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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moby Dick; or TheWhale, by Herman Melville
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Title: Moby Dick; or The Whale
Author: Herman Melville
Release Date: December 25, 2008 [EBook #2701] LastUpdated: December 3, 2017
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKMOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE ***
Produced by Daniel Lazarus, Jonesey, and David Widger
MOBY-DICK;
or, THE WHALE.
By Herman Melville
CONTENTS
1
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.
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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.
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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.
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CHAPTER 50. Ahabs Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.
CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.
CHAPTER 53. The Gam.
CHAPTER 54. The Town-Hos 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; inSheet-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. Stubbs Supper.
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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 Jeroboams Story.
CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.
CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; andThen Have a Talk over Him.
CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whales HeadContrasted View.
CHAPTER 75. The Right Whales HeadContrasted 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.
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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.
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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 Whales Skeleton.
CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.
CHAPTER 105. Does the Whales MagnitudeDiminish?Will He Perish?
CHAPTER 106. Ahabs 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.
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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 FirstNight 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.
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CHAPTER 130. The Hat.
CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
CHAPTER 132. The Symphony.
CHAPTER 133. The ChaseFirst Day.
CHAPTER 134. The ChaseSecond Day.
CHAPTER 135. The Chase.Third Day.
Epilogue
Original Transcribers Notes:
This text is a combination of etexts, one from the now-defunct ERIS project at Virginia Tech and one fromProject Gutenbergs archives. The proofreaders of thisversion are indebted to The University of Adelaide Libraryfor preserving the Virginia Tech version. The resultingetext was compared with a public domain hard copyversion of the text.
ETYMOLOGY.
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a GrammarSchool.)
The pale Usherthreadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain;I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons
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and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockinglyembellished with all the gay flags of all the known nationsof the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; itsomehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
While you take in hand to school others, and to teach themby what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue,leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almostalone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliverthat which is not true. _Hackluyt._
WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. _hval_. This animal is namedfrom roundness or rolling; for in Dan. _hvalt_ is arched orvaulted. _Websters Dictionary._
WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut.and Ger. _Wallen_; A.S. _Walw-ian_, to roll, to wallow._Richardsons Dictionary._
, _Hebrew_. , _Greek_. CETUS, _Latin_. WHL, _Anglo-Saxon_. HVALT, _Danish_. WAL, _Dutch_. HWAL,_Swedish_. WHALE, _Icelandic_. WHALE, _English_.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 andgrub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to havegone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the
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earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whaleshe could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred orprofane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least,take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, howeverauthentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology.Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, aswell as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solelyvaluable or entertaining, as affording a glancing birdseye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought,fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations andgenerations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whosecommentator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallowtribe which no wine of this world will ever warm; andfor whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; butwith whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say tothem bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and innot altogether unpleasant sadnessGive it up, Sub-Subs!For by how much the more pains ye take to pleasethe world, by so much the more shall ye for ever gothankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Courtand the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears andhie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for yourfriends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pamperedGabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here
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ye strike but splintered hearts togetherthere, ye shall strikeunsplinterable glasses!
EXTRACTS.
And God created great whales. _Genesis_.
Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One wouldthink the deep to be hoary. _Job_.
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow upJonah. _Jonah_.
There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hastmade to play therein. _Psalms_.
In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strongsword, shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, evenLeviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay thedragon that is in the sea. _Isaiah_.
And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaosof this monsters mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down itgoes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his, andperisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch. _HollandsPlutarchs Morals_.
The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishesthat are: among which the Whales and Whirlpooles calledBalaene, take up as much in length as four acres or arpensof land. _Hollands Pliny_.
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Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, whenabout sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters ofthe sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a mostmonstrous size.... This came towards us, open-mouthed,raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea beforehim into a foam. _Tookes Lucian_. _The True History_.
He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales, which had bones of very great value for theirteeth, of which he brought some to the king.... The bestwhales were catched in his own country, of which somewere forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that hewas one of six who had killed sixty in two days. _Otheror Others verbal narrative taken down from his mouth byKing Alfred, A.D._ 890.
