
set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the
Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of its periodical
dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas,
or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to
Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained
something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were
lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and
sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was
not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a
horseman?
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there’s a member-roll for
you! What club but the whaleman’s can head off like that?
CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the
preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story
of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans,
who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the
story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their
doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts,
for all that.
One old Sag-Harbor whaleman’s chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was
this:—He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious,
unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonah’s whale with two spouts in
his head—a peculiarity only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the
Right Whale, and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen
have this saying, “A penny roll would choke him”; his swallow is so very small.
But, to this, Bishop Jebb’s anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary,
hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whale’s belly, but as
temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And this seems reasonable enough
in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale’s mouth would accommodate a
couple of whist-tables, and comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too,
Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts,
the Right Whale is toothless.
Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his want of
faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely in reference to his
incarcerated body and the whale’s gastric juices. But this objection likewise
falls to the ground, because a German exegetist supposes that Jonah must have
taken refuge in the floating body of a dead whale—even as the French soldiers in
the Russian campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them.
Besides, it has been divined by other continental commentators, that when Jonah
was thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his escape to
another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a figure-head; and, I would
add, possibly called “The Whale,” as some craft are nowadays christened the
“Shark,” the “Gull,” the “Eagle.” Nor have there been wanting learned exegetists
who have opined that the whale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a
life-preserver—an inflated bag of wind—which the endangered prophet swam to, and
so was saved from a watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all
round. But he had still another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I
remember right: Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and
after three days he was vomited up somewhere within three days’ journey of
Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very much more than three days’ journey across
from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast. How is that?
But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within that short
distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him round by the way of the Cape
of Good Hope. But not to speak of the passage through the whole length of the
Mediterranean, and another passage up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a
supposition would involve the complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three
days, not to speak of the Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too
shallow for any whale to swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah’s weathering the
Cape of Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honor 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 honor of Jonah, in which Mosque was a miraculous
lamp that burnt without any oil.
CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling.
To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are anointed; and
for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an analogous operation upon
their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it to be doubted that as such a
procedure can do no harm, it may possibly be of no contemptible advantage;
considering that oil and water are hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and
that the object in view is to make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed
strongly in anointing his boat, and one morning not long after the German ship
Jungfrau disappeared, took more than customary pains in that occupation;
crawling under its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in the
unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair from the
craft’s bald keel. He seemed to be working in obedience to some particular
presentiment. Nor did it remain unwarranted by the event.
Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down to them,
they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered flight, as of
Cleopatra’s barges from Actium.
Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb’s was foremost. By great exertion,
Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but the stricken whale, without
at all sounding, still continued his horizontal flight, with added fleetness.
Such unintermitted strainings upon the planted iron must sooner or later
inevitably extract it. It became imperative to lance the flying whale, or be
content to lose him. But to haul the boat up to his flank was impossible, he
swam so fast and furious. What then remained?
Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and countless
subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced, none exceed that
fine manœuvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small sword, or broad sword, in
all its exercises boasts nothing like it. It is only indispensable with an
inveterate running whale; its grand fact and feature is the wonderful distance
to which the long lance is accurately darted from a violently rocking, jerking
boat, under extreme headway. Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some
ten or twelve feet in length; the staff is much slighter than that of the
harpoon, and also of a lighter material—pine. It is furnished with a small rope
called a warp, of considerable length, by which it can be hauled back to the
hand after darting.
But before going further, it is important to mention here, that though the
harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance, yet it is seldom done;
and when done, is still less frequently successful, on account of the greater
weight and inferior length of the harpoon as compared with the lance, which in
effect become serious drawbacks. As a general thing, therefore, you must first
get fast to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play.
Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and
equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel in
pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the flying
boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead. Handling the
long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its length to see if it be
exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers up the coil of the warp in one hand,
so as to secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then
holding the lance full before his waistband’s middle, he levels it at the whale;
when, covering him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand,
thereby elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his
palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a
long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb
lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life
spot of the whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.
“That drove the spigot out of him!” cried Stubb. “’Tis July’s immortal Fourth;
all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were old Orleans whiskey, or
old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then, Tashtego, lad, I’d have ye hold
a canakin to the jet, and we’d drink round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we’d
brew choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live
punch-bowl quaff the living stuff.”
Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated, the spear
returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful leash. The agonized
whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is slackened, and the pitchpoler
dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches the monster die.
CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.
That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of ages
before—the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and
sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or
mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should
have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and
spoutings—that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute
(fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o’clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of
December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings
are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapor—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 vapor—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 vapor 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 vapor; 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, vapory 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 vapor, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that
vapor—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 vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the
dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog
with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny;
but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all
things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes
neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal
eye.
CHAPTER 86. The Tail.
Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope, and the
lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial, I celebrate a
tail.
Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale’s tail to begin at that point of the
trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises upon its upper
surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet. The compact round body of
its root expands into two broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling
away to less than an inch in thickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes
slightly overlap, then sideways recede from each other like wings, leaving a
wide vacancy between. In no living thing are the lines of beauty more
exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its
utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed
twenty feet across.
The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut into it,
and you find that three distinct strata compose it:—upper, middle, and lower.
The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long and horizontal; those of the
middle one, very short, and running crosswise between the outside layers. This
triune structure, as much as anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the
student of old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to
the thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful
relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great
strength of the masonry.
But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough, the whole
bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of muscular fibres and
filaments, which passing on either side the loins and running down into the
flukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely contribute to their might; so
that in the tail the confluent measureless force of the whole whale seems
concentrated to a point. Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing
to do it.
Nor does this—its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful flexion
of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through a Titanism of
power. On the contrary, those motions derive their most appalling beauty from
it. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and
in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take
away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved
Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet
from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of
the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the
Father in human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may
reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian
pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied; these pictures,
so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the
mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it
is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.
Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether wielded in
sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood it be in, its flexions
are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein no fairy’s arm can transcend
it.
Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for
progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping; Fourth,
in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.
First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan’s tail acts in a
different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles.
In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is
the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body, and
then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular darting,
leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve
to steer by.
Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only fights
another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in his conflicts with
man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In striking at a boat, he
swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the blow is only inflicted by the
recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed air, especially if it descend to its
mark, the stroke is then simply irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can
withstand it. Your only salvation lies in eluding it; but if it comes sideways
through the opposing water, then partly owing to the light buoyancy of the
whale-boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib or a dashed plank
or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the most serious result.
These submerged side blows are so often received in the fishery, that they are
accounted mere child’s play. Some one strips off a frock, and the hole is
stopped.
Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the whale the sense
of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this respect there is a delicacy in
it only equalled by the daintiness of the elephant’s trunk. This delicacy is
chiefly evinced in the action of sweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale
with a certain soft slowness moves his immense flukes from side to side upon the
surface of the sea; and if he feel but a sailor’s whisker, woe to that sailor,
whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch! Had this
tail any prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me of Darmonodes’
elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and with low salutations
presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed their zones. On more accounts
than one, a pity it is that the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue in
his tail; for I have heard of yet another elephant, that when wounded in the
fight, curved round his trunk and extracted the dart.
Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the middle
of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence of his dignity,
and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see
his power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the
air; then smiting the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You
would almost think a great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light
wreath of vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that
that was the smoke from the touch-hole.
Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes lie
considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely out of sight
beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into the deeps, his entire
flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the air, and so
remain vibrating a moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the
sublime breach—somewhere else to be described—this peaking of the whale’s flukes
is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the
bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the
highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his
tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such
scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils
will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the
mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a
large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards the sun, and for a moment
vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a
grand embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the
home of the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African
elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout of all
beings. For according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity often
hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the profoundest silence.
The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the elephant, so
far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk of the other are
concerned, should not tend to place those two opposite organs on an equality,
much less the creatures to which they respectively belong. For as the mightiest
elephant is but a terrier to Leviathan, so, compared with Leviathan’s tail, his
trunk is but the stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant’s
trunk were as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush and
crash of the sperm whale’s ponderous flukes, which in repeated instances have
one after the other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews into the
air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls.*
*Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale and the
elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the elephant stands in
much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to the elephant;
nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of curious similitude; among
these is the spout. It is well known that the elephant will often draw up water
or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it, jet it forth in a stream.
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to
express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they would well
grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so
remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that I have heard hunters
who have declared them akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale,
indeed, by these methods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there
wanting other motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness, and
unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how I may, then, I
but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the
tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face,
when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say,
but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts;
and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.
CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.
The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward from the
territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of all Asia. In a
continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of Sumatra, Java,
Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, form a vast mole, or rampart,
lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia, and dividing the long unbroken Indian
ocean from the thickly studded oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced
by several sally-ports for the convenience of ships and whales; conspicuous
among which are the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of Sunda,
chiefly, vessels bound to China from the west, emerge into the China seas.
Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing midway in
that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green promontory, known to
seamen as Java Head; they not a little correspond to the central gateway opening
into some vast walled empire: and considering the inexhaustible wealth of
spices, and silks, and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand
islands of that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of
nature, that such treasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least
bear the appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping
western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those
domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the
Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the
obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of ships
before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed
between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of
the east. But while they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by no
means renounce their claim to more solid tribute.
Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among the low shaded
coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through
the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears. Though by
the repeated bloody chastisements they have received at the hands of European
cruisers, the audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed;
yet, even at the present day, we occasionally hear of English and American
vessels, which, in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged.
With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these straits; Ahab
purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea, and thence, cruising
northwards, over waters known to be frequented here and there by the Sperm
Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, and gain the far coast of Japan,
in time for the great whaling season there. By these means, the circumnavigating
Pequod would sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the
world, previous to descending upon the Line in the Pacific; where Ahab, though
everywhere else foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle to Moby
Dick, in the sea he was most known to frequent; and at a season when he might
most reasonably be presumed to be haunting it.
But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does his crew drink
air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time, now, the
circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but
what’s in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the whaler. While other hulls are
loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred to foreign wharves; the
world-wandering whale-ship carries no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons
and their wants. She has a whole lake’s contents bottled in her ample hold. She
is ballasted with utilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead and
kentledge. She carries years’ water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket water;
which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to
drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks, from the
Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may have gone
to China from New York, and back again, touching at a score of ports, the
whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted one grain of soil; her
crew having seen no man but floating seamen like themselves. So that did you
carry them the news that another flood had come; they would only answer—“Well,
boys, here’s the ark!”
Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western coast of Java, in
the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda; indeed, as most of the ground,
roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen as an excellent spot for
cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained more and more upon Java Head, the
look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and admonished to keep wide awake. But though
the green palmy cliffs of the land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with
delighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single
jet was descried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game
hereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when the customary
cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle of singular
magnificence saluted us.
But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity with which of late
they have been hunted over all four oceans, the Sperm Whales, instead of almost
invariably sailing in small detached companies, as in former times, are now
frequently met with in extensive herds, sometimes embracing so great a
multitude, that it would almost seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn
solemn league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection. To this
aggregation of the Sperm Whale into such immense caravans, may be imputed the
circumstance that even in the best cruising grounds, you may now sometimes sail
for weeks and months together, without being greeted by a single spout; and then
be suddenly saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands.
Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and forming a
great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon, a continuous chain of
whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the noon-day air. Unlike the
straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right Whale, which, dividing at top,
fall over in two branches, like the cleft drooping boughs of a willow, the
single forward-slanting spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of
white mist, continually rising and falling away to leeward.
Seen from the Pequod’s deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill of the sea,
this host of vapory 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 vapors, rising and falling something like the
spouts of the whales; only they did not so completely come and go; for they
constantly hovered, without finally disappearing. Levelling his glass at this
sight, Ahab quickly revolved in his pivot-hole, crying, “Aloft there, and rig
whips and buckets to wet the sails;—Malays, sir, and after us!”
As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should fairly have
entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot pursuit, to make up
for their over-cautious delay. But when the swift Pequod, with a fresh leading
wind, was herself in hot chase; how very kind of these tawny philanthropists to
assist in speeding her on to her own chosen pursuit,—mere riding-whips and
rowels to her, that they were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced
the deck; in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased, and in the after
one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him; some such fancy as the above seemed
his. And when he glanced upon the green walls of the watery defile in which the
ship was then sailing, and bethought him that through that gate lay the route to
his vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same gate he was now both
chasing and being chased to his deadly end; and not only that, but a herd of
remorseless wild pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering
him on with their curses;—when all these conceits had passed through his brain,
Ahab’s brow was left gaunt and ribbed, like the black sand beach after some
stormy tide has been gnawing it, without being able to drag the firm thing from
its place.
But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and when, after
steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod at last shot by
the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side, emerging at last upon the
broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift
whales had been gaining upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so
victoriously gained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake of the
whales, at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship neared
them; and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the boats. But
no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the Sperm Whale,
become notified of the three keels that were after them,—though as yet a mile in
their rear,—than they rallied again, and forming in close ranks and battalions,
so that their spouts all looked like flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved
on with redoubled velocity.
Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and after
several hours’ pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase, when a
general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating token that they were
now at last under the influence of that strange perplexity of inert
irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is
gallied. The compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly and
steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout; and like King
Porus’ elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with
consternation. In all directions expanding in vast irregular circles, and
aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by their short thick spoutings, they
plainly betrayed their distraction of panic. This was still more strangely
evinced by those of their number, who, completely paralysed as it were,
helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the sea. Had these
Leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep, pursued over the pasture by three
fierce wolves, they could not possibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But
this occasional timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures.
Though banding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes of the
West have fled before a solitary horseman. Witness, too, all human beings, how
when herded together in the sheepfold of a theatre’s pit, they will, at the
slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding,
trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best,
therefore, withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for
there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by
the madness of men.
Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion, yet it is
to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced nor retreated, but
collectively remained in one place. As is customary in those cases, the boats at
once separated, each making for some one lone whale on the outskirts of the
shoal. In about three minutes’ time, Queequeg’s harpoon was flung; the stricken
fish darted blinding spray in our faces, and then running away with us like
light, steered straight for the heart of the herd. Though such a movement on the
part of the whale struck under such circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented;
and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated; yet does it present one of
the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. For as the swift monster drags
you deeper and deeper into the frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life
and only exist in a delirious throb.
As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of speed to
rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we thus tore a white
gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by the crazed creatures to and
fro rushing about us; our beset boat was like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a
tempest, and striving to steer through their complicated channels and straits,
knowing not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed.
But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering off from this
monster directly across our route in advance; now edging away from that, whose
colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while all the time, Starbuck stood up
in the bows, lance in hand, pricking out of our way whatever whales he could
reach by short darts, for there was no time to make long ones. Nor were the
oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted duty was now altogether dispensed with.
They chiefly attended to the shouting part of the business. “Out of the way,
Commodore!” cried one, to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the
surface, and for an instant threatened to swamp us. “Hard down with your tail,
there!” cried a second to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly
cooling himself with his own fan-like extremity.
All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented by the
Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares of wood of equal size are
stoutly clenched together, so that they cross each other’s grain at right
angles; a line of considerable length is then attached to the middle of this
block, and the other end of the line being looped, it can in a moment be
fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly among gallied whales that this drugg is
used. For then, more whales are close round you than you can possibly chase at
one time. But sperm whales are not every day encountered; while you may, then,
you must kill all you can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, you must
wing them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it is,
that at times like these the drugg, comes into requisition. Our boat was
furnished with three of them. The first and second were successfully darted, and
we saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered by the enormous sidelong
resistance of the towing drugg. They were cramped like malefactors with the
chain and ball. But upon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard the
clumsy wooden block, it caught under one of the seats of the boat, and in an
instant tore it out and carried it away, dropping the oarsman in the boat’s
bottom as the seat slid from under him. On both sides the sea came in at the
wounded planks, but we stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in, and so
stopped the leaks for the time.
It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were it not that
as we advanced into the herd, our whale’s way greatly diminished; moreover, that
as we went still further and further from the circumference of commotion, the
direful disorders seemed waning. So that when at last the jerking harpoon drew
out, and the towing whale sideways vanished; then, with the tapering force of
his parting momentum, we glided between two whales into the innermost heart of
the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley
lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were
heard but not felt. In this central expanse the sea presented that smooth
satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced by the subtle moisture thrown off
by the whale in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm
which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion. And still in the
distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric circles, and
saw successive pods of whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and
round, like multiplied spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to
shoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle
ones, and so have gone round on their backs. Owing to the density of the crowd
of reposing whales, more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd,
no possible chance of escape was at present afforded us. We must watch for a
breach in the living wall that hemmed us in; the wall that had only admitted us
in order to shut us up. Keeping at the centre of the lake, we were occasionally
visited by small tame cows and calves; the women and children of this routed
host.
Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving outer
circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in any one of
those circles, the entire area at this juncture, embraced by the whole
multitude, must have contained at least two or three square miles. At any
rate—though indeed such a test at such a time might be deceptive—spoutings might
be discovered from our low boat that seemed playing up almost from the rim of
the horizon. I mention this circumstance, because, as if the cows and calves had
been purposely locked up in this innermost fold; and as if the wide extent of
the herd had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause of its
stopping; or, possibly, being so young, unsophisticated, and every way innocent
and inexperienced; however it may have been, these smaller whales—now and then
visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the lake—evinced a wondrous
fearlessness and confidence, or else a still becharmed panic which it was
impossible not to marvel at. Like household dogs they came snuffling round us,
right up to our gunwales, and touching them; till it almost seemed that some
spell had suddenly domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck
scratched their backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the
time refrained from darting it.
But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger
world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery
vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that
by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I have
hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human
infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if
leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal
nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly
reminiscence;—even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us,
but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight.
Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these
little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might
have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a
little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that
irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail
to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a
Tartar’s bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly
retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly arrived from
foreign parts.
“Line! line!” cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; “him fast! him fast!—Who
line him! Who struck?—Two whale; one big, one little!”
“What ails ye, man?” cried Starbuck.
“Look-e here,” said Queequeg, pointing down.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of fathoms
of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows the slackened
curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now, Starbuck
saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub
seemed still tethered to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the
chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with
the hempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets
of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan
amours in the deep.*
*The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but unlike most
other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a gestation which may
probably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a time; though in
some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and Jacob:—a contingency
provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously situated, one on each side of
the anus; but the breasts themselves extend upwards from that. When by chance
these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter’s lance, the
mother’s pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The
milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with
strawberries. When overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales salute more
hominum.
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and
affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly
indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and
delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still
for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning
woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in
eternal mildness of joy.
Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic spectacles in
the distance evinced the activity of the other boats, still engaged in drugging
the whales on the frontier of the host; or possibly carrying on the war within
the first circle, where abundance of room and some convenient retreats were
afforded them. But the sight of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly
darting to and fro across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes.
It is sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful and
alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or maiming his
gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handled cutting-spade, to
which is attached a rope for hauling it back again. A whale wounded (as we
afterwards learned) in this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had broken
away from the boat, carrying along with him half of the harpoon line; and in the
extraordinary agony of the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles
like the lone mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying
dismay wherever he went.
But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle enough,
any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire the rest of the
herd, was owing to a cause which at first the intervening distance obscured from
us. But at length we perceived that by one of the unimaginable accidents of the
fishery, this whale had become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed; he
had also run away with the cutting-spade in him; and while the free end of the
rope attached to that weapon, had permanently caught in the coils of the
harpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose from his
flesh. So that tormented to madness, he was now churning through the water,
violently flailing with his flexible tail, and tossing the keen spade about him,
wounding and murdering his own comrades.
This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their stationary
fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake began to crowd a
little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted by half spent billows from
afar; then the lake itself began faintly to heave and swell; the submarine
bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished; in more and more contracting orbits the
whales in the more central circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes,
the long calm was departing. A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like
to the tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in
Spring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner centre, as if
to pile themselves up in one common mountain. Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg
changed places; Starbuck taking the stern.
“Oars! Oars!” he intensely whispered, seizing the helm—“gripe your oars, and
clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off, you Queequeg—the
whale there!—prick him!—hit him! Stand up—stand up, and stay so! Spring,
men—pull, men; never mind their backs—scrape them!—scrape away!”
The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, leaving a narrow
Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate endeavor we at last
shot into a temporary opening; then giving way rapidly, and at the same time
earnestly watching for another outlet. After many similar hair-breadth escapes,
we at last swiftly glided into what had just been one of the outer circles, but
now crossed by random whales, all violently making for one centre. This lucky
salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg’s hat, who, while
standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean from
his head by the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad flukes
close by.
Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon resolved
itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having clumped together at
last in one dense body, they then renewed their onward flight with augmented
fleetness. Further pursuit was useless; but the boats still lingered in their
wake to pick up what drugged whales might be dropped astern, and likewise to
secure one which Flask had killed and waifed. The waif is a pennoned pole, two
or three of which are carried by every boat; and which, when additional game is
at hand, are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale, both to
mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior possession, should the
boats of any other ship draw near.
The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious saying
in the Fishery,—the more whales the less fish. Of all the drugged whales only
one was captured. The rest contrived to escape for the time, but only to be
taken, as will hereafter be seen, by some other craft than the Pequod.
CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm Whales,
and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those vast
aggregations.
Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must have been
seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are occasionally observed,
embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each. Such bands are known as
schools. They generally are of two sorts; those composed almost entirely of
females, and those mustering none but young vigorous males, or bulls, as they
are familiarly designated.
In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a male of
full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm, evinces his gallantry by
falling in the rear and covering the flight of his ladies. In truth, this
gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about over the watery world,
surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces and endearments of the harem. The
contrast between this Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he
is always of the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full
growth, are not more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They
are comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen yards
round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the whole they are
hereditarily entitled to en bon point.
