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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