And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel,that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monsters (whales)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 is not Leviathandescribed by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patientJob. _Rabelais_.
This whales liver was two cartloads. _Stowes Annals_.
The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe likeboiling pan. _Lord Bacons Version of the Psalms_.
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Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork wehave received nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat,insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil will beextracted out of one whale. _Ibid_. _History of Life andDeath_.
The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inwardbruise. _King Henry_.
Very like a whale. _Hamlet_.
Which to secure, no skill of leachs art Mote him availle,but to returne againe To his wounds worker, that with lowlydart, Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine, Likeas the wounded whale to shore flies thro the maine. _TheFaerie Queen_.
Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can ina peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil. _Sir WilliamDavenant. Preface to Gondibert_.
What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since thelearned Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saithplainly, _Nescio quid sit_. _Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Cetiand the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E._
Like Spencers Talus with his modern flail He threatensruin with his ponderous tail. ... Their fixed javlins in hisside he wears, And on his back a grove of pikes appears._Wallers Battle of the Summer Islands_.
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By art is created that great Leviathan, called aCommonwealth or State(in Latin, Civitas) which is but anartificial man. _Opening sentence of Hobbess Leviathan_.
Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it hadbeen a sprat in the mouth of a whale. _Pilgrims Progress_.
That sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his worksCreated hugest that swim the ocean stream. _ParadiseLost_.
There Leviathan, Hugest of living creatures, in the deepStretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seemsa moving land; and at his gills Draws in, and at his breathspouts out a sea. _Ibid_.
The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and havea sea of oil swimming in them. _Fullers Profane and HolyState_.
So close behind some promontory lie The huge Leviathanto attend their prey, And give no chance, but swallow inthe fry, Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way._Drydens Annus Mirabilis_.
While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, theycut off his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shoreas it will come; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteenfeet water. _Thomas Edges Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen,in Purchas_.
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In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean,and in wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipesand vents, which nature has placed on their shoulders. _SirT. Herberts Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll_.
Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they wereforced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fearthey should run their ship upon them. _Schoutens SixthCircumnavigation_.
We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship calledThe Jonas-in-the-Whale.... Some say the whale cant openhis mouth, but that is a fable.... They frequently climb upthe masts to see whether they can see a whale, for the firstdiscoverer has a ducat for his pains.... I was told of a whaletaken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of herrings inhis belly.... One of our harpooneers told me that he caughtonce a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over. _AVoyage to Greenland, A.D._ 1671. _Harris Coll_.
Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno1652, one eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kindcame in, which (as I was informed), besides a vast quantityof oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it standfor a gate in the garden of Pitferren. _Sibbalds Fife andKinross_.
Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill thisSperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that
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sort that was killed by any man, such is his fierceness andswiftness. _Richard Straffords Letter from the Bermudas.Phil. Trans. A.D._ 1668.
Whales in the sea Gods voice obey. _N. E. Primer_.
We saw also abundance of large whales, there being morein those southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one;than we have to the northward of us. _Captain CowleysVoyage round the Globe, A.D._ 1729.
... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended withsuch an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder ofthe brain. _Ulloas South America_.
To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, We trust theimportant charge, the petticoat. Oft have we known thatseven-fold fence to fail, Tho stuffed with hoops and armedwith ribs of whale. _Rape of the Lock_.
If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, withthose that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find theywill appear contemptible in the comparison. The whale isdoubtless the largest animal in creation. _Goldsmith, Nat.Hist_.
If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would makethem speak like great whales. _Goldsmith to Johnson_.
In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock,
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but it was found to be a dead whale, which some Asiaticshad killed, and were then towing ashore. They seemed toendeavor to conceal themselves behind the whale, in orderto avoid being seen by us. _Cooks Voyages_.
The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. Theystand in so great dread of some of them, that when out atsea they are afraid to mention even their names, and carrydung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articlesof the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify andprevent their too near approach. _Uno Von Troils Letterson Bankss and Solanders Voyage to Iceland in_ 1772.