It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent ramblings.
Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in leisurely search of variety.
You meet them on the Line in time for the full flower of the Equatorial feeding
season, having just returned, perhaps, from spending the summer in the Northern
seas, and so cheating summer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time
they have lounged up and down the promenade of the Equator awhile, they start
for the Oriental waters in anticipation of the cool season there, and so evade
the other excessive temperature of the year.
When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange suspicious
sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his interesting family.
Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming that way, presume to draw
confidentially close to one of the ladies, with what prodigious fury the Bashaw
assails him, and chases him away! High times, indeed, if unprincipled young
rakes like him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss;
though do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out
of his bed; for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause
the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who
sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with their long
lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving for the supremacy
like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not a few are captured having
the deep scars of these encounters,—furrowed heads, broken teeth, scolloped
fins; and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths.
But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at the first
rush of the harem’s lord, then is it very diverting to watch that lord. Gently
he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and revels there awhile, still in
tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping
among his thousand concubines. Granting other whales to be in sight, the
fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand
Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small.
As for the sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must
take care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help. For like certain
other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste
for the nursery, however much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he
leaves his anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In good
time, nevertheless, as the ardour of youth declines; as years and dumps
increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a general
lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the
love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory
stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky
old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels saying his
prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his amorous errors.
Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so is the lord
and master of that school technically known as the schoolmaster. It is therefore
not in strict character, however admirably satirical, that after going to school
himself, he should then go abroad inculcating not what he learned there, but the
folly of it. His title, schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from the
name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that the man who
first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of
Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that famous
Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was the nature of those occult
lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils.
The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale betakes
himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm Whales. Almost
universally, a lone whale—as a solitary Leviathan is called—proves an ancient
one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but
Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the
best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets.
The schools composing none but young and vigorous males, previously mentioned,
offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while those female whales are
characteristically timid, the young males, or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call
them, are by far the most pugnacious of all Leviathans, and proverbially the
most dangerous to encounter; excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled
whales, sometimes met, and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by
a penal gout.
The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like a mob of
young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round
the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would
insure them any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon
relinquish this turbulence though, and when about three-fourths grown, break up,
and separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.
Another point of difference between the male and female schools is still more
characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a Forty-barrel-bull—poor devil! all
his comrades quit him. But strike a member of the harem school, and her
companions swim around her with every token of concern, sometimes lingering so
near her and so long, as themselves to fall a prey.
CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter but one,
necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale fishery, of
which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.
It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company, a whale
may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally killed and captured by
another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised many minor contingencies,
all partaking of this one grand feature. For example,—after a weary and perilous
chase and capture of a whale, the body may get loose from the ship by reason of
a violent storm; and drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a second
whaler, who, in a calm, snugly tows it alongside, without risk of life or line.
Thus the most vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between the
fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, universal, undisputed law
applicable to all cases.
Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative enactment, was
that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General in A.D. 1695. But though
no other nation has ever had any written whaling law, yet the American fishermen
have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a
system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian’s Pandects and the
By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other
People’s Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne’s farthing,
or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they.
I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.
But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable brevity of
it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to expound it.
First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast, when it is
connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all controllable by
the occupant or occupants,—a mast, an oar, a nine-inch cable, a telegraph wire,
or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same. Likewise a fish is technically fast
when it bears a waif, or any other recognised symbol of possession; so long as
the party waifing it plainly evince their ability at any time to take it
alongside, as well as their intention so to do.
These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen
themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks—the
Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright and honorable
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 £100,000 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 £100,000 but a Fast-Fish?
What are the Duke of Dunder’s hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish? What
to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What
to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas but a Fast-Fish? And
concerning all these, is not Possession the whole of the law?
But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the kindred
doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is internationally and
universally applicable.
What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish
standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland
to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will
Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.
What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What
all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious
belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists
are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but
a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?
CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.
“De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam.” Bracton, l. 3,
c. 3.
Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with the context,
means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of that land, the
King, as Honorary 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 £150 from the precious oil and bone; and in
fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon
the strength of their respective shares; up steps a very learned and most
Christian and charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm; and
laying it upon the whale’s head, he says—“Hands off! this fish, my masters, is a
Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden’s.” Upon this the poor mariners in
their respectful consternation—so truly English—knowing not what to say, fall to
vigorously scratching their heads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from
the whale to the stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all
soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone. At
length one of them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made bold to
speak,
“Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?”
“The Duke.”
“But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?”
“It is his.”
“We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is all that to
go to the Duke’s benefit; we getting nothing at all for our pains but our
blisters?”
“It is his.”
“Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of getting a
livelihood?”
“It is his.”
“I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of this
whale.”
“It is his.”
“Won’t the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?”
“It is his.”
In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of Wellington
received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular lights, the case
might by a bare possibility in some small degree be deemed, under the
circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman of the town respectfully
addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to take the case of those unfortunate
mariners into full consideration. To which my Lord Duke in substance replied
(both letters were published) that he had already done so, and received the
money, and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the
reverend gentleman) would decline meddling with other people’s business. Is this
the still militant old man, standing at the corners of the three kingdoms, on
all hands coercing alms of beggars?
It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke to the
whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs inquire then on what
principle the Sovereign is originally invested with that right. The law itself
has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says
Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs to the King and Queen, “because of its
superior excellence.” And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a
cogent argument in such matters.
But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A reason for
that, ye lawyers!
In his treatise on “Queen-Gold,” or Queen-pinmoney, an old King’s Bench author,
one William Prynne, thus discourseth: “Ye tail is ye Queen’s, that ye Queen’s
wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone.” Now this was written at a time when
the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in
ladies’ bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which
is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid,
to be presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here.
There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers—the whale and the
sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and nominally supplying
the tenth branch of the crown’s ordinary revenue. I know not that any other
author has hinted of the matter; but by inference it seems to me that the
sturgeon must be divided in the same way as the whale, the King receiving the
highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically
regarded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality.
And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law.
CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
“In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan,
insufferable fetor denying not inquiry.” Sir T. Browne, V.E.
It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when we were
slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapory, 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 vapors in advance slid aside; and there in the distance lay a
ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be alongside. As
we glided nearer, the stranger showed French colours from his peak; and by the
eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and hovered, and swooped around
him, it was plain that the whale alongside must be what the fishermen call a
blasted whale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea, and so
floated an unappropriated corpse. It may well be conceived, what an unsavory
odor such a mass must exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when
the living are incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed is it
regarded by some, that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it.
Yet are there those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that the oil
obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and by no means of
the nature of attar-of-rose.
Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the Frenchman had a
second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed even more of a nosegay than
the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of those problematical whales that
seem to dry up and die with a sort of prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion;
leaving their defunct bodies almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil.
Nevertheless, in the proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will
ever turn up his nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun blasted
whales in general.
The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Stubb vowed he recognised
his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that were knotted round the tail
of one of these whales.
“There’s a pretty fellow, now,” he banteringly laughed, standing in the ship’s
bows, “there’s a jackal for ye! I well know that these Crappoes of Frenchmen are
but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering their boats for breakers,
mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes, and sometimes sailing from their
port with their hold full of boxes of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers,
foreseeing that all the oil they will get won’t be enough to dip the Captain’s
wick into; aye, we all know these things; but look ye, here’s a Crappo that is
content with our leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean; aye, and is content
too with scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there. Poor
devil! I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let’s make him a present of a
little oil for dear charity’s sake. For what oil he’ll get from that drugged
whale there, wouldn’t be fit to burn in a jail; no, not in a condemned cell. And
as for the other whale, why, I’ll agree to get more oil by chopping up and
trying out these three masts of ours, than he’ll get from that bundle of bones;
though, now that I think of it, it may contain something worth a good deal more
than oil; yes, ambergris. I wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It’s
worth trying. Yes, I’m for it;” and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.
By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that whether or no,
the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell, with no hope of escaping
except by its breezing up again. Issuing from the cabin, Stubb now called his
boat’s crew, and pulled off for the stranger. Drawing across her bow, he
perceived that in accordance with the fanciful French taste, the upper part of
her stem-piece was carved in the likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted
green, and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it here and there; the
whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red colour. Upon her
head boards, in large gilt letters, he read “Bouton de Rose,”—Rose-button, or
Rose-bud; and this was the romantic name of this aromatic ship.
Though Stubb did not understand the Bouton part of the inscription, yet the word
rose, and the bulbous figure-head put together, sufficiently explained the whole
to him.
“A wooden rose-bud, eh?” he cried with his hand to his nose, “that will do very
well; but how like all creation it smells!”
Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck, he had to
pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come close to the blasted
whale; and so talk over it.
Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he
bawled—“Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses that speak
English?”
“Yes,” rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who turned out to be the
chief-mate.
“Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the White Whale?”
“What whale?”
“The White Whale—a Sperm Whale—Moby Dick, have ye seen him?
“Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale—no.”
“Very good, then; good bye now, and I’ll call again in a minute.”
Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab leaning over the
quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his two hands into a trumpet
and shouted—“No, Sir! No!” Upon which Ahab retired, and Stubb returned to the
Frenchman.
He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the chains, and
was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of bag.
“What’s the matter with your nose, there?” said Stubb. “Broke it?”
“I wish it was broken, or that I didn’t have any nose at all!” answered the
Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relish the job he was at very much. “But what
are you holding yours for?”
“Oh, nothing! It’s a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, ain’t it? Air
rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies, will ye,
Bouton-de-Rose?”
“What in the devil’s name do you want here?” roared the Guernseyman, flying into
a sudden passion.
“Oh! keep cool—cool? yes, that’s the word! why don’t you pack those whales in
ice while you’re working at ’em? But joking aside, though; do you know,
Rose-bud, that it’s all nonsense trying to get any oil out of such whales? As
for that dried up one, there, he hasn’t a gill in his whole carcase.”
“I know that well enough; but, d’ye see, the Captain here won’t believe it; this
is his first voyage; he was a Cologne manufacturer before. But come aboard, and
mayhap he’ll believe you, if he won’t me; and so I’ll get out of this dirty
scrape.”
“Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow,” rejoined Stubb, and with
that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer scene presented itself. The
sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted, were getting the heavy tackles in
readiness for the whales. But they worked rather slow and talked very fast, and
seemed in anything but a good humor. All their noses upwardly projected from
their faces like so many jib-booms. Now and then pairs of them would drop their
work, and run up to the mast-head to get some fresh air. Some thinking they
would catch the plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held it to
their nostrils. Others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short off
at the bowl, were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so that it constantly filled
their olfactories.
Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding from the
Captain’s round-house abaft; and looking in that direction saw a fiery face
thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar from within. This was the
tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrating against the proceedings of
the day, had betaken himself to the Captain’s round-house (cabinet he called it)
to avoid the pest; but still, could not help yelling out his entreaties and
indignations at times.
Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the
Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate
expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had
brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle. Sounding him
carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man had not the slightest
suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore held his peace on that head,
but otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him, so that the two quickly
concocted a little plan for both circumventing and satirizing the Captain,
without his at all dreaming of distrusting their sincerity. According to this
little plan of theirs, the Guernsey-man, under cover of an interpreter’s office,
was to tell the Captain what he pleased, but as coming from Stubb; and as for
Stubb, he was to utter any nonsense that should come uppermost in him during the
interview.
By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He was a small and
dark, but rather delicate looking man for a sea-captain, with large whiskers and
moustache, however; and wore a red cotton velvet vest with watch-seals at his
side. To this gentleman, Stubb was now politely introduced by the Guernsey-man,
who at once ostentatiously put on the aspect of interpreting between them.
“What shall I say to him first?” said he.
“Why,” said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals, “you may as
well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me, though I don’t
pretend to be a judge.”
“He says, Monsieur,” said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to his captain,
“that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain and chief-mate, with
six sailors, had all died of a fever caught from a blasted whale they had
brought alongside.”
Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.
“What now?” said the Guernsey-man to Stubb.
“Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him carefully,
I’m quite certain that he’s no more fit to command a whale-ship than a St. Jago
monkey. In fact, tell him from me he’s a baboon.”
“He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one, is far
more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he conjures us, as we value
our lives, to cut loose from these fish.”
Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his crew to
desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast loose the cables and
chains confining the whales to the ship.
“What now?” said the Guernsey-man, when the Captain had returned to them.
“Why, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him now that—that—in fact, tell him
I’ve diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhaps somebody else.”
“He says, Monsieur, that he’s very happy to have been of any service to us.”
Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties (meaning
himself and mate) and concluded by inviting Stubb down into his cabin to drink a
bottle of Bordeaux.
“He wants you to take a glass of wine with him,” said the interpreter.
“Thank him heartily; but tell him it’s against my principles to drink with the
man I’ve diddled. In fact, tell him I must go.”
“He says, Monsieur, that his principles won’t admit of his drinking; but that if
Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then Monsieur had best drop all
four boats, and pull the ship away from these whales, for it’s so calm they
won’t drift.”
By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into his boat, hailed the
Guernsey-man to this effect,—that having a long tow-line in his boat, he would
do what he could to help them, by pulling out the lighter whale of the two from
the ship’s side. While the Frenchman’s boats, then, were engaged in towing the
ship one way, Stubb benevolently towed away at his whale the other way,
ostentatiously slacking out a most unusually long tow-line.
Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the whale; hoisting
his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance, while the Pequod slid in
between him and Stubb’s whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to the floating
body, and hailing the Pequod to give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded
to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he
commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would
almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at length
his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old Roman tiles
and pottery buried in fat English loam. His boat’s crew were all in high
excitement, eagerly helping their chief, and looking as anxious as gold-hunters.
And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and screaming, and
yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning to look disappointed,
especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when suddenly from out the very
heart of this plague, there stole a faint stream of perfume, which flowed
through the tide of bad smells without being absorbed by it, as one river will
flow into and then along with another, without at all blending with it for a
time.
“I have it, I have it,” cried Stubb, with delight, striking something in the
subterranean regions, “a purse! a purse!”
Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls of something
that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old cheese; very unctuous
and savory withal. You might easily dent it with your thumb; it is of a hue
between yellow and ash colour. And this, good friends, is ambergris, worth a
gold guinea an ounce to any druggist. Some six handfuls were obtained; but more
was unavoidably lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been
secured were it not for impatient Ahab’s loud command to Stubb to desist, and
come on board, else the ship would bid them good bye.
CHAPTER 92. Ambergris.
Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an article
of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined
at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For at that time,
and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris
remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris
is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite
distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in
some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea.
Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance, used for
mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and
so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles,
precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and
also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St.
Peter’s in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor
it.
Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale
themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet
so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the
effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard
to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth’s pills,
and then running out of harm’s way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.
I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain hard,
round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors’ trowsers
buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than pieces of
small squid bones embalmed in that manner.
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the
heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in
Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in
dishonor, 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 honor to Alexander the Great?
CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.
It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most
significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew; an event
most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and
predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever
shattered sequel might prove her own.
Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. Some few
hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work the vessel
while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ship-keepers
are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats’ crews. But if there happen
to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is
certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the little negro
Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before;
ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.
In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony and a white
one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour, driven in one eccentric
span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and torpid in his
intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with
that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which
ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other
race. For blacks, the year’s calendar should show naught but three hundred and
sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year’s Days. Nor smile so, while I write that
this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold
yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king’s cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all
life’s peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he had
somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness;
though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in
the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that
fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his
native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler’s
frolic on the green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned
the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the clear air
of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will
healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its
most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it
up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery
effulgences, infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest
symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of
Hell. But let us to the story.
It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb’s after-oarsman chanced so
to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip
was put into his place.
The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness; but
happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and therefore came
off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing him, took care,
afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness to the utmost, for he
might often find it needful.
Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as the fish
received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which happened, in this
instance, to be right under poor Pip’s seat. The involuntary consternation of
the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a
way, that part of the slack whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it
overboard with him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into
the water. That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line
swiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of
the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns
around his chest and neck.
Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He hated Pip
for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp
edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, “Cut?”
Meantime Pip’s blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God’s sake! All passed
in a flash. In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
“Damn him, cut!” roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed by yells and
execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these irregular cursings to
evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like, but still half humorous manner,
cursed Pip officially; and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome
advice. The substance was, Never jump from a boat, Pip, except—but all the rest
was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, Stick to the
boat, is your true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when Leap
from the boat, is still better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he
should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him too
wide a margin to jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and
concluded with a peremptory command, “Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I
won’t pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can’t afford to lose whales by the
likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in
Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don’t jump any more.” Hereby perhaps Stubb
indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making
animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It was under very
similar circumstances to the first performance; but this time he did not breast
out the line; and hence, when the whale started to run, Pip was left behind on
the sea, like a hurried traveller’s trunk. Alas! Stubb was but too true to his
word. It was a beautiful, bounteous, blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool,
and flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater’s skin
hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip’s ebon head
showed like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly
astern. Stubb’s inexorable back was turned upon him; and the whale was winged.
In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb. Out
from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling, black head to
the sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the brightest.
Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised
swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is
intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless
immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe
in the open sea—mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her
sides.
But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No; he did not
mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake, and he supposed, no
doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly, and pick him up;
though, indeed, such considerations towards oarsmen jeopardized through their
own timidity, is not always manifested by the hunters in all similar instances;
and such instances not unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a
coward, so called, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to
military navies and armies.
But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly spying whales
close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and Stubb’s boat was now so
far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pip’s ringed
horizon began to expand around him miserably. By the merest chance the ship
itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little negro went about the
deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his
finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely,
though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of
the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the
miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous,
heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent,
coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He
saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his
shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering
from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to
reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,
indifferent as his God.
For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that fishery;
and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment
befell myself.
CHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.
That whale of Stubb’s, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the Pequod’s
side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations previously detailed, were
regularly gone through, even to the baling of the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.
While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in dragging
away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and when the proper time
arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to the try-works,
of which anon.
It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others,
I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I found it strangely
concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the liquid part. It was
our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty!
No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a
clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious molifier! After
having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and
began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralise.
As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion
at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and
gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle
globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly
broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes
their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,—literally and truly, like
the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a
musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm,
I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old
Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of
anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or
petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I
myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of
insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’
hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding,
affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I
was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes
sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we
longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy!
Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into
each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of
kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many
prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must
eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not
placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart,
the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have
perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the
visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands
in a jar of spermaceti.
Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things akin to
it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the try-works.
First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering part of
the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is tough with
congealed tendons—a wad of muscle—but still contains some oil. After being
severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere
going to the mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble.
Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the whale’s
flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and often
participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most
refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is of
an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground,
dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in
pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it.
I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something
as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have
tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison
season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine
vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in the
course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling adequately to
describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation original with the whalemen,
and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an ineffably oozy, stringy
affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing,
and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured
membranes of the case, coalescing.
Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but sometimes
incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous
substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right whale, and
much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble
Leviathan.
Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale’s vocabulary. But as
applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman’s nipper is a short firm strip of
tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan’s tail: it averages an
inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the size of the iron part of a
hoe. Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee;
and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all
impurities.
But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at once to
descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its inmates. This place
has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the blanket-pieces, when
stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper time arrives for cutting up
its contents, this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by
night. On one side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the
workmen. They generally go in pairs,—a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. The
whaling-pike is similar to a frigate’s boarding-weapon of the same name. The
gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a
sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and
lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself,
perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp
as hone can make it; the spademan’s feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on
will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off
one of his own toes, or one of his assistants’, would you be very much
astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.
CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this
post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass,
pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very
strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along
lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge
head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his
symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that
unaccountable cone,—longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at
the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol,
indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that
found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for worshipping which,
King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an
abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the
First Book of Kings.
Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and assisted by two
allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners call it, and with bowed
shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead
comrade from the field. Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds
cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa.
This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good
stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well
spread, in the rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some
three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for
arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The
mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.
Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him,
while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.
That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the pots; an
operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted endwise against
the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the minced pieces
drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator’s desk. Arrayed in decent black;
occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an
archbishopric, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!*
*Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates to the
mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin slices as
possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the oil is much
accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps improving
it in quality.
CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.
Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished by her
try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the most solid masonry joining
with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship. It is as if from the open
field a brick-kiln were transported to her planks.
The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most roomy part
of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength, fitted to sustain
the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar, some ten feet by eight
square, and five in height. The foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the
masonry is firmly secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it
on all sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased
with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened hatchway.
Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in number, and each of
several barrels’ capacity. When not in use, they are kept remarkably clean.
Sometimes they are polished with soapstone and sand, till they shine within like
silver punch-bowls. During the night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl
into them and coil themselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing
them—one man in each pot, side by side—many confidential communications are
carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound mathematical
meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod, with the soapstone
diligently circling round me, that I was first indirectly struck by the
remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies gliding along the cycloid, my
soapstone for example, will descend from any point in precisely the same time.
Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare masonry of
that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of the furnaces,
directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted with heavy doors of iron.
The intense heat of the fire is prevented from communicating itself to the deck,
by means of a shallow reservoir extending under the entire inclosed surface of
the works. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished
with water as fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open
direct from the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment.
It was about nine o’clock at night that the Pequod’s try-works were first
started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee the business.
“All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the works.”
This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting his shavings into
the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the
first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no
wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word,
after being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or
fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters
feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming
misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own
body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale,
and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time.
It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the
vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment;
it is an argument for the pit.
By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcase;
sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was
intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at
intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in
the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if
remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and
sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their
midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the
Turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.