The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, isan active, fierce animal, and requires vast address andboldness in the fishermen. _Thomas Jeffersons WhaleMemorial to the French minister in_ 1778.
And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? _EdmundBurkes reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery_.
Spaina great whale stranded on the shores of Europe._Edmund Burke_. (_somewhere_.)
A tenth branch of the kings ordinary revenue, said tobe grounded on the consideration of his guarding andprotecting the seas from pirates and robbers, is the rightto _royal_ fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these,
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when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are theproperty of the king. _Blackstone_.
Soon to the sport of death the crews repair: Rodmondunerring oer his head suspends The barbed steel, and everyturn attends. _Falconers Shipwreck_.
Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, And rocketsblew self driven, To hang their momentary fire Around thevault 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 Queens Visit to London_.
Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heartat a stroke, with immense velocity. _John Hunters accountof the dissection of a whale_. (_A small sized one_.)
The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the mainpipe of the water-works at London Bridge, and the waterroaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior inimpetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whalesheart. _Paleys Theology_.
The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet._Baron Cuvier_.
In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but didnot take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered
20
with them. _Colnetts Voyage for the Purpose of Extendingthe Spermaceti Whale Fishery_.
In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered anddived, in play, in chace, in battle, Fishes of every colour,form, and kind; Which language cannot paint, and marinerHad never seen; from dread Leviathan To insect millionspeopling every wave: Gatherd in shoals immense, likefloating islands, Led by mysterious instincts throughthat waste And trackless region, though on every sideAssaulted by voracious enemies, Whales, sharks, andmonsters, armd in front or jaw, With swords, saws, spiralhorns, or hooked fangs. _Montgomerys World before theFlood_.
Io! Paean! Io! sing. To the finny peoples king. Not amightier whale than this In the vast Atlantic is; Not afatter fish than he, Flounders round the Polar Sea. _CharlesLambs Triumph of the Whale_.
In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hillobserving the whales spouting and sporting with eachother, when one observed: therepointing to the seais agreen pasture where our childrens grand-children will gofor bread. _Obed Macys History of Nantucket_.
I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gatewayin the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whales jawbones. _Hawthornes Twice Told Tales_.
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She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, whohad been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no lessthan 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 Christianwould wish to look at. Hes a raal oil-butt, that fellow!_Coopers Pilot_.
The papers were brought in, and we saw in the BerlinGazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there._Eckermanns Conversations with Goethe_.
My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter? I answered, wehave been stove by a whale. _Narrative of the Shipwreckof the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket, which was attackedand finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in the PacificOcean_. _By Owen Chace of Nantucket, first mate of saidvessel. New York_, 1821.
A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, The wind waspiping free; Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlightpale, 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 engagedin the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to10,440 yards or nearly six English miles....
Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air,
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which, cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance ofthree or four miles. _Scoresby_.
Mad with the agonies he endures from these freshattacks, the infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over;he rears his enormous head, and with wide expandedjaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes at theboats with his head; they are propelled before him withvast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.... It isa matter of great astonishment that the consideration ofthe habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial pointof view, so important an animal (as the Sperm Whale)should have been so entirely neglected, or should haveexcited so little curiosity among the numerous, and manyof them competent observers, that of late years, must havepossessed the most abundant and the most convenientopportunities of witnessing their habitudes. _ThomasBeales History of the Sperm Whale_, 1839.
The Cachalot (Sperm Whale) is not only better armed thanthe True Whale (Greenland or Right Whale) in possessinga formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, butalso more frequently displays a disposition to employthese weapons offensively and in manner at once so artful,bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded asthe most dangerous to attack of all the known species of thewhale tribe. _Frederick Debell Bennetts Whaling VoyageRound the Globe_, 1840.
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October 13. There she blows, was sung out from the mast-head. Where away? demanded the captain. Three pointsoff 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! Thereshe breaches! Sing out! sing out every time! Ay Ay, sir!There she blows! therethere_thar_ she blowsbowesbo-o-os! How far off? Two miles and a half. Thunder andlightning! so near! Call all hands. _J. Ross BrownesEtchings of a Whaling Cruize_. 1846.
The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurredthe horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged tothe 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 thefurious monster at length rushed on the boat; himself andcomrades only being preserved by leaping into the waterwhen they saw the onset was inevitable. _MissionaryJournal of Tyerman and Bennett_.
Nantucket itself, said Mr. Webster, is a very strikingand peculiar portion of the National interest. There is apopulation of eight or nine thousand persons living herein the sea, adding largely every year to the Nationalwealth by the boldest and most persevering industry._Report of Daniel Websters Speech in the U. S. Senate,
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on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater atNantucket_. 1828.
The whale fell directly over him, and probably killedhim in a moment. _The Whale and his Captors, orThe Whalemans Adventures and the Whales Biography,gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the CommodorePreble_. _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_ (_themutineer_), _by his brother, William Comstock. AnotherVersion of the whale-ship Globe narrative_.
The voyages of the Dutch and English to the NorthernOcean, in order, if possible, to discover a passage throughit to India, though they failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale. _McCullochs CommercialDictionary_.
These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only tobound forward again; for now in laying open the hauntsof the whale, the whalemen seem to have indirectly hitupon new clews to that same mystic North-West Passage._From_ _Something_ _unpublished_.
It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the oceanwithout being struck by her near appearance. The vesselunder short sail, with look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly
25
scanning the wide expanse around them, has a totallydifferent air from those engaged in regular voyage._Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex_.
Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere mayrecollect having seen large curved bones set upright in theearth, either to form arches over gateways, or entrances toalcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that thesewere the ribs of whales. _Tales of a Whale Voyager to theArctic Ocean_.
It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of thesewhales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possessionof the savages enrolled among the crew. _NewspaperAccount of the Taking and Retaking of the Whale-ShipHobomack_.
It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whalingvessels (American) few ever return in the ships on boardof which they departed. _Cruise in a Whale Boat_.
Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shotup perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale. _MiriamCoffin or the Whale Fisherman_.
The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, howyou would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with themere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail. _AChapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks_.
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On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales)probably male and female, slowly swimming, one afterthe other, within less than a stones throw of the shore(Terra Del Fuego), over which the beech tree extended itsbranches. _Darwins Voyage of a Naturalist_.
Stern all! exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head,he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whaleclose to the head of the boat, threatening it with instantdestruction;Stern all, for your lives! _Wharton the WhaleKiller_.
So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While thebold harpooneer is striking the whale! _Nantucket Song_.
Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale In his oceanhome will be A giant in might, where might is right, AndKing of the boundless sea. _Whale Song_.
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
Call me Ishmael. Some years agonever mind how longpreciselyhaving little or no money in my purse, andnothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought Iwould sail about a little and see the watery part of theworld. It is a way I have of driving off the spleenand regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myselfgrowing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp,drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself
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involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, andbringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especiallywhenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, thatit requires a strong moral principle to prevent me fromdeliberately stepping into the street, and methodicallyknocking peoples hats offthen, I account it high time toget to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistoland ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himselfupon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothingsurprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men intheir degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly thesame feelings towards the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, beltedround by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefscommercesurrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streetstake you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery,where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled bybreezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight ofland. 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 likesilent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands uponthousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Someleaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from
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China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to geta still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen;of week days pent up in lath and plastertied to counters,nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Arethe green fields gone? What do they here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for thewater, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothingwill content them but the extremest limit of the land;loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses willnot suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as theypossibly can without falling in. And there they standmilesof themleagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes andalleys, streets and avenuesnorth, east, south, and west. Yethere they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue ofthe needles of the compasses of all those ships attract themthither?
Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high landof lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one itcarries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a poolin the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveriesstand thatman on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infalliblylead 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 suppliedwith a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows,meditation and water are wedded for ever.
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But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest,shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romanticlandscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chiefelement he employs? There stand his trees, each with ahollow 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. Deepinto distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching tooverlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-sideblue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and thoughthis pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon thisshepherds head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherdseye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Govisit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores ofmiles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilieswhat is theone charm wanting?Waterthere is not a drop of waterthere! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would youtravel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poorpoet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfulsof silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which hesadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip toRockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthyboy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time orother crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as apassenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration,when first told that you and your ship were now out of sightof land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Whydid the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother
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of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. Andstill deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, whobecause he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image hesaw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. Butthat same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans.It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and thisis the key to it all.
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to seawhenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and beginto be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have itinferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as apassenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is buta rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengersget sea-sickgrow quarrelsomedont sleep of nightsdo notenjoy themselves much, as a general thing;no, I never goas a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do Iever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. Iabandon the glory and distinction of such offices to thosewho like them. For my part, I abominate all honorablerespectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kindwhatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take careof myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs,schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,thoughI confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being asort of officer on ship-boardyet, somehow, I never fanciedbroiling fowls;though once broiled, judiciously buttered,and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
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will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of abroiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotingsof the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted riverhorse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in theirhuge bake-houses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right beforethe mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to theroyal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some,and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper ina May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasantenough. It touches ones sense of honor, particularly if youcome of an old established family in the land, the VanRensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And morethan 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 transitionis a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor,and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoicsto enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears offin time.
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain ordersme to get a broom and sweep down the decks? Whatdoes that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in thescales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangelGabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptlyand respectfully obey that old hunks in that particularinstance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then,
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however the old sea-captains may order me abouthoweverthey may thump and punch me about, I have thesatisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybodyelse is one way or other served in much the same wayeitherin a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and sothe universal thump is passed round, and all hands shouldrub each others shoulder-blades, and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they makea point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they neverpay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On thecontrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there isall the difference in the world between paying and beingpaid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortableinfliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.But _being paid_,what will compare with it? The urbaneactivity with which a man receives money is reallymarvellous, considering that we so earnestly believemoney to be the root of all earthly ills, and that onno account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! howcheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of thewholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck.For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalentthan winds from astern (that is, if you never violate thePythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodoreon the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second handfrom the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it
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first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonaltylead their leaders in many other things, at the same timethat the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was thatafter having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, Ishould now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage;this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has theconstant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, andinfluences me in some unaccountable wayhe can betteranswer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on thiswhaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme ofProvidence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came inas a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensiveperformances. I take it that this part of the bill must haverun something like this:
_Grand Contested Election for the Presidency ofthe United States._ WHALING VOYAGE BY ONEISHMAEL. BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stagemanagers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby partof a whaling voyage, when others were set down formagnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easyparts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farcesthoughI cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall allthe circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springsand motives which being cunningly presented to me undervarious disguises, induced me to set about performing thepart I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it
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was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill anddiscriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea ofthe great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysteriousmonster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distantseas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable,nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attendingmarvels 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 forme, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for thingsremote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarouscoasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceivea horror, and could still be social with itwould they letmesince it is but well to be on friendly terms with all theinmates of the place one lodges in.
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyagewas welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-worldswung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to mypurpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul,endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of themall, 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 itunder my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific.
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Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived inNew Bedford. It was a Saturday night in December. Muchwas I disappointed upon learning that the little packet forNantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reachingthat place would offer, till the following Monday.
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties ofwhaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embarkon their voyage, it may as well be related that I, forone, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was madeup to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, becausethere was a fine, boisterous something about everythingconnected with that famous old island, which amazinglypleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of latebeen gradually monopolising the business of whaling, andthough in this matter poor old Nantucket is now muchbehind her, yet Nantucket was her great originalthe Tyreof this Carthage;the place where the first dead Americanwhale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket didthose aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out incanoes to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but fromNantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop putforth, partly laden with imported cobblestonesso goes thestoryto throw at the whales, in order to discover when theywere nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?