The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth in
front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan
harpooneers, always the whale-ship’s stokers. With huge pronged poles they
pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the
fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch
them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the
ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap
into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of the
wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged
the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire,
till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all
begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric
brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious
emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other their unholy
adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized
laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and
fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged
forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship
groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further
into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white
bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing
Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and
plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her
monomaniac commander’s soul.
So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided
the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness
myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of
others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half in
smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon
as I began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over
me at a midnight helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable) thing
occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was horribly conscious
of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote my side, which leaned
against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails, just beginning to shake in the
wind; I thought my eyes were open; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to
the lids and mechanically stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all
this, I could see no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed but a
minute since I had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp
illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and then made
ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever
swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as
rushing from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered feeling, as of death, came
over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit
that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is
the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about,
and was fronting the ship’s stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In
an instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into
the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief
from this unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of
being brought by the lee!
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on
the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the
hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all
things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright;
those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far
other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true
lamp—all others but liars!
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, nor Rome’s accursed
Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of
griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of
this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal
man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true—not
true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of
Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine
hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold
of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and
walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls
Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a
care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;—not
that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould
with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, “the man that wandereth out of the way of
understanding shall remain” (i.e., even while living) “in the congregation of
the dead.” Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee;
as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe
that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive
down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible
in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge
is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is
still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
CHAPTER 97. The Lamp.
Had you descended from the Pequod’s try-works to the Pequod’s forecastle, where
the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single moment you would have almost
thought you were standing in some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and
counsellors. There they lay in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a
chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens. To
dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet,
this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he
lives in light. He makes his berth an Aladdin’s lamp, and lays him down in it;
so that in the pitchiest night the ship’s black hull still houses an
illumination.
See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps—often but
old bottles and vials, though—to the copper cooler at the try-works, and
replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too, the purest of
oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to
solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter
in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and
genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own supper of
game.
CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off descried from
the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors, and slaughtered in the
valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside and beheaded; and how (on
the principle which entitled the headsman of old to the garments in which the
beheaded was killed) his great padded surtout becomes the property of his
executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through the
fire;—but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the
description by rehearsing—singing, if I may—the romantic proceeding of decanting
off his oil into the casks and striking them down into the hold, where once
again leviathan returns to his native profundities, sliding along beneath the
surface as before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow.
While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the six-barrel
casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling this way and that in
the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed round and headed over, end for
end, and sometimes perilously scoot across the slippery deck, like so many land
slides, till at last man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the
hoops, rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, ex officio,
every sailor is a cooper.
At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great
hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and down go the
casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches are replaced, and
hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.
In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable incidents in
all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream with freshets of blood
and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale’s head are
profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke
from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused
with unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all
hands the din is deafening.
But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this
self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works, you would
all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a most scrupulously
neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing
virtue. This is the reason why the decks never look so white as just after what
they call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of the
whale, a potent lye is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back
of the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye quickly exterminates it.
Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags
restore them to their full tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower rigging.
All the numerous implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully
cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the
try-works, completely hiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles
are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined and simultaneous industry
of almost the entire ship’s company, the whole of this conscientious duty is at
last concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift
themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and
all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.
Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously
discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics; propose to mat the
deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not to taking tea by moonlight
on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked mariners of oil, and
bone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. They know not the thing you
distantly allude to. Away, and bring us napkins!
But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent on spying
out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil the old oaken
furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many is
the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night;
continuing straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they
have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line,—they only step to the
deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea,
and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires
of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all
this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a
spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the
necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of “There she blows!” and
away they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing
again. Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly
have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s vast bulk its small
but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its
defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly
is this done, when—There she blows!—the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to
fight some other world, and go through young life’s old routine again.
Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand
years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the
Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple
boy, how to splice a rope!
CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.
Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck, taking
regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but in the
multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been added how that
sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood, he was wont to pause in
turn at each spot, and stand there strangely eyeing the particular object before
him. When he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed
needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed
intensity of his purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the
mainmast, then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin
there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a
certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.
But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted
by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the
first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever
significance might lurk in them. And some certain significance lurks in all
things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an
empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to
fill up some morass in the Milky Way.
Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of the heart
of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands, the head-waters of
many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron
bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculate to any
foulness, it still preserved its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a
ruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong
nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach,
nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For
it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in
their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale’s
talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering
whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun and
tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun’s disks and stars;
ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are in luxuriant profusion
stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to derive an added preciousness
and enhancing glories, by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly
poetic.
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of
these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR:
QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the
world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast
midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those
letters you saw the likeness of three Andes’ summits; from one a flame; a tower
on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of
the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and
the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now pausing.
“There’s something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other
grand and lofty things; look here,—three peaks as proud as Lucifer. The firm
tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted,
and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is
but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician’s glass, to each and
every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small
gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself.
Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the
sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a
former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in throes,
’tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here’s
stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.”
“No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil’s claws must have left
their mouldings there since yesterday,” murmured Starbuck to himself, leaning
against the bulwarks. “The old man seems to read Belshazzar’s awful writing. I
have never marked the coin inspectingly. He goes below; let me read. A dark
valley between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity,
in some faint earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and
over all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope.
If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil; but if we lift
them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun
is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace from
him, we gaze for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still
sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely.”
“There now’s the old Mogul,” soliloquized Stubb by the try-works, “he’s been
twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with faces which I
should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And all from looking at
a piece of gold, which did I have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer’s Hook, I’d
not look at it very long ere spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant
opinion, I regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my
voyagings; your doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons
of Chili, your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; with plenty of
gold moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter joes. What then
should there be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful? By
Golconda! let me read it once. Halloa! here’s signs and wonders truly! That,
now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanac
below calls ditto. I’ll get the almanac and as I have heard devils can be raised
with Daboll’s arithmetic, I’ll try my hand at raising a meaning out of these
queer curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar. Here’s the book. Let’s see
now. Signs and wonders; and the sun, he’s always among ’em. Hem, hem, hem; here
they are—here they go—all alive:—Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull and
Jimimi! here’s Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he wheels among ’em.
Aye, here on the coin he’s just crossing the threshold between two of twelve
sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must
know your places. You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in
to supply the thoughts. That’s my small experience, so far as the Massachusetts
calendar, and Bowditch’s navigator, and Daboll’s arithmetic go. Signs and
wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in
wonders! There’s a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist—hark! By Jove, I have it!
Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter;
and now I’ll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin:
there’s Aries, or the Ram—lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the
Bull—he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins—that is, Virtue and
Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back;
and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path—he gives a
few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the
Virgin! that’s our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop
comes Libra, or the Scales—happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are
very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion,
stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all
round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the
shafts, stand aside! here’s the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full
tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the
Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with
Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There’s a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and
the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and
hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and so, alow
here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly’s the word for aye! Adieu, Doubloon! But stop;
here comes little King-Post; dodge round the try-works, now, and let’s hear what
he’ll have to say. There; he’s before it; he’ll out with something presently.
So, so; he’s beginning.”
“I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises a
certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what’s all this staring been
about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that’s true; and at two cents the cigar,
that’s nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won’t smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but
I like cigars, and here’s nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask
aloft to spy ’em out.”
“Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a foolish
look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of wiseish look to
it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman—the old hearse-driver, he must have
been, that is, before he took to the sea. He luffs up before the doubloon;
halloa, and goes round on the other side of the mast; why, there’s a horse-shoe
nailed on that side; and now he’s back again; what does that mean? Hark! he’s
muttering—voice like an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!”
“If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when the sun
stands in some one of these signs. I’ve studied signs, and know their marks;
they were taught me two score years ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in
what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right
opposite the gold. And what’s the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe
sign—the roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think
of thee.”
“There’s another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in one kind
of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg—all tattooing—looks like the
signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the Cannibal? As I live he’s comparing
notes; looking at his thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the
calf, or in the bowels, I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon’s Astronomy in
the back country. And by Jove, he’s found something there in the vicinity of his
thigh—I guess it’s Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don’t know what to make of
the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king’s trowsers. But, aside
again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as usual,
oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual. What does he say, with that look of
his? Ah, only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a sun on the
coin—fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way comes Pip—poor
boy! would he had died, or I; he’s half horrible to me. He too has been watching
all of these interpreters—myself included—and look now, he comes to read, with
that unearthly idiot face. Stand away again and hear him. Hark!”
“I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Upon my soul, he’s been studying Murray’s Grammar! Improving his mind, poor
fellow! But what’s that he says now—hist!”
“I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Why, he’s getting it by heart—hist! again.”
“I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Well, that’s funny.”
“And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I’m a crow,
especially when I stand a’top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw!
caw! Ain’t I a crow? And where’s the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones
stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves of an old
jacket.”
“Wonder if he means me?—complimentary!—poor lad!—I could go hang myself. Any
way, for the present, I’ll quit Pip’s vicinity. I can stand the rest, for they
have plain wits; but he’s too crazy-witty for my sanity. So, so, I leave him
muttering.”
“Here’s the ship’s navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire to
unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what’s the consequence? Then again, if
it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught’s nailed to the mast it’s a
sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he’ll nail
ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree
once, and found a silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey’s wedding ring.
How did it get there? And so they’ll say in the resurrection, when they come to
fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for
the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious, gold! the green miser’ll
hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes ’mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook! ho,
cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your
hoe-cake done!”
CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm. The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby,
of London.
“Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?”
So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours, bearing down
under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted
quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who was
carelessly reclining in his own boat’s bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly,
good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious
roundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty
arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar’s
surcoat.
“Hast seen the White Whale?”
“See you this?” and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it, he held up
a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet.
“Man my boat!” cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near
him—“Stand by to lower!”
In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his crew were
dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger. But here a
curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the moment, Ahab had
forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once stepped on board of
any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by an ingenious and very
handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to be
rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment’s warning. Now, it is no very
easy matter for anybody—except those who are almost hourly used to it, like
whalemen—to clamber up a ship’s side from a boat on the open sea; for the great
swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously
drop it half way down to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and the strange
ship of course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now
found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the
uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope to attain.
It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward circumstance that
befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his luckless mishap, almost
invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And in the present instance, all this
was heightened by the sight of the two officers of the strange ship, leaning
over the side, by the perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging
towards him a pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not
seem to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to use
their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the
strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, “I see, I
see!—avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle.”
As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two
previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive curved
blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This was quickly
lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his solitary thigh into
the curve of the hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of an anchor, or the
crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the word, held himself fast, and at
the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand
upon one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside
the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm
frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting
out his ivory leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried
out in his walrus way, “Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones together!—an arm
and a leg!—an arm that never can shrink, d’ye see; and a leg that never can run.
Where did’st thou see the White Whale?—how long ago?”
“The White Whale,” said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm towards the East,
and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a telescope; “there I saw
him, on the Line, last season.”
“And he took that arm off, did he?” asked Ahab, now sliding down from the
capstan, and resting on the Englishman’s shoulder, as he did so.
“Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?”
“Spin me the yarn,” said Ahab; “how was it?”
“It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,” began the
Englishman. “I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well, one day we
lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to one of them; a
regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and milling round so, that
my boat’s crew could only trim dish, by sitting all their sterns on the outer
gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great
whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows’ feet and wrinkles.”
“It was he, it was he!” cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his suspended breath.
“And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.”
“Aye, aye—they were mine—my irons,” cried Ahab, exultingly—“but on!”
“Give me a chance, then,” said the Englishman, good-humoredly. “Well, this old
great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod,
and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!
“Aye, I see!—wanted to part it; free the fast-fish—an old trick—I know him.”
“How it was exactly,” continued the one-armed commander, “I do not know; but in
biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow; but we didn’t
know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the line, bounce we came
plump on to his hump! instead of the other whale’s; that went off to windward,
all fluking. Seeing how matters stood, and what a noble great whale it was—the
noblest and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life—I resolved to capture him, spite
of the boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would
get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a
boat’s crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped into
my first mate’s boat—Mr. Mounttop’s here (by the way, Captain—Mounttop;
Mounttop—the captain);—as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop’s boat, which,
d’ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the first
harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir—hearts
and souls alive, man—the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat—both eyes
out—all befogged and bedeadened with black foam—the whale’s tail looming
straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple. No use
sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday, with a blinding sun, all
crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after the second iron, to toss it
overboard—down comes the tail like a Lima tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving
each half in splinters; and, flukes first, the white hump backed through the
wreck, as though it was all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible
flailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment
clung to that like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the
same instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash;
and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here”
(clapping his hand just below his shoulder); “yes, caught me just here, I say,
and bore me down to Hell’s flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sudden,
thank the good God, the barb ript its way along the flesh—clear along the whole
length of my arm—came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;—and that gentleman
there will tell you the rest (by the way, captain—Dr. Bunger, ship’s surgeon:
Bunger, my lad,—the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the yarn.”
The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all the time
standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote his gentlemanly
rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but sober one; he was dressed
in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched trowsers; and had thus far
been dividing his attention between a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a
pill-box held in the other, occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory
limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at his superior’s introduction of him
to Ahab, he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain’s bidding.
“It was a shocking bad wound,” began the whale-surgeon; “and, taking my advice,
Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy—”
“Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship,” interrupted the one-armed captain,
addressing Ahab; “go on, boy.”
“Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot weather
there on the Line. But it was no use—I did all I could; sat up with him nights;
was very severe with him in the matter of diet—”
“Oh, very severe!” chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly altering his
voice, “Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he couldn’t see to
put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half seas over, about three o’clock
in the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up with me indeed, and was very severe in
my diet. Oh! a great watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger.
(Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why don’t ye? You know you’re a precious jolly
rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I’d rather be killed by you than kept alive by
any other man.”
“My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir”—said the
imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab—“is apt to be
facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort. But I may as
well say—en passant, as the French remark—that I myself—that is to say, Jack
Bunger, late of the reverend clergy—am a strict total abstinence man; I never
drink—”
“Water!” cried the captain; “he never drinks it; it’s a sort of fits to him;
fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on—go on with the arm
story.”
“Yes, I may as well,” said the surgeon, coolly. “I was about observing, sir,
before Captain Boomer’s facetious interruption, that spite of my best and
severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir,
it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several
inches long. I measured it with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I knew
what was threatened, and off it came. But I had no hand in shipping that ivory
arm there; that thing is against all rule”—pointing at it with the
marlingspike—“that is the captain’s work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to
make it; he had that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one’s
brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical
passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir”—removing his hat, and brushing
aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not
the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever having been a wound—“Well, the
captain there will tell you how that came here; he knows.”
“No, I don’t,” said the captain, “but his mother did; he was born with it. Oh,
you solemn rogue, you—you Bunger! was there ever such another Bunger in the
watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in pickle, you dog; you
should be preserved to future ages, you rascal.”
“What became of the White Whale?” now cried Ahab, who thus far had been
impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen.
“Oh!” cried the one-armed captain, “oh, yes! Well; after he sounded, we didn’t
see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I didn’t then know
what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till some time afterwards,
when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick—as some call him—and then
I knew it was he.”
“Did’st thou cross his wake again?”
“Twice.”
“But could not fasten?”
“Didn’t want to try to: ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without this
other arm? And I’m thinking Moby Dick doesn’t bite so much as he swallows.”
“Well, then,” interrupted Bunger, “give him your left arm for bait to get the
right. Do you know, gentlemen”—very gravely and mathematically bowing to each
Captain in succession—“Do you know, gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the
whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite
impossible for him to completely digest even a man’s arm? And he knows it too.
So that what you take for the White Whale’s malice is only his awkwardness. For
he never means to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints.
But sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in
Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop
into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I
gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d’ye see. No possible
way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general
bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a
mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to
the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale have another
chance at you shortly, that’s all.”
“No, thank ye, Bunger,” said the English Captain, “he’s welcome to the arm he
has, since I can’t help it, and didn’t know him then; but not to another one. No
more White Whales for me; I’ve lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me.
There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load
of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so,
Captain?”—glancing at the ivory leg.
“He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that
accursed thing is not always what least allures. He’s all a magnet! How long
since thou saw’st him last? Which way heading?”
“Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend’s,” cried Bunger, stoopingly walking
round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; “this man’s blood—bring the
thermometer!—it’s at the boiling point!—his pulse makes these planks
beat!—sir!”—taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing near to Ahab’s arm.
“Avast!” roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks—“Man the boat! Which way
heading?”
“Good God!” cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put. “What’s the
matter? He was heading east, I think.—Is your Captain crazy?” whispering
Fedallah.
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to take the
boat’s steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle towards him,
commanded the ship’s sailors to stand by to lower.
In a moment he was standing in the boat’s stern, and the Manilla men were
springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With back to
the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright till
alongside of the Pequod.
CHAPTER 101. The Decanter.
Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she hailed from
London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the
original of the famous whaling house of Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor
whaleman’s opinion, comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors
and Bourbons, in point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year
of our Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous
fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out the
first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some
score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant Coffins and Maceys of
Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only
in the North and South Atlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here,
that the Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized
steel the great Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the only
people of the whole globe who so harpooned him.
In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose, and at the
sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the
first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the great South
Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one; and returning to her berth with her
hold full of the precious sperm, the Amelia’s example was soon followed by other
ships, English and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the
Pacific were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the indefatigable
house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons—how many, their mother
only knows—and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I think, at their
expense, the British government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on
a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval
Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some service;
how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the same house fitted
out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on a tasting cruise to the remote
waters of Japan. That ship—well called the “Syren”—made a noble experimental
cruise; and it was thus that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became
generally known. The Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain
Coffin, a Nantucketer.
All honor 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 honor, being a very fast sailer and a
noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight somewhere off the
Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam
we had, and they were all trumps—every soul on board. A short life to them, and
a jolly death. And that fine gam I had—long, very long after old Ahab touched
her planks with his ivory heel—it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon
hospitality of that ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember
me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped
it at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it’s
squally off there by Patagonia), and all hands—visitors and all—were called to
reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in
bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so
that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all
drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by and by we
scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again, though the savage
salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted and
pickled it to my taste.
The beef was fine—tough, but with body in it. They said it was bull-beef;
others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for certain, how that
was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial, symmetrically globular, and
indestructible dumplings. I fancied that you could feel them, and roll them
about in you after they were swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you
risked their pitching out of you like billiard-balls. The bread—but that
couldn’t be helped; besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread
contained the only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very light,
and it was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all in
all, taking her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the cook’s
boilers, including his own live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the
Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong;
crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band.
But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other English
whalers I know of—not all though—were such famous, hospitable ships; that passed
round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke; and were not soon
weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good
cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have I
been at all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.
The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders,
and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant in the fishery; and
what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and drink. For,
as a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the
English whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not
normal and natural, but incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have
some special origin, which is here pointed out, and will be still further
elucidated.
During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient
Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about
whalers. The title was, “Dan Coopman,” wherefore I concluded that this must be
the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every whale
ship must carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it
was the production of one “Fitz Swackhammer.” But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very
learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa
Claus and St. Pott’s, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a
box of sperm candles for his trouble—this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied
the book, assured me that “Dan Coopman” did not mean “The Cooper,” but “The
Merchant.” In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book treated of the
commerce of Holland; and, among other subjects, contained a very interesting
account of its whale fishery. And in this chapter it was, headed, “Smeer,” or
“Fat,” that I found a long detailed list of the outfits for the larders and
cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from which list, as translated by Dr.
Snodhead, I transcribe the following:
400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock fish.
550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins of butter.
20,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior
article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of beer.
Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in the present
case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts,
and gills of good gin and good cheer.
At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this beer,
beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were incidentally suggested
to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic application; and, furthermore, I
compiled supplementary tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of
stock-fish, etc., consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient
Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of
butter, and Texel and Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it,
though, to their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous
by the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in
those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the
convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.
The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as those polar
fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that climate, so that
the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen, including the short voyage to
and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three months, say, and
reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch
seamen in all; therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man,
for a twelve weeks’ allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550
ankers of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one
might fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a
boat’s head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat
improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very far
North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with the constitution; upon the
Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the harpooneer
sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss might ensue to
Nantucket and New Bedford.
But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers of two or
three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English whalers have not
neglected so excellent an example. For, say they, when cruising in an empty
ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of
it, at least. And this empties the decanter.
CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt
upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail upon some few
interior structural features. But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension
of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging the
points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the
eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum;
that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.
But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery,
pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite
Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy of the
Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a specimen rib for exhibition?
Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can you land a full-grown whale on your deck for
examination, as a cook dishes a roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have
you hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah
alone; the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters,
ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of leviathan;
and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and cheeseries in his
bowels.
I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far beneath the
skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed with an opportunity
to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small cub Sperm Whale
was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag, to make sheaths for the
barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads of the lances. Think you I let that
chance go, without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the seal
and reading all the contents of that young cub?
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their gigantic,
full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted to my late royal
friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides. For being at Tranque,
years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was invited to
spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at his retired
palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distant from what our
sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital.
Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted with a
devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought together in Pupella
whatever rare things the more ingenious of his people could invent; chiefly
carved woods of wonderful devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly
paddles, aromatic canoes; and all these distributed among whatever natural
wonders, the wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.
Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an unusually long
raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his head against a cocoa-nut
tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings seemed his verdant jet. When the vast
body had at last been stripped of its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones
become dust dry in the sun, then the skeleton was carefully transported up the
Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.
The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebræ 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
vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw vibrated
over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted Damocles.
It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen; the trees
stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the industrious earth beneath
was as a weaver’s loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine
tendrils formed the warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the
trees, with all their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses;
the message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings
of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied
verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!—pause!—one word!—whither flows the
fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak,
weaver!—stay thy hand!—but one single word with thee! Nay—the shuttle flies—the
figures float from forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides
away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he
hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are
deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that
speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words
that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard
without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies
been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the
great world’s loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.
Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the great,
white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging—a gigantic idler! Yet, as the ever-woven
verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed
the cunning weaver; himself all woven over with the vines; every month assuming
greener, fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death
trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him
curly-headed glories.
Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the skull an
altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real jet had issued, I
marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an object of vertu. He
laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests should swear that smoky jet of
his was genuine. To and fro I paced before this skeleton—brushed the vines
aside—broke through the ribs—and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered,
eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbours. But soon my
line was out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered.
I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones.
Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the skeleton. From
their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the altitude of
the final rib, “How now!” they shouted; “Dar’st thou measure this our god!
That’s for us.” “Aye, priests—well, how long do ye make him, then?” But hereupon
a fierce contest rose among them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each
other’s sconces with their yard-sticks—the great skull echoed—and seizing that
lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements.
These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be it recorded,
that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied measurement I please.
Because there are skeleton authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy.
There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in Hull, England, one of the
whaling ports of that country, where they have some fine specimens of fin-backs
and other whales. Likewise, I have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in
New Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call “the only perfect specimen of
a Greenland or River Whale in the United States.” Moreover, at a place in
Yorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable
has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no
means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo’s.
In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons belonged, were
originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo
seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he was lord of the
seignories of those parts. Sir Clifford’s whale has been articulated throughout;
so that, like a great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his
bony cavities—spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan—and swing all day upon his
lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a
footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir
Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the
spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and
sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead.
The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from
my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that
period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics.
But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain
a blank page for a poem I was then composing—at least, what untattooed parts
might remain—I did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should
inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.
CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.
In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain statement,
touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we are briefly to
exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.
According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base upon
Captain Scoresby’s estimate, of seventy tons for the largest sized Greenland
whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful calculation, I say, a
Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in
length, and something less than forty feet in its fullest circumference, such a
whale will weigh at least ninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton,
he would considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one
thousand one hundred inhabitants.
Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this
leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman’s imagination?
Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole, jaw, teeth,
tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now simply point out what
is most interesting in the general bulk of his unobstructed bones. But as the
colossal skull embraces so very large a proportion of the entire extent of the
skeleton; as it is by far the most complicated part; and as nothing is to be
repeated concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your
mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete
notion of the general structure we are about to view.
In length, the Sperm Whale’s skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two feet; so
that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have been ninety feet
long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one fifth in length compared
with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet, his skull and jaw comprised some
twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of plain back-bone. Attached to this
back-bone, for something less than a third of its length, was the mighty
circular basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals.
To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine, extending
far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled the hull of a great
ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her naked bow-ribs are
inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the time, but a long, disconnected
timber.
The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was nearly six
feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each successively longer, till you
came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the middle ribs, which measured eight
feet and some inches. From that part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the
tenth and last only spanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness,
they all bore a seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribs were the
most arched. In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay
footpath bridges over small streams.
In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the circumstance,
so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale is by no
means the mould of his invested form. The largest of the Tranque ribs, one of
the middle ones, occupied that part of the fish which, in life, is greatest in
depth. Now, the greatest depth of the invested body of this particular whale
must have been at least sixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured
but little more than eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the true
notion of the living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I now
saw but a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of added
bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here
saw but a few disordered joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but
boneless flukes, an utter blank!
How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to
comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated
skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest
perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound
unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.
But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a crane, to
pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now it’s done, it looks
much like Pompey’s Pillar.
There are forty and odd vertebræ in all, which in the skeleton are not locked
together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire,
forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in width
something less than three feet, and in depth more than four. The smallest, where
the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks
something like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller
ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest’s
children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the
spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child’s
play.
CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.
From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon to
enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not compress
him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell
over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about
the waist; only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they
lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean
orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship.
Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me to approve
myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not overlooking the minutest
seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him out to the uttermost coil of his
bowels. Having already described him in most of his present habitatory and
anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archæological,
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 vertebræ, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds
of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar
affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable
seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself
can be said to have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos
rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar
eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the
Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an
inhabitable hand’s breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the
whale’s; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the
Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab’s harpoon
had shed older blood than the Pharaoh’s. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look
round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced
existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all
time, must needs exist after all humane ages are over.
But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the stereotype
plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his ancient bust; but
upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim for them an almost
fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable print of his fin. In an
apartment of the great temple of Denderah, some fifty years ago, there was
discovered upon the granite ceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere,
abounding in centaurs, griffins, and dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures
on the celestial globe of the moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as
of yore; was there swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was
cradled.
Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity of the
whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by the venerable
John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.
“Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams of which
are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up
dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine, that by a secret Power bestowed
by God upon the Temple, no Whale can pass it without immediate death. But the
truth of the Matter is, that on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that
shoot two Miles into the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon ’em.
They keep a Whale’s Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon
the Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which
cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel’s Back. This Rib (says John Leo) is said
to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historians affirm,
that a Prophet who prophesy’d of Mahomet, came from this Temple, and some do not
stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at the Base
of the Temple.”
In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a
Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.
CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from the
head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether, in the long
course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulk of his
sires.
But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the present day
superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are found in the Tertiary
system (embracing a distinct geological period prior to man), but of the whales
found in that Tertiary system, those belonging to its latter formations exceed
in size those of its earlier ones.
Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the largest is the Alabama one
mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less than seventy feet in length in
the skeleton. Whereas, we have already seen, that the tape-measure gives
seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a large sized modern whale. And I have
heard, on whalemen’s authority, that Sperm Whales have been captured near a
hundred feet long at the time of capture.
But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an advance in
magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may it not be, that
since Adam’s time they have degenerated?
Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of such
gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For Pliny tells us of
whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus of others which
measured eight hundred feet in length—Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales!
And even in the days of Banks and Solander, Cooke’s naturalists, we find a
Danish member of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales
(reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty yards; that is,
three hundred and sixty feet. And Lacépède, 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 whale-ships, now penetrating even through Behring’s straits, and into the
remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and
lances darted along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan
can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not
at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man,
smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.
Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo, which,
not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the prairies of Illinois
and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and scowled with their thunder-clotted
brows upon the sites of populous river-capitals, where now the polite broker
sells you land at a dollar an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible
argument would seem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape
speedy extinction.
But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a period
ago—not a good lifetime—the census of the buffalo in Illinois exceeded the
census of men now in London, and though at the present day not one horn or hoof
of them remains in all that region; and though the cause of this wondrous
extermination was the spear of man; yet the far different nature of the
whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men
in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales for forty-eight months think they have done
extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish.
Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the
West, when the far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and a
virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of months,
mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but
forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be
statistically stated.
Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the gradual
extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former years (the latter
part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in small pods, were encountered
much oftener than at present, and, in consequence, the voyages were not so
prolonged, and were also much more remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere
noticed, those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in
immense caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and
pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely
separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally fallacious seems the
conceit, that because the so-called whale-bone whales no longer haunt many
grounds in former years abounding with them, hence that species also is
declining. For they are only being driven from promontory to cape; and if one
coast is no longer enlivened with their jets, then, be sure, some other and
remoter strand has been very recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle.
Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have two firm
fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever remain impregnable.
And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty Swiss have retreated to
their mountains; so, hunted from the savannas and glades of the middle seas, the
whale-bone whales can at last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under
the ultimate glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and
floes; and in a charmed circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all
pursuit from man.
But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one cachalot,
some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this positive havoc has
already very seriously diminished their battalions. But though for some time
past a number of these whales, not less than 13,000, have been annually slain on
the nor’ west coast by the Americans alone; yet there are considerations which
render even this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing argument in
this matter.
Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the populousness of the
more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall we say to Harto, the
historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one hunting the King of Siam took
4,000 elephants; that in those regions elephants are numerous as droves of
cattle in the temperate climes. And there seems no reason to doubt that if these
elephants, which have now been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by
Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East—if they still
survive there in great numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all
hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as
large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the
Isles of the sea combined.
Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity of whales,
their probably attaining the age of a century and more, therefore at any one
period of time, several distinct adult generations must be contemporary. And
what that is, we may soon gain some idea of, by imagining all the grave-yards,
cemeteries, and family vaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the
men, women, and children who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this
countless host to the present human population of the globe.
Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species,
however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas before the continents
broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle,
and the Kremlin. In Noah’s flood he despised Noah’s Ark; and if ever the world
is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the
eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the
equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.
CHAPTER 106. Ahab’s Leg.
The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel Enderby of
London, had not been unattended with some small violence to his own person. He
had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had
received a half-splintering shock. And when after gaining his own deck, and his
own pivot-hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to
the steersman (it was, as ever, something about his not steering inflexibly
enough); then, the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and
wrench, that though it still remained entire, and to all appearances lusty, yet
Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy.
And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his pervading, mad
recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the condition of that dead
bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not been very long prior to the
Pequod’s sailing from Nantucket, that he had been found one night lying prone
upon the ground, and insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable,
unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that
it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without
extreme difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured.
Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all the
anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a former woe;
and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptile of the
marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove;
so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their
like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and
posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not
to hint of this: that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings, that
while some natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the
other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of
all hell’s despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely
beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave;
not at all to hint of this, there still seems an inequality in the deeper
analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly
felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at
bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic
grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To
trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among
the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad,
hay-making suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in
to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad
birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.
Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more properly,
in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other particulars concerning
Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some, why it was, that for a certain
period, both before and after the sailing of the Pequod, he had hidden himself
away with such Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought
speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead. Captain
Peleg’s bruited reason for this thing appeared by no means adequate; though,
indeed, as touching all Ahab’s deeper part, every revelation partook more of
significant darkness than of explanatory light. But, in the end, it all came
out; this one matter did, at least. That direful mishap was at the bottom of his
temporary recluseness. And not only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping
circle ashore, who, for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less banned
approach to him; to that timid circle the above hinted casualty—remaining, as it
did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab—invested itself with terrors, not entirely
underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that, through their zeal for
him, they had all conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up the knowledge
of this thing from others; and hence it was, that not till a considerable
interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the Pequod’s decks.
But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air, or the
vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not with earthly Ahab,
yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain practical procedures;—he
called the carpenter.
And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without delay set
about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him supplied with all the
studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which had thus far been accumulated
on the voyage, in order that a careful selection of the stoutest,
clearest-grained stuff might be secured. This done, the carpenter received
orders to have the leg completed that night; and to provide all the fittings for
it, independent of those pertaining to the distrusted one in use. Moreover, the
ship’s forge was ordered to be hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the
hold; and, to accelerate the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at
once to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.
CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted
man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same
point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of
unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. But most humble though
he was, and far from furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; the
Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate; hence, he now comes in person on this
stage.
Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging to
whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical extent, alike
experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own; the
carpenter’s pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all those
numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an auxiliary
material. But, besides the application to him of the generic remark above, this
carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand nameless
mechanical emergencies continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three or
four years’ voyage, in uncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his
readiness in ordinary duties:—repairing stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the
shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull’s eyes in the deck, or new
tree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more directly
pertaining to his special business; he was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all
manner of conflicting aptitudes, both useful and capricious.
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold, was his
vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished with several vices, of
different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all times except when whales
were alongside, this bench was securely lashed athwartships against the rear of
the Try-works.
A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole: the
carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and straightway files it
smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board, and is made a
captive: out of clean shaved rods of right-whale bone, and cross-beams of sperm
whale ivory, the carpenter makes a pagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsman
sprains his wrist: the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for
vermillion stars to be painted upon the blade of his every oar; screwing each
oar in his big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the
constellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the
carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers,
and clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there; but the poor
fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the
handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that, if
he would have him draw the tooth.
Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent and
without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he deemed but
top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. But while now upon so
wide a field thus variously accomplished and with such liveliness of expertness
in him, too; all this would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of
intelligence. But not precisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable,
than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it so
shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with the
general stolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which while
pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace, and
ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals. Yet was this
half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an all-ramifying
heartlessness;—yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old, crutch-like,
antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked now and then with a certain
grizzled wittiness; such as might have served to pass the time during the
midnight watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah’s ark. Was it that this old
carpenter had been a life-long wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not
only had gathered no moss; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small
outward clingings might have originally pertained to him? He was a stript
abstract; an unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born babe; living
without premeditated reference to this world or the next. You might almost say,
that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence;
for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or by
instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of
all these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous
literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one,
must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of
those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo, Sheffield
contrivances, assuming the exterior—though a little swelled—of a common pocket
knife; but containing, not only blades of various sizes, but also screw-drivers,
cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers, nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if
his superiors wanted to use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do
was to open that part of him, and the screw was fast: or if for tweezers, take
him up by the legs, and there they were.
Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was, after
all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in him,
he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty. What that was,
whether essence of quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no
telling. But there it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years or
more. And this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him;
this it was, that kept him a great part of the time soliloquizing; but only like
an unreasoning wheel, which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was
a sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to
keep himself awake.
CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter. The Deck—First Night Watch.
(Carpenter standing before his vice-bench, and by the light of two lanterns
busily filing the ivory joist for the leg, which joist is firmly fixed in the
vice. Slabs of ivory, leather straps, pads, screws, and various tools of all
sorts lying about the bench. Forward, the red flame of the forge is seen, where
the blacksmith is at work.)
Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should be soft, and that is
soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and shinbones. Let’s try
another. Aye, now, this works better (sneezes). Halloa, this bone dust is
(sneezes)—why it’s (sneezes)—yes it’s (sneezes)—bless my soul, it won’t let me
speak! This is what an old fellow gets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a
live tree, and you don’t get this dust; amputate a live bone, and you don’t get
it (sneezes). Come, come, you old Smut, there, bear a hand, and let’s have that
ferule and buckle-screw; I’ll be ready for them presently. Lucky now (sneezes)
there’s no knee-joint to make; that might puzzle a little; but a mere
shinbone—why it’s easy as making hop-poles; only I should like to put a good
finish on. Time, time; if I but only had the time, I could turn him out as neat
a leg now as ever (sneezes) scraped to a lady in a parlor. Those buckskin legs
and calves of legs I’ve seen in shop windows wouldn’t compare at all. They soak
water, they do; and of course get rheumatic, and have to be doctored (sneezes)
with washes and lotions, just like live legs. There; before I saw it off, now, I
must call his old Mogulship, and see whether the length will be all right; too
short, if anything, I guess. Ha! that’s the heel; we are in luck; here he comes,
or it’s somebody else, that’s certain.
AHAB (advancing). (During the ensuing scene, the carpenter continues sneezing at
times.)
Well, manmaker!
Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length. Let me
measure, sir.
Measured for a leg! good. Well, it’s not the first time. About it! There; keep
thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast here, carpenter; let me feel
its grip once. So, so; it does pinch some.
Oh, sir, it will break bones—beware, beware!
No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this slippery world
that can hold, man. What’s Prometheus about there?—the blacksmith, I mean—what’s
he about?
He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.
Right. It’s a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He makes a fierce red
flame there!
Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work.
Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old Greek,
Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated
them with fire; for what’s made in fire must properly belong to fire; and so
hell’s probable. How the soot flies! This must be the remainder the Greek made
the Africans of. Carpenter, when he’s through with that buckle, tell him to
forge a pair of steel shoulder-blades; there’s a pedlar aboard with a crushing
pack.
Sir?
Hold; while Prometheus is about it, I’ll order a complete man after a desirable
pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest modelled after the
Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to ’em, to stay in one place; then, arms
three feet through the wrist; no heart at all, brass forehead, and about a
quarter of an acre of fine brains; and let me see—shall I order eyes to see
outwards? No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards.
There, take the order, and away.
Now, what’s he speaking about, and who’s he speaking to, I should like to know?
Shall I keep standing here? (aside).
’Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here’s one. No, no, no;
I must have a lantern.
Ho, ho! That’s it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my turn.
What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man? Thrusted light
is worse than presented pistols.
I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter.
Carpenter? why that’s—but no;—a very tidy, and, I may say, an extremely
gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here, carpenter;—or would’st thou
rather work in clay?
Sir?—Clay? clay, sir? That’s mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir.
The fellow’s impious! What art thou sneezing about?
Bone is rather dusty, sir.
Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury thyself under living
people’s noses.
Sir?—oh! ah!—I guess so;—yes—oh, 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 Prætorians at the
auction of the Roman empire (which was the world’s); and yet I owe for the flesh
in the tongue I brag with. By heavens! I’ll get a crucible, and into it, and
dissolve myself down to one small, compendious vertebra. So.
CARPENTER (resuming his work).
Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb always says he’s queer;
says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer; he’s queer, says Stubb;
he’s queer—queer, queer; and keeps dinning it into Mr. Starbuck all the
time—queer—sir—queer, queer, very queer. And here’s his leg! Yes, now that I
think of it, here’s his bedfellow! has a stick of whale’s jaw-bone for a wife!
And this is his leg; he’ll stand on this. What was that now about one leg
standing in three places, and all three places standing in one hell—how was
that? Oh! I don’t wonder he looked so scornful at me! I’m a sort of
strange-thoughted sometimes, they say; but that’s only haphazard-like. Then, a
short, little old body like me, should never undertake to wade out into deep
waters with tall, heron-built captains; the water chucks you under the chin
pretty quick, and there’s a great cry for life-boats. And here’s the heron’s
leg! long and slim, sure enough! Now, for most folks one pair of legs lasts a
lifetime, and that must be because they use them mercifully, as a tender-hearted
old lady uses her roly-poly old coach-horses. But Ahab; oh he’s a hard driver.
Look, driven one leg to death, and spavined the other for life, and now wears
out bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there, you Smut! bear a hand there with those
screws, and let’s finish it before the resurrection fellow comes a-calling with
his horn for all legs, true or false, as brewery-men go round collecting old
beer barrels, to fill ’em up again. What a leg this is! It looks like a real
live leg, filed down to nothing but the core; he’ll be standing on this
to-morrow; he’ll be taking altitudes on it. Halloa! I almost forgot the little
oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude. So, so; chisel,
file, and sand-paper, now!
CHAPTER 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and lo! no
inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must have sprung a
bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck went down into the cabin to
report this unfavourable affair.*
*In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it is a
regular semi-weekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench the casks
with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals, is removed by the
ship’s pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be kept damply tight; while by the
changed character of the withdrawn water, the mariners readily detect any
serious leakage in the precious cargo.
Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing nigh to Formosa and the
Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical outlets from the China
waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart of the
oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and another separate one representing
the long eastern coasts of the Japanese islands—Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke.
With his snow-white new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table,
and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man,
with his back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old
courses again.
“Who’s there?” hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning round to it.
“On deck! Begone!”
“Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir. We must up
Burtons and break out.”
“Up Burtons and break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to here for a
week to tinker a parcel of old hoops?”
“Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make good in a
year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving, sir.”
“So it is, so it is; if we get it.”
“I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir.”
“And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it leak! I’m all
aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks, but those leaky
casks are in a leaky ship; and that’s a far worse plight than the Pequod’s, man.
Yet I don’t stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in the deep-loaded hull;
or how hope to plug it, even if found, in this life’s howling gale? Starbuck!
I’ll not have the Burtons hoisted.”
“What will the owners say, sir?”
“Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What cares
Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those
miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye, the only real
owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship’s
keel.—On deck!”
“Captain Ahab,” said the reddening mate, moving further into the cabin, with a
daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost seemed not only every
way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation of itself, but within
also seemed more than half distrustful of itself; “A better man than I might
well pass over in thee what he would quickly enough resent in a younger man;
aye, and in a happier, Captain Ahab.”
“Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?—On deck!”
“Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir—to be forbearing! Shall we
not understand each other better than hitherto, Captain Ahab?”
Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most South-Sea-men’s
cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck, exclaimed: “There is one God
that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod.—On
deck!”
For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would
have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled tube.
But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin,
paused for an instant and said: “Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but
for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let
Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.”
“He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!” murmured
Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. “What’s that he said—Ahab beware of Ahab—there’s
something there!” Then unconsciously using the musket for a staff, with an iron
brow he paced to and fro in the little cabin; but presently the thick plaits of
his forehead relaxed, and returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.
“Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck,” he said lowly to the mate; then
raising his voice to the crew: “Furl the t’gallant-sails, and close-reef the
top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up Burton, and break out in the
main-hold.”
It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting Starbuck,
Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of honesty in him; or mere prudential
policy which, under the circumstance, imperiously forbade the slightest symptom
of open disaffection, however transient, in the important chief officer of his
ship. However it was, his orders were executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.
CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold were
perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it being calm
weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge
ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight sending those gigantic moles
into the daylight above. So deep did they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and
weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for
some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of
the posted placards, vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood.
Tierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves,
and iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were
hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were
treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an
air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all
Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then.
Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast bosom-friend,
Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh to his endless end.
Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown; dignity and
danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the higher you rise the
harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer, must not only face
all the rage of the living whale, but—as we have elsewhere seen—mount his dead
back in a rolling sea; and finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and
bitterly sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely
manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short, among
whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called.
Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have
stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped to
his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness
and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well. And a well, or
an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for
all the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a
fever; and at last, after some days’ suffering, laid him in his hammock, close
to the very sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those
few long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his frame
and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper,
his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a
strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from
his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could
not die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow
fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of
Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the
side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld
who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous and
fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near of
Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which
only an author from the dead could adequately tell. So that—let us say it
again—no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose
mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly
lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his
final rest, and the ocean’s invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher
towards his destined heaven.
Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself, what he
thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour he asked. He called
one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking
his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little
canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon
inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in
those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased
him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a
dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away
to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are
isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented
seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the
milky way. He added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his
hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the
death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the
more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these
coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering,
and much lee-way adown the dim ages.
Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter was at
once commanded to do Queequeg’s bidding, whatever it might include. There was
some heathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous
voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and
from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the
carpenter apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the
indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took
Queequeg’s measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg’s person as
he shifted the rule.
“Ah! poor fellow! he’ll have to die now,” ejaculated the Long Island sailor.
Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general
reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin was to
be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at its
extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to work.
When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he lightly
shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring whether they were
ready for it yet in that direction.
Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the people on deck
began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one’s consternation,
commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to him, nor was there any
denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some dying men are the most
tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for
evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an attentive
eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock drawn from it, and
then had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of the paddles of his
boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides
within: a flask of fresh water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody
earth scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled
up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he
might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few
minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then
crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid
(hatch he called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a
leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed
countenance in view. “Rarmai” (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last, and
signed to be replaced in his hammock.
But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all this while,
drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took him by the hand; in
the other, holding his tambourine.
“Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? where go ye
now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the beaches are
only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little errand for me? Seek out one
Pip, who’s now been missing long: I think he’s in those far Antilles. If ye find
him, then comfort him; for he must be very sad; for look! he’s left his
tambourine behind;—I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I’ll
beat ye your dying march.”
“I have heard,” murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, “that in violent
fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and that when the
mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood
those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty
scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his
lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he
that, but there?—Hark! he speaks again: but more wildly now.”
“Form two and two! Let’s make a General of him! Ho, where’s his harpoon? Lay it
across here.—Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game cock now to sit upon his
head and crow! Queequeg dies game!—mind ye that; Queequeg dies game!—take ye
good heed of that; Queequeg dies game! I say; game, game, game! but base little
Pip, he died a coward; died all a’shiver;—out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip,
tell all the Antilles he’s a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he
jumped from a whale-boat! I’d never beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail
him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame upon all
cowards—shame upon them! Let ’em go drown like Pip, that jumped from a
whale-boat. Shame! shame!”
During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip was led
away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.
But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now that his
coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon there seemed no
need of the carpenter’s box: and thereupon, when some expressed their delighted
surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause of his sudden convalescence was
this;—at a critical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he
was leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not
die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter
of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it
was Queequeg’s conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness
could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent,
ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized; that
while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, generally speaking,
a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day. So, in good time my Queequeg
gained strength; and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent
days (but eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw
out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and
then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon,
pronounced himself fit for a fight.
With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and emptying
into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many spare hours he
spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and
it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the
twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a
departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had
written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a
mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own
proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose
mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against
them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away
with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the
last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild
exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor
Queequeg—“Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!”
CHAPTER 111. The Pacific.
When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South Sea;
were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear Pacific with
uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was answered; that
serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue.
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful
stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled
undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it
is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’
Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow
unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams,
somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming,
dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves
but made so by their restlessness.
To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must ever
after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of the world, the
Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same waves wash the moles of
the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of
men, and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than
Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying,
endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious,
divine Pacific zones the world’s whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to
it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal swells, you
needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.
But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab’s brain, as standing like an iron statue at
his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly
snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers
must be walking), and with the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the
new found sea; that sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be
swimming. Launched at length upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards
the Japanese cruising-ground, the old man’s purpose intensified itself. His firm
lips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead’s veins swelled like
overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran through the vaulted
hull, “Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick blood!”
CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.
Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in these
latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits shortly to be
anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, had not removed his
portable forge to the hold again, after concluding his contributory work for
Ahab’s leg, but still retained it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the
foremast; being now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers,
and bowsmen to do some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new
shaping their various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded
by an eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads,
harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he
toiled. Nevertheless, this old man’s was a patient hammer wielded by a patient
arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and
solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away,
as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy
beating of his heart. And so it was.—Most miserable!
A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing yawing
in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the curiosity of the
mariners. And to the importunity of their persisted questionings he had finally
given in; and so it came to pass that every one now knew the shameful story of
his wretched fate.
Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter’s midnight, on the road running
between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt the deadly numbness
stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue
was, the loss of the extremities of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by
part, at last came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as
yet uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his life’s drama.
He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly encountered
that thing in sorrow’s technicals called ruin. He had been an artisan of famed
excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a house and garden; embraced a
youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three blithe, ruddy children; every
Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church, planted in a grove. But one night,
under cover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a
desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and robbed them all of everything.
And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this
burglar into his family’s heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of
that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for
prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith’s shop was in the
basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so that always had
the young and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness, but with
vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her young-armed old husband’s hammer;
whose reverberations, muffled by passing through the floors and walls, came up
to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery; and so, to stout Labor’s iron lullaby,
the blacksmith’s infants were rocked to slumber.
Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst thou
taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had
the young widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable,
legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killing
competency. But Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose
whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, and
left the worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life
should make him easier to harvest.
Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew more and
more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the last; the wife sat
frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly gazing into the weeping
faces of her children; the bellows fell; the forge choked up with cinders; the
house was sold; the mother dived down into the long church-yard grass; her
children twice followed her thither; and the houseless, familyless old man
staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a
scorn to flaxen curls!
Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death is only
a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first
salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the
Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left
in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and
all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable,
taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of
infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them—“Come hither,
broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death;
here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself
in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is
more oblivious than death. Come hither! put up thy gravestone, too, within the
churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee!”
Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by fall of eve,
the blacksmith’s soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth went a-whaling.
CHAPTER 113. The Forge.
With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about mid-day,
Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter placed upon an
iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with the
other at his forge’s lungs, when Captain Ahab came along, carrying in his hand a
small rusty-looking leathern bag. While yet a little distance from the forge,
moody Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire,
began hammering it upon the anvil—the red mass sending off the sparks in thick
hovering flights, some of which flew close to Ahab.
“Are these thy Mother Carey’s chickens, Perth? they are always flying in thy
wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;—look here, they burn; but
thou—thou liv’st among them without a scorch.”
“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth, resting for a
moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching; not easily can’st thou scorch a
scar.”
“Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful to me.
In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad.
Thou should’st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can’st
thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can’st
not go mad?—What wert thou making there?”
“Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it.”
“And can’st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard usage as
it had?”
“I think so, sir.”
“And I suppose thou can’st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never mind how
hard the metal, blacksmith?”
“Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.”
“Look ye here, then,” cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning with both
hands on Perth’s shoulders; “look ye here—here—can ye smoothe out a seam like
this, blacksmith,” sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow; “if thou could’st,
blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy
heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer! Can’st thou smoothe this seam?”
“Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?”
“Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for though thou
only see’st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the bone of my
skull—that is all wrinkles! But, away with child’s play; no more gaffs and pikes
to-day. Look ye here!” jingling the leathern bag, as if it were full of gold
coins. “I, too, want a harpoon made; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could
not part, Perth; something that will stick in a whale like his own fin-bone.
There’s the stuff,” flinging the pouch upon the anvil. “Look ye, blacksmith,
these are the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses.”
“Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the best and
stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work.”
“I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from the melted
bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge me first, twelve rods
for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer these twelve together like the
yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! I’ll blow the fire.”
When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one, by
spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. “A flaw!”
rejecting the last one. “Work that over again, Perth.”
This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one, when Ahab
stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, then, with regular,
gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to him the glowing rods,
one after the other, and the hard pressed forge shooting up its intense straight
flame, the Parsee passed silently, and bowing over his head towards the fire,
seemed invoking some curse or some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up,
he slid aside.
“What’s that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?” muttered Stubb, looking
on from the forecastle. “That Parsee smells fire like a fusee; and smells of it
himself, like a hot musket’s powder-pan.”
At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as Perth,
to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near by, the
scalding steam shot up into Ahab’s bent face.
“Would’st thou brand me, Perth?” wincing for a moment with the pain; “have I
been but forging my own branding-iron, then?”
“Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this harpoon for
the White Whale?”
“For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them thyself, man.
Here are my razors—the best of steel; here, and make the barbs sharp as the
needle-sleet of the Icy Sea.”
For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain not use
them.
“Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave, sup, nor pray
till—but here—to work!”
Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the shank, the
steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving
the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place
the water-cask near.
“No, no—no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there!
Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood
as will cover this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied,
Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs
were then tempered.
“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously howled
Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.
Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of hickory, with
the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket of the iron. A
coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to the
windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the
rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no
strandings, Ahab exclaimed, “Good! and now for the seizings.”
At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns were all
braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the pole was then driven hard
up into the socket; from the lower end the rope was traced half-way along the
pole’s length, and firmly secured so, with intertwistings of twine. This done,
pole, iron, and rope—like the Three Fates—remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily
stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the
hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his
cabin, light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. Oh,
Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy strange mummeries
not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and
mocked it!
CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.
Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising ground,
the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild, pleasant weather,
for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the stretch, they were
engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing, or paddling after the
whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting their
uprising; though with but small success for their pains.
At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving
swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with
the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr against the
gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil
beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that
pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but
conceals a remorseless fang.
These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a certain
filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he regards it as so
much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing only the tops of her masts,
seems struggling forward, not through high rolling waves, but through the tall
grass of a rolling prairie: as when the western emigrants’ horses only show
their erected ears, while their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing
verdure.
The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these there
steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied children lie
sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when the flowers of the
woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most mystic mood; so that fact
and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.
Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as temporary
an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem to open in him his
own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath upon them prove but tarnishing.
Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,—though
long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,—in ye, men yet may roll,
like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel
the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms
would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and
woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady
unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations,
and at the last one pause:—through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s
thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then
disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone
through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs
eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt
ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the
foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded
mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave,
and we must there to learn it.
And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s side into that same
golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:—
“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye!—Tell me
not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust
fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”
And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that same golden
light:—
“I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that he has
always been jolly!”
CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down before
the wind, some few weeks after Ahab’s harpoon had been welded.
It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her last cask of
oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad holiday apparel, was
joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing round among the
widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.
The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at
their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down; and hanging
captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last whale they had
slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colours were flying from her rigging,
on every side. Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two
barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender
breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen
lamp.
As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most surprising
success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in the same seas
numerous other vessels had gone entire months without securing a single fish.
Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to make room for the far
more valuable sperm, but additional supplemental casks had been bartered for,
from the ships she had met; and these were stowed along the deck, and in the
captain’s and officers’ state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had been
knocked into kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of an
oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, the
sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests, and filled them; it was
humorously added, that the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and
filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it; that
the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled them; that
indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain’s pantaloons
pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent
testimony of his entire satisfaction.
As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the barbarian
sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing still nearer, a
crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge try-pots, which, covered with
the parchment-like poke or stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud
roar to every stroke of the clenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the
mates and harpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with
them from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly
secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with
glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig.
Meanwhile, others of the ship’s company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of
the try-works, from which the huge pots had been removed. You would have almost
thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastille, such wild cries they raised,
as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled into the sea.
Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the ship’s
elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was full before him,
and seemed merely contrived for his own individual diversion.
And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black, with a
stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other’s wakes—one all
jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings as to things to
come—their two captains in themselves impersonated the whole striking contrast
of the scene.
“Come aboard, come aboard!” cried the gay Bachelor’s commander, lifting a glass
and a bottle in the air.
“Hast seen the White Whale?” gritted Ahab in reply.
“No; only heard of him; but don’t believe in him at all,” said the other
good-humoredly. “Come aboard!”
“Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?”
“Not enough to speak of—two islanders, that’s all;—but come aboard, old hearty,
come along. I’ll soon take that black from your brow. Come along, will ye
(merry’s the play); a full ship and homeward-bound.”
“How wondrous familiar is a fool!” muttered Ahab; then aloud, “Thou art a full
ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me an empty ship, and
outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward there! Set all sail, and
keep her to the wind!”
And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the other
stubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted; the crew of the
Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the receding Bachelor; but
the Bachelor’s men never heeding their gaze for the lively revelry they were in.
And as Ahab, leaning over the taffrail, eyed the homeward-bound craft, he took
from his pocket a small vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the
vial, seemed thereby bringing two remote associations together, for that vial
was filled with Nantucket soundings.
CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.
Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s favourites sail
close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze,
and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed it with the Pequod. For
next day after encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were seen and four were
slain; and one of them by Ahab.
It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson fight
were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and whale both
stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such plaintiveness, such
inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it almost seemed as if far
over from the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish
land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these
vesper hymns.
Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned off from
the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from the now tranquil boat.
For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales dying—the turning
sunwards of the head, and so expiring—that strange spectacle, beheld of such a
placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before.
“He turns and turns him to it,—how slowly, but how steadfastly, his
homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too worships
fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!—Oh that these
too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights. Look! here, far
water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in these most candid and
impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets; where for long
Chinese ages, the billows have still rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as
stars that shine upon the Niger’s unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards
full of faith; but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and
it heads some other way.
“Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded thy
separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas; thou art an
infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the wide-slaughtering
Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor has this thy whale
sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round again, without a lesson to
me.
“Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed
jet!—that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost
thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life,
but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a
darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed
by breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.
“Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl finds
his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though hill and valley
mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!”
CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.
The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to windward;
one, less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These last three were
brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one could not be reached till
morning; and the boat that had killed it lay by its side all night; and that
boat was Ahab’s.
The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale’s spout-hole; and the
lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare upon the black,
glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves, which gently chafed the
whale’s broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach.
Ahab and all his boat’s crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who crouching in the
bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played round the whale, and tapped
the light cedar planks with their tails. A sound like the moaning in squadrons
over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the
air.
Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee; and hooped round
by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a flooded world. “I have
dreamed it again,” said he.
“Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor coffin can be
thine?”
“And who are hearsed that die on the sea?”
“But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two hearses must
verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by mortal hands; and the
visible wood of the last one must be grown in America.”
“Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:—a hearse and its plumes floating over
the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha! Such a sight we shall not
soon see.”
“Believe it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man.”
“And what was that saying about thyself?”
“Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy pilot.”
“And when thou art so gone before—if that ever befall—then ere I can follow,
thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?—Was it not so? Well, then, did
I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two pledges that I shall yet slay
Moby Dick and survive it.”
“Take another pledge, old man,” said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up like
fire-flies in the gloom—“Hemp only can kill thee.”
“The gallows, ye mean.—I am immortal then, on land and on sea,” cried Ahab, with
a laugh of derision;—“Immortal on land and on sea!”
Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came on, and the slumbering
crew arose from the boat’s bottom, and ere noon the dead whale was brought to
the ship.
CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.
The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Ahab, coming
from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would ostentatiously
handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to the braces, and would
stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed on the nailed doubloon;
impatient for the order to point the ship’s prow for the equator. In good time
the order came. It was hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows of his
high-hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun to
determine his latitude.
Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of effulgences.
That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy
ocean’s immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks lacquered; clouds there are
none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the
insufferable splendors of God’s throne. Well that Ahab’s quadrant was furnished
with coloured glasses, through which to take sight of that solar fire. So,
swinging his seated form to the roll of the ship, and with his
astrological-looking instrument placed to his eye, he remained in that posture
for some moments to catch the precise instant when the sun should gain its
precise meridian. Meantime while his whole attention was absorbed, the Parsee
was kneeling beneath him on the ship’s deck, and with face thrown up like
Ahab’s, was eyeing the same sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded
their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness. At
length the desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory
leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant.
Then falling into a moment’s revery, he again looked up towards the sun and
murmured to himself: “Thou sea-mark! thou high and mighty Pilot! thou tellest me
truly where I am—but canst thou cast the least hint where I shall be? Or canst
thou tell where some other thing besides me is this moment living? Where is Moby
Dick? This instant thou must be eyeing him. These eyes of mine look into the
very eye that is even now beholding him; aye, and into the eye that is even now
equally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither side of thee, thou sun!”
Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its numerous
cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered: “Foolish toy!
babies’ plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains; the world
brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do, but
tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be on this wide
planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell
where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet
with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy;
and cursed be all the things that cast man’s eyes aloft to that heaven, whose
live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with
thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth’s horizon are the glances of
man’s eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze
on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!” dashing it to the deck, “no longer
will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship’s compass, and the level
dead-reckoning, by log and by line; these shall conduct me, and show me my place
on the sea. Aye,” lighting from the boat to the deck, “thus I trample on thee,
thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!”
As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live and dead feet,
a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and a fatalistic despair that
seemed meant for himself—these passed over the mute, motionless Parsee’s face.
Unobserved he rose and glided away; while, awestruck by the aspect of their
commander, the seamen clustered together on the forecastle, till Ahab,
troubledly pacing the deck, shouted out—“To the braces! Up helm!—square in!”
In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled upon her heel,
her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon her long, ribbed hull,
seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one sufficient steed.
Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Pequod’s tumultuous way,
and Ahab’s also, as he went lurching along the deck.
“I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of its
tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down, to dumbest
dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length
remain but one little heap of ashes!”
“Aye,” cried Stubb, “but sea-coal ashes—mind ye that, Mr. Starbuck—sea-coal, not
your common charcoal. Well, well; I heard Ahab mutter, ‘Here some one thrusts
these cards into these old hands of mine; swears that I must play them, and no
others.’ And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right; live in the game, and die in
it!”
CHAPTER 119. The Candles.
Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in
spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the
deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern
lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner
encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from
out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and bare-poled
was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly ahead. When darkness
came on, sky and sea roared and split with the thunder, and blazed with the
lightning, that showed the disabled masts fluttering here and there with the
rags which the first fury of the tempest had left for its after sport.
Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at every flash
of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional disaster might have
befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb and Flask were directing the
men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the boats. But all their pains
seemed naught. Though lifted to the very top of the cranes, the windward quarter
boat (Ahab’s) did not escape. A great rolling sea, dashing high up against the
reeling ship’s high teetering side, stove in the boat’s bottom at the stern, and
left it again, all dripping through like a sieve.
“Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck,” said Stubb, regarding the wreck, “but the
sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can’t fight it. You see, Mr. Starbuck, a
wave has such a great long start before it leaps, all round the world it runs,
and then comes the spring! But as for me, all the start I have to meet it, is
just across the deck here. But never mind; it’s all in fun: so the old song
says;”—(sings.)
Oh! jolly is the gale, And a joker is the whale, A’ flourishin’ his tail,—
Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!
The scud all a flyin’, That’s his flip only foamin’; When he stirs in the
spicin’,— Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the
Ocean, oh!
Thunder splits the ships, But he only smacks his lips, A tastin’ of this
flip,— Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean,
oh!
“Avast Stubb,” cried Starbuck, “let the Typhoon sing, and strike his harp here
in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy peace.”
“But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward; and I
sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, there’s no
way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my throat. And when that’s done,
ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a wind-up.”
“Madman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.”
“What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else, never mind how
foolish?”
“Here!” cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, and pointing his hand
towards the weather bow, “markest thou not that the gale comes from the
eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for Moby Dick? the very course he swung
to this day noon? now mark his boat there; where is that stove? In the
stern-sheets, man; where he is wont to stand—his stand-point is stove, man! Now
jump overboard, and sing away, if thou must!
“I don’t half understand ye: what’s in the wind?”
“Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to Nantucket,”
soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb’s question. “The gale that now
hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it into a fair wind that will drive us
towards home. Yonder, to windward, all is blackness of doom; but to leeward,
homeward—I see it lightens up there; but not with the lightning.”
At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, following the
flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at the same instant a volley
of thunder peals rolled overhead.
“Who’s there?”
“Old Thunder!” said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to his pivot-hole;
but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed lances of fire.
Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off the
perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea some ships carry
to each mast, is intended to conduct it into the water. But as this conductor
must descend to considerable depth, that its end may avoid all contact with the
hull; and as moreover, if kept constantly towing there, it would be liable to
many mishaps, besides interfering not a little with some of the rigging, and
more or less impeding the vessel’s way in the water; because of all this, the
lower parts of a ship’s lightning-rods are not always overboard; but are
generally made in long slender links, so as to be the more readily hauled up
into the chains outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may require.
“The rods! the rods!” cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished to
vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux, to light
Ahab to his post. “Are they overboard? drop them over, fore and aft. Quick!”
“Avast!” cried Ahab; “let’s have fair play here, though we be the weaker side.
Yet I’ll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and Andes, that all the world
may be secured; but out on privileges! Let them be, sir.”
“Look aloft!” cried Starbuck. “The corpusants! the corpusants!”
All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each
tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of the
three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three
gigantic wax tapers before an altar.
“Blast the boat! let it go!” cried Stubb at this instant, as a swashing sea
heaved up under his own little craft, so that its gunwale violently jammed his
hand, as he was passing a lashing. “Blast it!”—but slipping backward on the
deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames; and immediately shifting his tone he
cried—“The corpusants have mercy on us all!”
To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of the
calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses from the
topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething sea; but in all my
voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when God’s burning finger has been
laid on the ship; when His “Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin” has been woven into the
shrouds and the cordage.
While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from the enchanted
crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle, all their eyes gleaming
in that pale phosphorescence, like a far away constellation of stars. Relieved
against the ghostly light, the gigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice
his real stature, and seemed the black cloud from which the thunder had come.
The parted mouth of Tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth, which strangely
gleamed as if they too had been tipped by corpusants; while lit up by the
preternatural light, Queequeg’s tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames on his
body.
The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once more the
Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. A moment or two
passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one. It was Stubb.
“What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry; it was not the same in the song.”
“No, no, it wasn’t; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I hope they
will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces?—have they no bowels for
a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck—but it’s too dark to look. Hear me, then: I
take that mast-head flame we saw for a sign of good luck; for those masts are
rooted in a hold that is going to be chock a’ block with sperm-oil, d’ye see;
and so, all that sperm will work up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our
three masts will yet be as three spermaceti candles—that’s the good promise we
saw.”
At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb’s face slowly beginning to glimmer
into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: “See! see!” and once more the high
tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled supernaturalness in their
pallor.
“The corpusants have mercy on us all,” cried Stubb, again.
At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame, the Parsee
was kneeling in Ahab’s front, but with his head bowed away from him; while near
by, from the arched and overhanging rigging, where they had just been engaged
securing a spar, a number of the seamen, arrested by the glare, now cohered
together, and hung pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping,
orchard twig. In various enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or
running skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all
their eyes upcast.
“Aye, aye, men!” cried Ahab. “Look up at it; mark it well; the white flame but
lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast links there; I would
fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it; blood against fire! So.”
Then turning—the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot upon the
Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm, he stood erect
before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.
“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did
worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear
the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right
worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en
for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts
thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my
earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the
midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a
point at best; whencesoe’er I came; wheresoe’er I go; yet while I earthly live,
the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war is
pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and
kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou
launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there’s that in here that still
remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like
a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.”
[Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap lengthwise to
thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest, closes his eyes, his right
hand pressed hard upon them.]
“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me;
nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope. Thou
canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes, and
shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine
eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on
some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light
though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of
light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There
burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou
art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou
done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how
came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning,
hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of
thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou
clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness
mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it.
Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy
incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony,
I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with
thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!”
“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!”
Ahab’s harpoon, the one forged at Perth’s fire, remained firmly lashed in its
conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat’s bow; but the
sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to drop off;
and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flame of pale, forked
fire. As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent’s tongue, Starbuck
grasped Ahab by the arm—“God, God is against thee, old man; forbear! ’tis an ill
voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old
man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”
Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the braces—though
not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast mate’s thoughts seemed
theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But dashing the rattling lightning
links to the deck, and snatching the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch
among them; swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a
rope’s end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery
dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:—
“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and heart, soul,
and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye may know to what tune
this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear!” And with one
blast of his breath he extinguished the flame.
As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of some
lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so much the
more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last
words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay.
CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him.
“We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working loose and
the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?”
“Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I’d sway them up now.”
“Sir!—in God’s name!—sir?”
“Well.”
“The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?”
“Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises, but it
has not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.—By masts and keels!
he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some coasting smack. Send down my
main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds,
and this brain-truck of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that?
Oh, none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a
hooroosh aloft there! I would e’en take it for sublime, did I not know that the
colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!”
CHAPTER 121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.
Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over the
anchors there hanging.
“No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please, but you will
never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how long ago is it since
you said the very contrary? Didn’t you once say that whatever ship Ahab sails
in, that ship should pay something extra on its insurance policy, just as though
it were loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now;
didn’t you say so?”
“Well, suppose I did? What then? I’ve part changed my flesh since that time, why
not my mind? Besides, supposing we are loaded with powder barrels aft and
lucifers forward; how the devil could the lucifers get afire in this drenching
spray here? Why, my little man, you have pretty red hair, but you couldn’t get
afire now. Shake yourself; you’re Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask; might
fill pitchers at your coat collar. Don’t you see, then, that for these extra
risks the Marine Insurance companies have extra guarantees? Here are hydrants,
Flask. But hark, again, and I’ll answer ye the other thing. First take your leg
off from the crown of the anchor here, though, so I can pass the rope; now
listen. What’s the mighty difference between holding a mast’s lightning-rod in
the storm, and standing close by a mast that hasn’t got any lightning-rod at all
in a storm? Don’t you see, you timber-head, that no harm can come to the holder
of the rod, unless the mast is first struck? What are you talking about, then?
Not one ship in a hundred carries rods, and Ahab,—aye, man, and all of us,—were
in no more danger then, in my poor opinion, than all the crews in ten thousand
ships now sailing the seas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose you would have
every man in the world go about with a small lightning-rod running up the corner
of his hat, like a militia officer’s skewered feather, and trailing behind like
his sash. Why don’t ye be sensible, Flask? it’s easy to be sensible; why don’t
ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible.”
“I don’t know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard.”
“Yes, when a fellow’s soaked through, it’s hard to be sensible, that’s a fact.
And I am about drenched with this spray. Never mind; catch the turn there, and
pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors now as if they were never
going to be used again. Tying these two anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a
man’s hands behind him. And what big generous hands they are, to be sure. These
are your iron fists, hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder, Flask, whether
the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long
cable, though. There, hammer that knot down, and we’ve done. So; next to
touching land, lighting on deck is the most satisfactory. I say, just wring out
my jacket skirts, will ye? Thank ye. They laugh at long-togs so, Flask; but
seems to me, a long tailed coat ought always to be worn in all storms afloat.
The tails tapering down that way, serve to carry off the water, d’ye see. Same
with cocked hats; the cocks form gable-end eave-troughs, Flask. No more
monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me; I must mount a swallow-tail, and drive
down a beaver; so. Halloa! whew! there goes my tarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord,
that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty
night, lad.”
CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.
The main-top-sail yard.—Tashtego passing new lashings around it.
“Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What’s the use
of thunder? Um, um, um. We don’t want thunder; we want rum; give us a glass of
rum. Um, um, um!”
CHAPTER 123. The Musket.
During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pequod’s jaw-bone
tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by its spasmodic
motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached to it—for they were
slack—because some play to the tiller was indispensable.
In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock to the
blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses, at
intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the Pequod’s; at almost every
shock the helmsman had not failed to notice the whirling velocity with which
they revolved upon the cards; it is a sight that hardly anyone can behold
without some sort of unwonted emotion.
Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the
strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb—one engaged forward and the other
aft—the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails were cut adrift
from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like the feathers of an
albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when that storm-tossed bird is
on the wing.
The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and a storm-trysail
was set further aft; so that the ship soon went through the water with some
precision again; and the course—for the present, East-south-east—which he was to
steer, if practicable, was once more given to the helmsman. For during the
violence of the gale, he had only steered according to its vicissitudes. But as
he was now bringing the ship as near her course as possible, watching the
compass meanwhile, lo! a good sign! the wind seemed coming round astern; aye,
the foul breeze became fair!
Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of “Ho! the fair wind!
oh-ye-ho, cheerly men!” the crew singing for joy, that so promising an event
should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding it.
In compliance with the standing order of his commander—to report immediately,
and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided change in the affairs of
the deck,—Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to the breeze—however
reluctantly and gloomily,—than he mechanically went below to apprise Captain
Ahab of the circumstance.
Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it a moment. The
cabin lamp—taking long swings this way and that—was burning fitfully, and
casting fitful shadows upon the old man’s bolted door,—a thin one, with fixed
blinds inserted, in place of upper panels. The isolated subterraneousness of the
cabin made a certain humming silence to reign there, though it was hooped round
by all the roar of the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly
revealed, as they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an
honest, upright man; but out of Starbuck’s heart, at that instant when he saw
the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its
neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for
itself.
“He would have shot me once,” he murmured, “yes, there’s the very musket that he
pointed at me;—that one with the studded stock; let me touch it—lift it.
Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly lances, strange, that I should
shake so now. Loaded? I must see. Aye, aye; and powder in the pan;—that’s not
good. Best spill it?—wait. I’ll cure myself of this. I’ll hold the musket boldly
while I think.—I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death
and doom,—that’s fair for Moby Dick. It’s a fair wind that’s only fair for that
accursed fish.—The very tube he pointed at me!—the very one; this one—I hold it
here; he would have killed me with the very thing I handle now.—Aye and he would
fain kill all his crew. Does he not say he will not strike his spars to any
gale? Has he not dashed his heavenly quadrant? and in these same perilous seas,
gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding log? and in
this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods? But
shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down
to doom with him?—Yes, it would make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and
more, if this ship come to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my soul
swears this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this instant—put
aside, that crime would not be his. Ha! is he muttering in his sleep? Yes, just
there,—in there, he’s sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake
again. I can’t withstand thee, then, old man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance;
not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy
own flat commands, this is all thou breathest. Aye, and say’st the men have
vow’d thy vow; say’st all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!—But is there no
other way? no lawful way?—Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What! hope to
wrest this old man’s living power from his own living hands? Only a fool would
try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes and hawsers;
chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would be more hideous than a
caged tiger, then. I could not endure the sight; could not possibly fly his
howlings; all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason would leave me on the
long intolerable voyage. What, then, remains? The land is hundreds of leagues
away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with
two oceans and a whole continent between me and law.—Aye, aye, ’tis so.—Is
heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed,
tindering sheets and skin together?—And would I be a murderer, then, if”—and
slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket’s end
against the door.
“On this level, Ahab’s hammock swings within; his head this way. A touch, and
Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.—Oh Mary! Mary!—boy! boy!
boy!—But if I wake thee not to death, old man, who can tell to what unsounded
deeps Starbuck’s body this day week may sink, with all the crew! Great God,
where art Thou? Shall I? shall I?—The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the
fore and main topsails are reefed and set; she heads her course.”
“Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!”
Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man’s tormented
sleep, as if Starbuck’s voice had caused the long dumb dream to speak.
The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard’s arm against the panel; Starbuck
seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he placed the
death-tube in its rack, and left the place.
“He’s too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell him. I
must see to the deck here. Thou know’st what to say.”
CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty
bulk, and striving in the Pequod’s gurgling track, pushed her on like giants’
palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air
seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled
in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread
intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings,
as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was
as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time the
tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to eye the bright
sun’s rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly settled by the stern, he
turned behind, and saw the sun’s rearward place, and how the same yellow rays
were blending with his undeviating wake.
“Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of the
sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye! Yoke on the
further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!”
But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards the helm,
huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
“East-sou-east, sir,” said the frightened steersman.
“Thou liest!” smiting him with his clenched fist. “Heading East at this hour in
the morning, and the sun astern?”
Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then observed by
Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very blinding
palpableness must have been the cause.
Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse of the
compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost seemed to
stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compasses pointed
East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the old man
with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck,
last night’s thunder turned our compasses—that’s all. Thou hast before now heard
of such a thing, I take it.”
“Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said the pale mate,
gloomily.
Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than one case
occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as developed in the
mariner’s needle, is, as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheld
in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled at, that such things should be.
Instances where the lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite
down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been
still more fatal; all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before
magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife’s knitting needle. But in
either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue
thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected, the same fate
reaches all the others that may be in the ship; even were the lowermost one
inserted into the kelson.
Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed
compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took the
precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were exactly
inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship’s course to be changed
accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod thrust her
undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair one had only been
juggling her.
Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said nothing, but
quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and Flask—who in some small
degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings—likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced.
As for the men, though some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was
greater than their fear of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers
remained almost wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a certain
magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab’s.
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But chancing to
slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper sight-tubes of the quadrant
he had the day before dashed to the deck.
“Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun’s pilot! yesterday I wrecked thee, and
to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab is lord over
the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck—a lance without a pole; a top-maul, and
the smallest of the sail-maker’s needles. Quick!”
Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about to do,
were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to revive the
spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a matter so wondrous as
that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by
transpointed needles, though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed
over by superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.
“Men,” said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the
things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s needles; but out
of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as true as
any.”
Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was
said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow. But
Starbuck looked away.
With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the lance, and
then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade him hold it upright,
without its touching the deck. Then, with the maul, after repeatedly smiting the
upper end of this iron rod, he placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of
it, and less strongly hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the
rod as before. Then going through some small strange motions with it—whether
indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the
awe of the crew, is uncertain—he called for linen thread; and moving to the
binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended
the sail-needle by its middle, over one of the compass-cards. At first, the
steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last
it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching for this
result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm
towards it, exclaimed,—“Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the
level loadstone! The sun is East, and that compass swears it!”
One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could persuade
such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk away.
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal
pride.
CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.
While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage, the log and line
had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident reliance upon other means
of determining the vessel’s place, some merchantmen, and many whalemen,
especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave the log; though at the same
time, and frequently more for form’s sake than anything else, regularly putting
down upon the customary slate the course steered by the ship, as well as the
presumed average rate of progression every hour. It had been thus with the
Pequod. The wooden reel and angular log attached hung, long untouched, just
beneath the railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it; sun
and wind had warped it; all the elements had combined to rot a thing that hung
so idly. But heedless of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he happened to
glance upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet scene, and he remembered
how his quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic oath about the level log
and line. The ship was sailing plungingly; astern the billows rolled in riots.
“Forward, there! Heave the log!”
Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman. “Take the
reel, one of ye, I’ll heave.”
They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship’s lee side, where the deck,
with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into the creamy,
sidelong-rushing sea.
The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting handle-ends
of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved, so stood with the
angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to him.
Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty turns to
form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old Manxman, who was
intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to speak.
“Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have spoiled
it.”
“’Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee? Thou
seem’st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it.”
“I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these grey hairs of
mine ’tis not worth while disputing, ’specially with a superior, who’ll ne’er
confess.”
“What’s that? There now’s a patched professor in Queen Nature’s granite-founded
College; but methinks he’s too subservient. Where wert thou born?”
“In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.”
“Excellent! Thou’st hit the world by that.”
“I know not, sir, but I was born there.”
“In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it’s good. Here’s a man from Man;
a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man; which is sucked
in—by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall butts all inquiring heads at
last. Up with it! So.”
The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long dragging
line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In turn, jerkingly
raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the towing resistance of the log
caused the old reelman to stagger strangely.
“Hold hard!”
Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the tugging log was
gone.
“I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts
the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here, Tahitian; reel up, Manxman.
And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and mend thou the line. See to
it.”
“There he goes now; to him nothing’s happened; but to me, the skewer seems
loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in, Tahitian! These
lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken, and dragging slow. Ha, Pip?
come to help; eh, Pip?”
“Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whale-boat. Pip’s missing. Let’s see
now if ye haven’t fished him up here, fisherman. It drags hard; I guess he’s
holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off; we haul in no cowards here. Ho!
there’s his arm just breaking water. A hatchet! a hatchet! cut it off—we haul in
no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir, sir! here’s Pip, trying to get on board
again.”
“Peace, thou crazy loon,” cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm. “Away from
the quarter-deck!”
“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,” muttered Ahab, advancing. “Hands off
from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?
“Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!”
“And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of thy
eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through!
Who art thou, boy?”
“Bell-boy, sir; ship’s-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip! One hundred
pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high—looks cowardly—quickest known by
that! Ding, dong, ding! Who’s seen Pip the coward?”
“There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down
here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him, ye creative
libertines. Here, boy; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s home henceforth, while Ahab
lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven
of my heart-strings. Come, let’s down.”
“What’s this? here’s velvet shark-skin,” intently gazing at Ahab’s hand, and
feeling it. “Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he
had ne’er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak
souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands
together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go.”
“Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors
than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness,
and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man;
and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet
things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black
hand, than though I grasped an Emperor’s!”
“There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman. “One daft with strength,
the other daft with weakness. But here’s the end of the rotten line—all
dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new line altogether. I’ll
see Mr. Stubb about it.”
CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.
Steering now south-eastward by Ahab’s levelled steel, and her progress solely
determined by Ahab’s level log and line; the Pequod held on her path towards the
Equator. Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no
ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves
monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some
riotous and desperate scene.
At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the Equatorial
fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the dawn, was sailing
by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch—then headed by Flask—was startled by a
cry so plaintively wild and unearthly—like half-articulated wailings of the
ghosts of all Herod’s murdered Innocents—that one and all, they started from
their reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all
transfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild cry
remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the crew said it was
mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet the
grey Manxman—the oldest mariner of all—declared that the wild thrilling sounds
that were heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea.
Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when he came to
the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not unaccompanied with hinted
dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus explained the wonder.
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers of
seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or some dams that had lost
their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and kept company with her, crying and
sobbing with their human sort of wail. But this only the more affected some of
them, because most mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals,
arising not only from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the
human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly
uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances,
seals have more than once been mistaken for men.
But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At sun-rise this
man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore; and whether it was that
he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for sailors sometimes go aloft in a
transition state), whether it was thus with the man, there is now no telling;
but, be that as it may, he had not been long at his perch, when a cry was
heard—a cry and a rushing—and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air;
and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the sea.
The life-buoy—a long slender cask—was dropped from the stern, where it always
hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to seize it, and the sun
having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken, so that it slowly filled, and
that parched wood also filled at its every pore; and the studded iron-bound cask
followed the sailor to the bottom, as if to yield him his pillow, though in
sooth but a hard one.
And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out for the
White Whale, on the White Whale’s own peculiar ground; that man was swallowed up
in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the time. Indeed, in some
sort, they were not grieved at this event, at least as a portent; for they
regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment
of an evil already presaged. They declared that now they knew the reason of
those wild shrieks they had heard the night before. But again the old Manxman
said nay.
The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to see to it;
but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as in the feverish
eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage, all hands were
impatient of any toil but what was directly connected with its final end,
whatever that might prove to be; therefore, they were going to leave the ship’s
stern unprovided with a buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes
Queequeg hinted a hint concerning his coffin.
“A life-buoy of a coffin!” cried Starbuck, starting.
“Rather queer, that, I should say,” said Stubb.
“It will make a good enough one,” said Flask, “the carpenter here can arrange it
easily.”
“Bring it up; there’s nothing else for it,” said Starbuck, after a melancholy
pause. “Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so—the coffin, I mean. Dost thou
hear me? Rig it.”
“And shall I nail down the lid, sir?” moving his hand as with a hammer.
“Aye.”
“And shall I caulk the seams, sir?” moving his hand as with a caulking-iron.
“Aye.”
“And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?” moving his hand as with a
pitch-pot.
“Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin, and no
more.—Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me.”
“He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he baulks. Now I
don’t like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he wears it like a
gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he won’t put his head into it.
Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin? And now I’m ordered to make
a life-buoy of it. It’s like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on
the other side now. I don’t like this cobbling sort of business—I don’t like it
at all; it’s undignified; it’s not my place. Let tinkers’ brats do tinkerings;
we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin,
fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that regularly begins at the
beginning, and is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at the
conclusion; not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end in the middle, and at the
beginning at the end. It’s the old woman’s tricks to be giving cobbling jobs.
Lord! what an affection all old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of
sixty-five who ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that’s the
reason I never would work for lonely widow old women ashore, when I kept my
job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads
to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let me
see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten
them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the ship’s stern. Were
ever such things done before with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters,
now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere they would do the job. But I’m made of
knotty Aroostook hemlock; I don’t budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing about
with a grave-yard tray! But never mind. We workers in woods make
bridal-bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We work by the
month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask the why and wherefore
of our work, unless it be too confounded cobbling, and then we stash it if we
can. Hem! I’ll do the job, now, tenderly. I’ll have me—let’s see—how many in the
ship’s company, all told? But I’ve forgotten. Any way, I’ll have me thirty
separate, Turk’s-headed life-lines, each three feet long hanging all round to
the coffin. Then, if the hull go down, there’ll be thirty lively fellows all
fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun! Come
hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and marling-spike! Let’s to it.”
CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open
hatchway; the Carpenter caulking its seams; the string of twisted oakum slowly
unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock.—Ahab comes
slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip following him.
“Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand complies
with my humor more genially than that boy.—Middle aisle of a church! What’s
here?”
“Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the hatchway!”
“Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.”
“Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does.”
“Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy shop?”
“I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?”
“Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?”
“Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but they’ve
set me now to turning it into something else.”
“Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,
monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the next day
coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those same coffins?
Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a jack-of-all-trades.”
“But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.”
“The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a coffin? The
Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the craters for volcanoes;
and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in hand. Dost thou never?”
“Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I’m indifferent enough, sir, for that; but the reason
why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none in his
spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark to it.”
“Aye, and that’s because the lid there’s a sounding-board; and what in all
things makes the sounding-board is this—there’s naught beneath. And yet, a
coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter. Hast thou ever
helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against the churchyard gate,
going in?
“Faith, sir, I’ve——”
“Faith? What’s that?”
“Why, faith, sir, it’s only a sort of exclamation-like—that’s all, sir.”
“Um, um; go on.”
“I was about to say, sir, that——”
“Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself? Look at thy
bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight.”
“He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot latitudes.
I’ve heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut by the
Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some sort of Equator cuts yon old man,
too, right in his middle. He’s always under the Line—fiery hot, I tell ye! He’s
looking this way—come, oakum; quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the
cork, and I’m the professor of musical glasses—tap, tap!”
(Ahab to himself.)
“There’s a sight! There’s a sound! The greyheaded woodpecker tapping the hollow
tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that thing rests on two
line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag, that fellow. Rat-tat! So
man’s seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are
there, but imponderable thoughts? Here now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim
death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most
endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in
some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!
I’ll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its
other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will
ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed sound? I go below; let me not
see that thing here when I return again. Now, then, Pip, we’ll talk this over; I
do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the
unknown worlds must empty into thee!”
CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down upon the
Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the time the Pequod was
making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged windward stranger
shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that
are burst, and all life fled from the smitten hull.
“Bad news; she brings bad news,” muttered the old Manxman. But ere her
commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he could
hopefully hail, Ahab’s voice was heard.
“Hast seen the White Whale?”
“Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?”
Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected question; and would
then have fain boarded the stranger, when the stranger captain himself, having
stopped his vessel’s way, was seen descending her side. A few keen pulls, and
his boat-hook soon clinched the Pequod’s main-chains, and he sprang to the deck.
Immediately he was recognised by Ahab for a Nantucketer he knew. But no formal
salutation was exchanged.
“Where was he?—not killed!—not killed!” cried Ahab, closely advancing. “How was
it?”
It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous, while three
of the stranger’s boats were engaged with a shoal of whales, which had led them
some four or five miles from the ship; and while they were yet in swift chase to
windward, the white hump and head of Moby Dick had suddenly loomed up out of the
water, not very far to leeward; whereupon, the fourth rigged boat—a reserved
one—had been instantly lowered in chase. After a keen sail before the wind, this
fourth boat—the swiftest keeled of all—seemed to have succeeded in fastening—at
least, as well as the man at the mast-head could tell anything about it. In the
distance he saw the diminished dotted boat; and then a swift gleam of bubbling
white water; and after that nothing more; whence it was concluded that the
stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with his pursuers, as often
happens. There was some apprehension, but no positive alarm, as yet. The recall
signals were placed in the rigging; darkness came on; and forced to pick up her
three far to windward boats—ere going in quest of the fourth one in the
precisely opposite direction—the ship had not only been necessitated to leave
that boat to its fate till near midnight, but, for the time, to increase her
distance from it. But the rest of her crew being at last safe aboard, she
crowded all sail—stunsail on stunsail—after the missing boat; kindling a fire in
her try-pots for a beacon; and every other man aloft on the look-out. But though
when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain the presumed place of the
absent ones when last seen; though she then paused to lower her spare boats to
pull all around her; and not finding anything, had again dashed on; again
paused, and lowered her boats; and though she had thus continued doing till
daylight; yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.
The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal his object in
boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with his own in the search;
by sailing over the sea some four or five miles apart, on parallel lines, and so
sweeping a double horizon, as it were.
“I will wager something now,” whispered Stubb to Flask, “that some one in that
missing boat wore off that Captain’s best coat; mayhap, his watch—he’s so cursed
anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of two pious whale-ships cruising after
one missing whale-boat in the height of the whaling season? See, Flask, only see
how pale he looks—pale in the very buttons of his eyes—look—it wasn’t the
coat—it must have been the—”
“My boy, my own boy is among them. For God’s sake—I beg, I conjure”—here
exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far had but icily received his
petition. “For eight-and-forty hours let me charter your ship—I will gladly pay
for it, and roundly pay for it—if there be no other way—for eight-and-forty
hours only—only that—you must, oh, you must, and you shall do this thing.”
“His son!” cried Stubb, “oh, it’s his son he’s lost! I take back the coat and
watch—what says Ahab? We must save that boy.”
“He’s drowned with the rest on ’em, last night,” said the old Manx sailor
standing behind them; “I heard; all of ye heard their spirits.”
Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the Rachel’s the more
melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was one of the Captain’s sons
among the number of the missing boat’s crew; but among the number of the other
boat’s crews, at the same time, but on the other hand, separated from the ship
during the dark vicissitudes of the chase, there had been still another son; as
that for a time, the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest
perplexity; which was only solved for him by his chief mate’s instinctively
adopting the ordinary procedure of a whale-ship in such emergencies, that is,
when placed between jeopardized but divided boats, always to pick up the
majority first. But the captain, for some unknown constitutional reason, had
refrained from mentioning all this, and not till forced to it by Ahab’s iciness
did he allude to his one yet missing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old,
whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketer’s
paternal love, had thus early sought to initiate him in the perils and wonders
of a vocation almost immemorially the destiny of all his race. Nor does it
unfrequently occur, that Nantucket captains will send a son of such tender age
away from them, for a protracted three or four years’ voyage in some other ship
than their own; so that their first knowledge of a whaleman’s career shall be
unenervated by any chance display of a father’s natural but untimely partiality,
or undue apprehensiveness and concern.
Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of Ahab; and Ahab
still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without the least
quivering of his own.
“I will not go,” said the stranger, “till you say aye to me. Do to me as you
would have me do to you in the like case. For you too have a boy, Captain
Ahab—though but a child, and nestling safely at home now—a child of your old age
too—Yes, yes, you relent; I see it—run, run, men, now, and stand by to square in
the yards.”
“Avast,” cried Ahab—“touch not a rope-yarn”; then in a voice that prolongingly
moulded every word—“Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time.
Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go.
Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch, and in three minutes from this present
instant warn off all strangers: then brace forward again, and let the ship sail
as before.”
Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin, leaving the
strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter rejection of his so
earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment, Gardiner silently hurried to
the side; more fell than stepped into his boat, and returned to his ship.
Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel was in
view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot, however small,
on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung round; starboard and
larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat against a head sea; and again it
pushed her before it; while all the while, her masts and yards were thickly
clustered with men, as three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying
among the boughs.
But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that
this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was
Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.
CHAPTER 129. The Cabin.
(Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow.)
“Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is coming when
Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee by him. There is
that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like;
and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health. Do thou abide below
here, where they shall serve thee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou
shalt sit here in my own screwed chair; another screw to it, thou must be.”
“No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me for your one
lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I remain a part of ye.”
“Oh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless fidelity
of man!—and a black! and crazy!—but methinks like-cures-like applies to him too;
he grows so sane again.”
“They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip, whose drowned
bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living skin. But I will never
desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must go with ye.”
“If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab’s purpose keels up in him. I tell
thee no; it cannot be.”
“Oh good master, master, master!
“Weep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is mad. Listen, and
thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and still know that I am
there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand!—Met! True art thou, lad, as the
circumference to its centre. So: God for ever bless thee; and if it come to
that,—God for ever save thee, let what will befall.”
(Ahab goes; Pip steps one step forward.)
“Here he this instant stood; I stand in his air,—but I’m alone. Now were even
poor Pip here I could endure it, but he’s missing. Pip! Pip! Ding, dong, ding!
Who’s seen Pip? He must be up here; let’s try the door. What? neither lock, nor
bolt, nor bar; and yet there’s no opening it. It must be the spell; he told me
to stay here: Aye, and told me this screwed chair was mine. Here, then, I’ll
seat me, against the transom, in the ship’s full middle, all her keel and her
three masts before me. Here, our old sailors say, in their black seventy-fours
great admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it over rows of captains and
lieutenants. Ha! what’s this? epaulets! epaulets! the epaulets all come
crowding! Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs! What an
odd feeling, now, when a black boy’s host to white men with gold lace upon their
coats!—Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip?—a little negro lad, five feet high,
hang-dog look, and cowardly! Jumped from a whale-boat once;—seen him? No! Well
then, fill up again, captains, and let’s drink shame upon all cowards! I name no
names. Shame upon them! Put one foot upon the table. Shame upon all
cowards.—Hist! above there, I hear ivory—Oh, master! master! I am indeed
down-hearted when you walk over me. But here I’ll stay, though this stern
strikes rocks; and they bulge through; and oysters come to join me.”
CHAPTER 130. The Hat.
And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a preliminary
cruise, Ahab,—all other whaling waters swept—seemed to have chased his foe into
an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely there; now, that he found himself
hard by the very latitude and longitude where his tormenting wound had been
inflicted; now that a vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had
actually encountered Moby Dick;—and now that all his successive meetings with
various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with
which the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against; now
it was that there lurked a something in the old man’s eyes, which it was hardly
sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting polar star, which through
the livelong, arctic, six months’ night sustains its piercing, steady, central
gaze; so Ahab’s purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of
the gloomy crew. It domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts,
misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a
single spear or leaf.
In this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced or natural, vanished.
Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more strove to check one.
Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, and
powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of Ahab’s iron soul. Like
machines, they dumbly moved about the deck, ever conscious that the old man’s
despot eye was on them.
But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours; when he
thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have seen that even as
Ahab’s eyes so awed the crew’s, the inscrutable Parsee’s glance awed his; or
somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it. Such an added,
gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless
shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it
seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow
cast upon the deck by some unseen being’s body. And that shadow was always
hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known
to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or
leaned; his wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say—We two watchmen never rest.
Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon the deck,
unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot-hole, or exactly
pacing the planks between two undeviating limits,—the main-mast and the mizen;
or else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle,—his living foot advanced
upon the deck, as if to step; his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that
however motionless he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that he
had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could
never tell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at
times; or whether he was still intently scanning them; no matter, though he
stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded
night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The
clothes that the night had wet, the next day’s sunshine dried upon him; and so,
day after day, and night after night; he went no more beneath the planks;
whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for.
He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,—breakfast and dinner:
supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly grew all gnarled, as
unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still grow idly on at naked base,
though perished in the upper verdure. But though his whole life was now become
one watch on deck; and though the Parsee’s mystic watch was without intermission
as his own; yet these two never seemed to speak—one man to the other—unless at
long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a
potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck
crew, they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak one word;
by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal
interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far
parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; but
still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his
forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.
And yet, somehow, did Ahab—in his own proper self, as daily, hourly, and every
instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,—Ahab seemed an independent
lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again both seemed yoked together, and an
unseen tyrant driving them; the lean shade siding the solid rib. For be this
Parsee what he may, all rib and keel was solid Ahab.
At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard from
aft,—“Man the mast-heads!”—and all through the day, till after sunset and after
twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking of the helmsman’s bell, was
heard—“What d’ye see?—sharp! sharp!”
But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the children-seeking
Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac old man seemed
distrustful of his crew’s fidelity; at least, of nearly all except the Pagan
harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether Stubb and Flask might not
willingly overlook the sight he sought. But if these suspicions were really his,
he sagaciously refrained from verbally expressing them, however his actions
might seem to hint them.
“I will have the first sight of the whale myself,”—he said. “Aye! Ahab must have
the doubloon!” and with his own hands he rigged a nest of basketed bowlines; and
sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved block, to secure to the main-mast
head, he received the two ends of the downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to
his basket prepared a pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail.
This done, with that end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked
round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance long
upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then settling his
firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,—“Take the rope, sir—I give it into
thy hands, Starbuck.” Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word
for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope
at last; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one hand clinging round
the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for miles and miles,—ahead,
astern, this side, and that,—within the wide expanded circle commanded at so
great a height.
When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in the
rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is hoisted up to
that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under these circumstances, its
fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge to some one man who has
the special watch of it. Because in such a wilderness of running rigging, whose
various different relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what
is seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being
every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural
fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should by
some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the sea.
So Ahab’s proceedings in this matter were not unusual; the only strange thing
about them seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the one only man who had ever
ventured to oppose him with anything in the slightest degree approaching to
decision—one of those too, whose faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to
doubt somewhat;—it was strange, that this was the very man he should select for
his watchman; freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted
person’s hands.
Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there ten minutes;
one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly incommodiously close
round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these latitudes; one of these birds
came wheeling and screaming round his head in a maze of untrackably swift
circlings. Then it darted a thousand feet straight up into the air; then
spiralized downwards, and went eddying again round his head.
But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed not to
mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked it much, it
being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least heedful eye seemed to
see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight.
“Your hat, your hat, sir!” suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who being posted
at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though somewhat lower than
his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing them.
But already the sable wing was before the old man’s eyes; the long hooked bill
at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with his prize.
An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his cap to replace it, and
thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be king of Rome. But
only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good. Ahab’s hat was
never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far in advance of the
prow: and at last disappeared; while from the point of that disappearance, a
minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the
sea.
CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the
life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably misnamed
the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her broad
beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at
the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or
disabled boats.
Upon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and some few
splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you now saw through
this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled, half-unhinged, and
bleaching skeleton of a horse.
“Hast seen the White Whale?”
“Look!” replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and with his
trumpet he pointed to the wreck.
“Hast killed him?”
“The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that,” answered the other,
sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered sides some
noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.
“Not forged!” and snatching Perth’s levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab held it
out, exclaiming—“Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold his death!
Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to
temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, where the White Whale most
feels his accursed life!”
“Then God keep thee, old man—see’st thou that”—pointing to the hammock—“I bury
but one of five stout men, who were alive only yesterday; but were dead ere
night. Only that one I bury; the rest were buried before they died; you sail
upon their tomb.” Then turning to his crew—“Are ye ready there? place the plank
then on the rail, and lift the body; so, then—Oh! God”—advancing towards the
hammock with uplifted hands—“may the resurrection and the life——”
“Brace forward! Up helm!” cried Ahab like lightning to his men.
But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the sound of the
splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea; not so quick, indeed, but
that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled her hull with their ghostly
baptism.
As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy hanging at
the Pequod’s stern came into conspicuous relief.
“Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!” cried a foreboding voice in her wake. “In vain,
oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us your taffrail to show us
your coffin!”
CHAPTER 132. The Symphony.
It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly
separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently
pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with
long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep.
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled
birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the
deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish,
and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the
masculine sea.
But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows
without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that
distinguished them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this
bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the
horizon, a soft and tremulous motion—most seen here at the equator—denoted the
fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her
bosom away.
Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and
unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin;
untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his
splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s forehead of heaven.
Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures
that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye
of old Ahab’s close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha,
laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the
circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his
brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched
how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more
that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted
air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul.
That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the
step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round
his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that
however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to
bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did
all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side; and he
seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of
the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by
him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.
Ahab turned.
“Starbuck!”
“Sir.”
“Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a
day—very much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first whale—a boy-harpooneer
of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—ago! Forty years of continual whaling!
forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless
sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to
make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty
years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the
desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s
exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green
country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary
command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to
me before—and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of
the dry nourishment of my soil!—when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to
his daily hand, and broken the world’s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away,
whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for
Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow—wife?
wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when
I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood
and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has
furiously, foamingly chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a
forty years’ fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the
chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how
the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that
with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under
me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so
grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very,
very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were
Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God!
God!—crack my heart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of
grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus
intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human
eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By
the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see
my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board!—lower not
when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be
thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!”
“Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should
any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly
waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck’s—wife and child of his
brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and
child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!—this instant
let me alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we
bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some such
mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.”
“They have, they have. I have seen them—some summer days in the morning. About
this time—yes, it is his noon nap now—the boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed;
and his mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the
deep, but will yet come back to dance him again.”
“’Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning, should
be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father’s sail! Yes,
yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the
course, and let us away! See, see! the boy’s face from the window! the boy’s
hand on the hill!”
But Ahab’s glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his
last, cindered apple to the soil.
“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening,
hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against
all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming
myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper,
natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who,
that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an
errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible
power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think
thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living,
and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like
yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling
sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to
chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who’s to doom, when
the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild
looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they
have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the
mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may,
we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last
year’s scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swaths—Starbuck!”
But blanched to a corpse’s hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at two
reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over
the same rail.
CHAPTER 133. The Chase—First Day.
That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man—as his wont at intervals—stepped
forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he
suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious
ship’s dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a
whale must be near. Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given
forth by the living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any
mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and
then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab
rapidly ordered the ship’s course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be
shortened.
The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated at
daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead,
smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the
polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep,
rapid stream.
“Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!”
Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle deck,
Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they seemed to exhale
from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear with their clothes in their
hands.
“What d’ye see?” cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
“Nothing, nothing sir!” was the sound hailing down in reply.
“T’gallant sails!—stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!”
All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for swaying him to
the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they were hoisting him thither,
when, while but two thirds of the way aloft, and while peering ahead through the
horizontal vacancy between the main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a
gull-like cry in the air. “There she blows!—there she blows! A hump like a
snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”
Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three look-outs,
the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous whale they had so
long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final perch, some feet above the
other look-outs, Tashtego standing just beneath him on the cap of the
top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian’s head was almost on a level with Ahab’s
heel. From this height the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every
roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his
silent spout into the air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent
spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
“And did none of ye see it before?” cried Ahab, hailing the perched men all
around him.
“I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I cried
out,” said Tashtego.
“Not the same instant; not the same—no, the doubloon is mine, Fate reserved the
doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the White Whale first.
There she blows!—there she blows!—there she blows! There again!—there again!” he
cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic tones, attuned to the gradual
prolongings of the whale’s visible jets. “He’s going to sound! In stunsails!
Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay on
board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So; steady, man,
steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black water! All ready the boats there?
Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck; lower, lower,—quick, quicker!” and
he slid through the air to the deck.
“He is heading straight to leeward, sir,” cried Stubb, “right away from us;
cannot have seen the ship yet.”
“Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!—brace up! Shiver
her!—shiver her!—So; well that! Boats, boats!”
Soon all the boats but Starbuck’s were dropped; all the boat-sails set—all the
paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to leeward; and Ahab heading
the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up Fedallah’s sunken eyes; a hideous motion
gnawed his mouth.
Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea; but only
slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more
smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so
serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly
unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding
along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring
of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the
slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged
waters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a
musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters
interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on
either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken
again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea,
alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the
painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance
projected from the white whale’s back; and at intervals one of the cloud of
soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish,
silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like
pennons.
A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the
gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa
clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon
the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial
bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the
glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.
On each soft side—coincident with the parted swell, that but once leaving him,
then flowed so wide away—on each bright side, the whale shed off enticings. No
wonder there had been some among the hunters who namelessly transported and
allured by all this serenity, had ventured to assail it; but had fatally found
that quietude but the vesture of tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale!
thou glidest on, to all who for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in
that same way thou may’st have bejuggled and destroyed before.
And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among waves
whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on,
still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely
hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly
rose from the water; for an instant his whole marbleized body formed a high
arch, like Virginia’s Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes
in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight.
Hoveringly halting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls longingly
lingered over the agitated pool that he left.
With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift, the three
boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick’s reappearance.
“An hour,” said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat’s stern; and he gazed beyond
the whale’s place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing vacancies to
leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed whirling round in his
head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze now freshened; the sea began to
swell.
“The birds!—the birds!” cried Tashtego.
In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now all
flying towards Ahab’s boat; and when within a few yards began fluttering over
the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous, expectant cries. Their
vision was keener than man’s; Ahab could discover no sign in the sea. But
suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white
living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and
magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two
long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the
undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast,
shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouth
yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb; and giving one sidelong
sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous
apparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to change places with him, went forward
to the bows, and seizing Perth’s harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars
and stand by to stern.
Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by
anticipation, was made to face the whale’s head while yet under water. But as if
perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed
to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his
pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat.
Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for an
instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of a biting shark,
slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his mouth, so that the long,
narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the open air, and one of the
teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was
within six inches of Ahab’s head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude
the White Whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With
unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the tiger-yellow
crew were tumbling over each other’s heads to gain the uttermost stern.
And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the whale
dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his body being
submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from the bows, for the
bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while the other boats
involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis impossible to withstand, then it
was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe,
which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with
all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to
wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from
him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an
enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain, and
locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks.
These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at the stern-wreck
clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold fast to the oars to lash them
across.
At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first to
perceive the whale’s intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a movement
that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had made one final
effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only slipping further into the
whale’s mouth, and tilting over sideways as it slipped, the boat had shaken off
his hold on the jaw; spilled him out of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he
fell flat-faced upon the sea.
Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little distance,
vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the billows; and at
the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body; so that when his vast
wrinkled forehead rose—some twenty or more feet out of the water—the now rising
swells, with all their confluent waves, dazzlingly broke against it;
vindictively tossing their shivered spray still higher into the air.* So, in a
gale, the but half baffled Channel billows only recoil from the base of the
Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit with their scud.
*This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation
(pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down poise of
the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously described. By
this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively view whatever objects
may be encircling him.
But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly round and
round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as if
lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. The sight of the
splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast
before Antiochus’s elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half
smothered in the foam of the whale’s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to
swim,—though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool
as that; helpless Ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least
chance shock might burst. From the boat’s fragmentary stern, Fedallah
incuriously and mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other drifting end,
could not succor him; more than enough was it for them to look to themselves.
For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale’s aspect, and so planetarily
swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed horizontally swooping
upon them. And though the other boats, unharmed, still hovered hard by; still
they dared not pull into the eddy to strike, lest that should be the signal for
the instant destruction of the jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that
case could they themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then, they
remained on the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had now become the
old man’s head.
Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship’s mast
heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene; and was now so
nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!—“Sail on the”—but that moment a
breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and whelmed him for the time. But
struggling out of it again, and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he
shouted,—“Sail on the whale!—Drive him off!”
The Pequod’s prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed circle, she
effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly swam off, the
boats flew to the rescue.
Dragged into Stubb’s boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine caking
in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab’s bodily strength did crack, and
helplessly he yielded to his body’s doom: for a time, lying all crushed in the
bottom of Stubb’s boat, like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants. Far
inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines.
But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more
abbreviate it. In an instant’s compass, great hearts sometimes condense to one
deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler
men’s whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary in each one suffering;
still, if the gods decree it, in their life-time aggregate a whole age of woe,
wholly made up of instantaneous intensities; for even in their pointless
centres, those noble natures contain the entire circumferences of inferior
souls.
“The harpoon,” said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on one bended
arm—“is it safe?”
“Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it,” said Stubb, showing it.
“Lay it before me;—any missing men?”
“One, two, three, four, five;—there were five oars, sir, and here are five men.”
“That’s good.—Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him! there! there!
going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!—Hands off from me! The eternal sap
runs up in Ahab’s bones again! Set the sail; out oars; the helm!”
It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked up by
another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase is thus continued
with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus now. But the added power of
the boat did not equal the added power of the whale, for he seemed to have
treble-banked his every fin; swimming with a velocity which plainly showed, that
if now, under these circumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an
indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so
long a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing
barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as
it sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate means of
overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were soon
swayed up to their cranes—the two parts of the wrecked boat having been
previously secured by her—and then hoisting everything to her side, and stacking
her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like the
double-jointed wings of an albatross; the Pequod bore down in the leeward wake
of Moby-Dick. At the well known, methodic intervals, the whale’s glittering
spout was regularly announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be
reported as just gone down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the deck,
binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted hour expired,
his voice was heard.—“Whose is the doubloon now? D’ye see him?” and if the reply
was, No, sir! straightway he commanded them to lift him to his perch. In this
way the day wore on; Ahab, now aloft and motionless; anon, unrestingly pacing
the planks.
As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men aloft, or to
bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a still greater
breadth—thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at every turn he
passed his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon the quarter-deck, and
lay there reversed; broken bow to shattered stern. At last he paused before it;
and as in an already over-clouded sky fresh troops of clouds will sometimes sail
across, so over the old man’s face there now stole some such added gloom as
this.
Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to evince his
own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in his Captain’s mind,
he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed—“The thistle the ass refused; it
pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha!”
“What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man! did I not
know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I could swear thou wert a
poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck.”
“Aye, sir,” said Starbuck drawing near, “’tis a solemn sight; an omen, and an
ill one.”
“Omen? omen?—the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to man, they
will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives’
darkling hint.—Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is
Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab
stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his
neighbors! Cold, cold—I shiver!—How now? Aloft there! D’ye see him? Sing out for
every spout, though he spout ten times a second!”
The day was nearly done; only the hem of his golden robe was rustling. Soon, it
was almost dark, but the look-out men still remained unset.
“Can’t see the spout now, sir;—too dark”—cried a voice from the air.
“How heading when last seen?”
“As before, sir,—straight to leeward.”
“Good! he will travel slower now ’tis night. Down royals and top-gallant
stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before morning; he’s making a
passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm there! keep her full before the
wind!—Aloft! come down!—Mr. Stubb, send a fresh hand to the fore-mast head, and
see it manned till morning.”—Then advancing towards the doubloon in the
main-mast—“Men, this gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide
here till the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises him,
upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man’s; and if on that day I
shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye!
Away now!—the deck is thine, sir!”
And so saying, he placed himself half way within the scuttle, and slouching his
hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals rousing himself to see how
the night wore on.
CHAPTER 134. The Chase—Second Day.
At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh.
“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the light to
spread.
“See nothing, sir.”
“Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought for;—the
top-gallant sails!—aye, they should have been kept on her all night. But no
matter—’tis but resting for the rush.”
Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale,
continued through day into night, and through night into day, is a thing by no
means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such is the wonderful skill,
prescience of experience, and invincible confidence acquired by some great
natural geniuses among the Nantucket commanders; that from the simple
observation of a whale when last descried, they will, under certain given
circumstances, pretty accurately foretell both the direction in which he will
continue to swim for a time, while out of sight, as well as his probable rate of
progression during that period. And, in these cases, somewhat as a pilot, when
about losing sight of a coast, whose general trending he well knows, and which
he desires shortly to return to again, but at some further point; like as this
pilot stands by his compass, and takes the precise bearing of the cape at
present visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright the remote, unseen
headland, eventually to be visited: so does the fisherman, at his compass, with
the whale; for after being chased, and diligently marked, through several hours
of daylight, then, when night obscures the fish, the creature’s future wake
through the darkness is almost as established to the sagacious mind of the
hunter, as the pilot’s coast is to him. So that to this hunter’s wondrous skill,
the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all desired
purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land. And as the mighty iron
Leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known in its every pace, that,
with watches in their hands, men time his rate as doctors that of a baby’s
pulse; and lightly say of it, the up train or the down train will reach such or
such a spot, at such or such an hour; even so, almost, there are occasions when
these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep, according to the
observed humor of his speed; and say to themselves, so many hours hence this
whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have about reached this or that
degree of latitude or longitude. But to render this acuteness at all successful
in the end, the wind and the sea must be the whaleman’s allies; for of what
present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures him
he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port? Inferable from
these statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching the chase of
whales.
The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannon-ball,
missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level field.
“By salt and hemp!” cried Stubb, “but this swift motion of the deck creeps up
one’s legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two brave fellows!—Ha,
ha! Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise, on the sea,—for by
live-oaks! my spine’s a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait that leaves no dust
behind!”
“There she blows—she blows!—she blows!—right ahead!” was now the mast-head cry.
“Aye, aye!” cried Stubb, “I knew it—ye can’t escape—blow on and split your
spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your trump—blister your
lungs!—Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his watergate upon the
stream!”
And Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies of the
chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew.
Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before; these
were not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, but they
were broken up, and on all sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter
before the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by
the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past night’s suspense;
the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went
plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled
along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on
by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency
which so enslaved them to the race.
They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it
was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron,
and pitch, and hemp—yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull,
which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even
so, all the individualities of the crew, this man’s valor, that man’s fear;
guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all
directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.
The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were
outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one hand, some
reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others, shading their eyes from
the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars in full
bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still strove
through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them!
“Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?” cried Ahab, when, after the lapse
of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard. “Sway me up, men;
ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd jet that way, and then
disappears.”
It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some other
thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for hardly had Ahab
reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its pin on deck, when he
struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the air vibrate as with the
combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs
was heard, as—much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less
than a mile ahead—Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and
indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his
head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous
phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest
depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air,
and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of
seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off,
seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.
“There she breaches! there she breaches!” was the cry, as in his immeasurable
bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to Heaven. So suddenly seen
in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved against the still bluer margin of the
sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment, intolerably glittered and glared
like a glacier; and stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first
sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.
“Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!” cried Ahab, “thy hour and thy
harpoon are at hand!—Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore. The
boats!—stand by!”
Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like shooting
stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and halyards; while Ahab,
less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from his perch.
“Lower away,” he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat—a spare one, rigged
the afternoon previous. “Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine—keep away from the
boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!”
As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first assailant
himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for the three crews. Ahab’s
boat was central; and cheering his men, he told them he would take the whale
head-and-head,—that is, pull straight up to his forehead,—a not uncommon thing;
for when within a certain limit, such a course excludes the coming onset from
the whale’s sidelong vision. But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet
all three boats were plain as the ship’s three masts to his eye; the White Whale
churning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing
among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling battle on
every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him from every boat, seemed only
intent on annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made. But
skilfully manœuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained chargers in the field;
the boats for a while eluded him; though, at times, but by a plank’s breadth;
while all the time, Ahab’s unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to
shreds.
But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed and
recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three lines now
fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of themselves, warped the devoted
boats towards the planted irons in him; though now for a moment the whale drew
aside a little, as if to rally for a more tremendous charge. Seizing that
opportunity, Ahab first paid out more line: and then was rapidly hauling and
jerking in upon it again—hoping that way to disencumber it of some snarls—when
lo!—a sight more savage than the embattled teeth of sharks!
Caught and twisted—corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose harpoons and
lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came flashing and dripping up
to the chocks in the bows of Ahab’s boat. Only one thing could be done. Seizing
the boat-knife, he critically reached within—through—and then, without—the rays
of steel; dragged in the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and
then, twice sundering the rope near the chocks—dropped the intercepted fagot of
steel into the sea; and was all fast again. That instant, the White Whale made a
sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines; by so doing,
irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and Flask towards his
flukes; dashed them together like two rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach, and
then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in a boiling maelstrom, in which,
for a space, the odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and round, like
the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch.
While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out after the
revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while aslope little
Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching his legs upwards to
escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was lustily singing out for some
one to ladle him up; and while the old man’s line—now parting—admitted of his
pulling into the creamy pool to rescue whom he could;—in that wild
simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils,—Ahab’s yet unstricken boat
seemed drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires,—as, arrow-like, shooting
perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against
its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell
again—gunwale downwards—and Ahab and his men struggled out from under it, like
seals from a sea-side cave.
The first uprising momentum of the whale—modifying its direction as he struck
the surface—involuntarily launched him along it, to a little distance from the
centre of the destruction he had made; and with his back to it, he now lay for a
moment slowly feeling with his flukes from side to side; and whenever a stray
oar, bit of plank, the least chip or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his
tail swiftly drew back, and came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if
satisfied that his work for that time was done, he pushed his pleated forehead
through the ocean, and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued his
leeward way at a traveller’s methodic pace.
As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again came
bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the floating
mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at, and safely landed
them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and ankles; livid
contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable intricacies of rope;
shattered oars and planks; all these were there; but no fatal or even serious
ill seemed to have befallen any one. As with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab
was now found grimly clinging to his boat’s broken half, which afforded a
comparatively easy float; nor did it so exhaust him as the previous day’s
mishap.
But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him; as instead
of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of Starbuck, who had
thus far been the foremost to assist him. His ivory leg had been snapped off,
leaving but one short sharp splinter.
“Aye, aye, Starbuck, ’tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who he will;
and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has.”
“The ferrule has not stood, sir,” said the carpenter, now coming up; “I put good
work into that leg.”
“But no bones broken, sir, I hope,” said Stubb with true concern.
“Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!—d’ye see it.—But even with a broken
bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living bone of mine one jot more
me, than this dead one that’s lost. Nor white whale, nor man, nor fiend, can so
much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and inaccessible being. Can any lead
touch yonder floor, any mast scrape yonder roof?—Aloft there! which way?”
“Dead to leeward, sir.”
“Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest of the spare
boats and rig them—Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the boat’s crews.”
“Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir.”
“Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate! that the
unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!”
“Sir?”
“My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane—there, that shivered lance
will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet. By heaven it cannot
be!—missing?—quick! call them all.”
The old man’s hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company, the Parsee
was not there.
“The Parsee!” cried Stubb—“he must have been caught in——”
“The black vomit wrench thee!—run all of ye above, alow, cabin, forecastle—find
him—not gone—not gone!”
But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was nowhere to
be found.
“Aye, sir,” said Stubb—“caught among the tangles of your line—I thought I saw
him dragging under.”
“My line! my line? Gone?—gone? What means that little word?—What death-knell
rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry. The harpoon,
too!—toss over the litter there,—d’ye see it?—the forged iron, men, the white
whale’s—no, no, no,—blistered fool! this hand did dart it!—’tis in the
fish!—Aloft there! Keep him nailed—Quick!—all hands to the rigging of the
boats—collect the oars—harpooneers! the irons, the irons!—hoist the royals
higher—a pull on all the sheets!—helm there! steady, steady for your life! I’ll
ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but
I’ll slay him yet!”
“Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck; “never,
never wilt thou capture him, old man—In Jesus’ name no more of this, that’s
worse than devil’s madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very
leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone—all good angels
mobbing thee with warnings:—what more wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing
this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to
the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh,
oh,—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!”
“Starbuck, of late I’ve felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we
both saw—thou know’st what, in one another’s eyes. But in this matter of the
whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand—a lipless,
unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably
decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean
rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou,
underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut
down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot.
’Tis Ahab—his body’s part; but Ahab’s soul’s a centipede, that moves upon a
hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted
frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, ye’ll hear me crack; and
till ye hear that, know that Ahab’s hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye,
men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they
drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink
for evermore. So with Moby Dick—two days he’s floated—tomorrow will be the
third. Aye, men, he’ll rise once more,—but only to spout his last! D’ye feel
brave men, brave?”
“As fearless fire,” cried Stubb.
“And as mechanical,” muttered Ahab. Then as the men went forward, he muttered
on: “The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there,
concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek to drive out of others’
hearts what’s clinched so fast in mine!—The Parsee—the Parsee!—gone, gone? and
he was to go before:—but still was to be seen again ere I could perish—How’s
that?—There’s a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of
the whole line of judges:—like a hawk’s beak it pecks my brain. I’ll, I’ll solve
it, though!”
When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.
So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as on the
previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the grindstone was
heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns in the complete and
careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening their fresh weapons for the
morrow. Meantime, of the broken keel of Ahab’s wrecked craft the carpenter made
him another leg; while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed
within his scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on
its dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.
CHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day.
The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the solitary
night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the daylight
look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.
“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.
“In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that’s all. Helm there;
steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day again! were it a
new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the
first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world.
Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only
feels, feels, feels; that’s tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity.
God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness
and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for
that. And yet, I’ve sometimes thought my brain was very calm—frozen calm, this
old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turned to ice, and
shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat
must breed it; but no, it’s like that sort of common grass that will grow
anywhere, between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How
the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails
lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this
through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them,
and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!—it’s tainted.
Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I’d crawl
somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic thing,
the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest
blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that
strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab
is a braver thing—a nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body;
but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things
are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There’s a most
special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I say again,
and swear it now, that there’s something all glorious and gracious in the wind.
These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in
strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however
the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of
the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the
eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these
Trades, or something like them—something so unchangeable, and full as strong,
blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there! What d’ye see?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun! Aye, aye,
it must be so. I’ve oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, he’s chasing me
now; not I, him—that’s bad; I might have known it, too. Fool! the lines—the
harpoons he’s towing. Aye, aye, I have run him by last night. About! about! Come
down, all of ye, but the regular look outs! Man the braces!”
Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod’s quarter, so
that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced ship sailed hard
upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own white wake.
“Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw,” murmured Starbuck to himself,
as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. “God keep us, but already
my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me
that I disobey my God in obeying him!”
“Stand by to sway me up!” cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen basket. “We should
meet him soon.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” and straightway Starbuck did Ahab’s bidding, and once more Ahab
swung on high.
A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now held long
breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the weather bow,
Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three mast-heads three
shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it.
“Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On deck
there!—brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind’s eye. He’s too far off to
lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that helmsman with a
top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But let me have one more
good round look aloft here at the sea; there’s time for that. An old, old sight,
and yet somehow so young; aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, a
boy, from the sand-hills of Nantucket! The same!—the same!—the same to Noah as
to me. There’s a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They must lead
somewhere—to something else than common land, more palmy than the palms.
Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward, then; the better if
the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old mast-head! What’s this?—green?
aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab’s
head! There’s the difference now between man’s old age and matter’s. But aye,
old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my
ship? Aye, minus a leg, that’s all. By heaven this dead wood has the better of
my live flesh every way. I can’t compare with it; and I’ve known some ships made
of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital
fathers. What’s that he said? he should still go before me, my pilot; and yet to
be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing I
descend those endless stairs? and all night I’ve been sailing from him, wherever
he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more thou told’st direful truth as touching
thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good-bye,
mast-head—keep a good eye upon the whale, the while I’m gone. We’ll talk
to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and
tail.”
He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered through the
cloven blue air to the deck.
In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop’s stern, Ahab
just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the mate,—who held one
of the tackle-ropes on deck—and bade him pause.
“Starbuck!”
“Sir?”
“For the third time my soul’s ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck.”
“Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so.”
“Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck!”
“Truth, sir: saddest truth.”
“Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the flood;—and
I feel now like a billow that’s all one crested comb, Starbuck. I am old;—shake
hands with me, man.”
Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck’s tears the glue.
“Oh, my captain, my captain!—noble heart—go not—go not!—see, it’s a brave man
that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!”
“Lower away!”—cried Ahab, tossing the mate’s arm from him. “Stand by the crew!”
In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.
“The sharks! the sharks!” cried a voice from the low cabin-window there; “O
master, my master, come back!”
But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and the boat
leaped on.
Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when numbers
of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath the hull,
maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they dipped in the
water; and in this way accompanied the boat with their bites. It is a thing not
uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at
times apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover
over the banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the first
sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first
descried; and whether it was that Ahab’s crew were all such tiger-yellow
barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the sharks—a
matter sometimes well known to affect them,—however it was, they seemed to
follow that one boat without molesting the others.
“Heart of wrought steel!” murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and following
with his eyes the receding boat—“canst thou yet ring boldly to that
sight?—lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them,
open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?—For when three days
flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure the first is the
morning, the second the noon, and the third the evening and the end of that
thing—be that end what it may. Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me,
and leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant,—fixed at the top of a shudder!
Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past
is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I
seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem
clearing; but clouds sweep between—Is my journey’s end coming? My legs feel
faint; like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,—beats it yet? Stir
thyself, Starbuck!—stave it off—move, move! speak aloud!—Mast-head there! See ye
my boy’s hand on the hill?—Crazed;—aloft there!—keep thy keenest eye upon the
boats:—mark well the whale!—Ho! again!—drive off that hawk! see! he pecks—he
tears the vane”—pointing to the red flag flying at the main-truck—“Ha! he soars
away with it!—Where’s the old man now? see’st thou that sight, oh Ahab!—shudder,
shudder!”
The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast-heads—a downward
pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had sounded; but intending to be near him
at the next rising, he held on his way a little sideways from the vessel; the
becharmed crew maintaining the profoundest silence, as the head-beat waves
hammered and hammered against the opposing bow.
“Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads drive them
in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no hearse can be
mine:—and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!”
Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; then quickly
upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to
the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a subterraneous hum; and then all
held their breaths; as bedraggled with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances,
a vast form shot lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin
drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then
fell swamping back into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters
flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower
of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the marble
trunk of the whale.
“Give way!” cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward to the
attack; but maddened by yesterday’s fresh irons that corroded in him, Moby Dick
seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven. The wide
tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad white forehead, beneath the
transparent skin, looked knitted together; as head on, he came churning his tail
among the boats; and once more flailed them apart; spilling out the irons and
lances from the two mates’ boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of
their bows, but leaving Ahab’s almost without a scar.
While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks; and as the whale
swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire flank as he shot by them
again; at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round and round to the fish’s
back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the
whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of
the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes
turned full upon old Ahab.
The harpoon dropped from his hand.
“Befooled, befooled!”—drawing in a long lean breath—“Aye, Parsee! I see thee
again.—Aye, and thou goest before; and this, this then is the hearse that thou
didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of thy word. Where is the
second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those boats are useless now; repair
them if ye can in time, and return to me; if not, Ahab is enough to die—Down,
men! the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that
thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey
me.—Where’s the whale? gone down again?”
But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with the corpse he
bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter had been but a stage
in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily swimming forward; and
had almost passed the ship,—which thus far had been sailing in the contrary
direction to him, though for the present her headway had been stopped. He seemed
swimming with his utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own
straight path in the sea.
“Oh! Ahab,” cried Starbuck, “not too late is it, even now, the third day, to
desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest
him!”
Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled to
leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was sliding by the
vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck’s face as he leaned over the
rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow him, not too swiftly,
at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and
Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking
in the two staved boats which had but just been hoisted to the side, and were
busily at work in repairing them. One after the other, through the port-holes,
as he sped, he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying
themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all this; as
he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving a
nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking that the vane or flag was
gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had just gained that
perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it
to the mast.
Whether fagged by the three days’ running chase, and the resistance to his
swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some latent
deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White Whale’s way now
began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly nearing him once more;
though indeed the whale’s last start had not been so long a one as before. And
still as Ahab glided over the waves the unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so
pertinaciously stuck to the boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars,
that the blades became jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea,
at almost every dip.
“Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull on! ’tis
the better rest, the shark’s jaw than the yielding water.”
“But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!”
“They will last long enough! pull on!—But who can tell”—he muttered—“whether
these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on Ahab?—But pull on! Aye, all alive,
now—we near him. The helm! take the helm! let me pass,”—and so saying two of the
oarsmen helped him forward to the bows of the still flying boat.
At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with the
White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance—as the whale
sometimes will—and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown
off from the whale’s spout, curled round his great, Monadnock hump; he was even
thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise
high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse
into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked
into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank
against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat
over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then
clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of
the oarsmen—who foreknew not the precise instant of the dart, and were therefore
unprepared for its effects—these were flung out; but so fell, that, in an
instant two of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a
combing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man helplessly
dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.
Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, instantaneous
swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering sea. But when Ahab cried
out to the steersman to take new turns with the line, and hold it so; and
commanded the crew to turn round on their seats, and tow the boat up to the
mark; the moment the treacherous line felt that double strain and tug, it
snapped in the empty air!
“What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!—’tis whole again; oars! oars! Burst in
upon him!”
Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled round to
present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution, catching sight of the
nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it the source of all his
persecutions; bethinking it—it may be—a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he
bore down upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.
Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. “I grow blind; hands! stretch out
before me that I may yet grope my way. Is’t night?”
“The whale! The ship!” cried the cringing oarsmen.
“Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for ever too
late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I see: the ship! the
ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?”
But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the sledge-hammering
seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks burst through, and in an
instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat lay nearly level with the waves;
its half-wading, splashing crew, trying hard to stop the gap and bale out the
pouring water.
Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego’s mast-head hammer remained
suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as with a plaid, then
streamed itself straight out from him, as his own forward-flowing heart; while
Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the
down-coming monster just as soon as he.
“The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug
me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman’s fainting fit. Up
helm, I say—ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is this the end of all my bursting
prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady!
helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his
unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart.
My God, stand by me now!”
“Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help Stubb;
for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever
helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb’s own unwinking eye? And now poor
Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed
with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and
stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For
all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh!
oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there’ll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye
not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A
most mouldy and over salted death, though;—cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh,
Flask, for one red cherry ere we die!”
“Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor
mother’s drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will now come to her,
for the voyage is up.”
From the ship’s bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive; hammers, bits of
plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in their hands, just as they
had darted from their various employments; all their enchanted eyes intent upon
the whale, which from side to side strangely vibrating his predestinating head,
sent a broad band of overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed.
Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite
of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote
the ship’s starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their
faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their
bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain
torrents down a flume.
“The ship! The hearse!—the second hearse!” cried Ahab from the boat; “its wood
could only be American!”
Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel; but
turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the other bow,
but within a few yards of Ahab’s boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent.
“I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye
three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied
hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,—death-glorious
ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride
of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel
my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest
bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this
one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but
unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at
thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all
hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to
pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus,
I give up the spear!”
The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity
the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did
clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as
Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew
knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end
flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea,
disappeared in its depths.
For an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still; then turned. “The ship?
Great God, where is the ship?” Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw
her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost
masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their
once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking
lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself,
and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning,
animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest
chip of the Pequod out of sight.
But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head
of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet
visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated,
with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;—at
that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open
air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar.
A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its
natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego
there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the
hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the
submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and
so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust
upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with
his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a
living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf
beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the
sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
Epilogue “AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE” Job.
The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive
the wreck.
It so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was he whom the Fates
ordained to take the place of Ahab’s bowsman, when that bowsman assumed the
vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three men were tossed from
out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So, floating on the margin of the
ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the halfspent suction of the sunk
ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When
I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever
contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly
wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that vital
centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its
cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the
coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my
side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on
a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with
padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On
the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the
devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing
children, only found another orphan. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
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