Now having a night, a day, and still another night followingbefore me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for mydestined port, it became a matter of concernment where
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I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly coldand cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxiousgrapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought upa few pieces of silver,So, wherever you go, Ishmael, saidI to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary streetshouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towardsthe north with the darkness towards the southwherever inyour wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, mydear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and dont be tooparticular.
With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the signof The Crossed Harpoonsbut it looked too expensive andjolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows ofthe Sword-Fish Inn, there came such fervent rays, thatit seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice frombefore the house, for everywhere else the congealed frostlay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,ratherweary for me, when I struck my foot against the flintyprojections, because from hard, remorseless service thesoles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Tooexpensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one momentto watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the soundsof the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I atlast; dont you hear? get away from before the door; yourpatched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I nowby instinct followed the streets that took me waterward,
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for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriestinns.
Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, oneither hand, and here and there a candle, like a candlemoving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, ofthe last day of the week, that quarter of the town provedall but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky lightproceeding from a low, wide building, the door of whichstood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it weremeant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thingI did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha!thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, arethese ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But TheCrossed Harpoons, and The Sword-Fish?this, then mustneeds be the sign of The Trap. However, I picked myselfup and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and openeda second, interior door.
It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. Ahundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer;and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a bookin a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the preachers textwas about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping andwailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, mutteredI, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of TheTrap!
Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far
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from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air;and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with awhite painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straightjet of misty spray, and these words underneathThe SpouterInn:Peter Coffin.
Coffin?Spouter?Rather ominous in that particularconnexion, thought I. But it is a common name inNantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is anemigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, andthe place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and thedilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it mighthave been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district,and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort ofcreak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheaplodgings, and the best of pea coffee.
It was a queer sort of placea gable-ended old house, oneside palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stoodon a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous windEuroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it didabout poor Pauls tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless,is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, withhis feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. In judgingof that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon, says an oldwriterof whose works I possess the only copy extantitmaketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest outat it from a glass window where the frost is all on theoutside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless
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window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which thewight Death is the only glazier. True enough, thought I,as this passage occurred to my mindold black-letter, thoureasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this bodyof mine is the house. What a pity they didnt stop up thechinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little linthere and there. But its too late to make any improvementsnow. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and thechips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarusthere, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for hispillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, hemight plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob intohis mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuousEuroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silkenwrapper(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh!What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northernlights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climesof everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege ofmaking my own summer with my own coals.
But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue handsby holding them up to the grand northern lights? Wouldnot Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he notfar rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of theequator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, inorder to keep out this frost?
Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on thecurbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful
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than that an iceberg should be moored to one of theMoluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar inan ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a presidentof a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears oforphans.
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let usscrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of aplace this Spouter may be.
CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you foundyourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks ofsome condemned old craft. On one side hung a verylarge oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every waydefaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which youviewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series ofsystematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors,that you could any way arrive at an understanding ofits purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades andshadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitiousyoung artist, in the time of the New England hags, hadendeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dintof much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeatedponderings, and especially by throwing open the littlewindow towards the back of the entry, you at last come to
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the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might notbe altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long,limber, portentous, black mass of something hoveringin 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 nervousman distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly frozeyou to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourselfto find out what that marvellous painting meant. Everand anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dartyou through.Its the Black Sea in a midnight gale.Its theunnatural combat of the four primal elements.Its a blastedheath.Its a Hyperborean winter scene.Its the breaking-upof the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fanciesyielded to that one portentous something in the picturesmidst. _That_ once found out, and all the rest were plain.But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a giganticfish? even the great leviathan himself?
In fact, the artists design seemed this: a final theory of myown, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of manyaged 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 threedismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale,
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purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormousact of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over witha heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Somewere thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivorysaws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; andone was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping roundlike the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wonderedwhat monstrous cannibal and savage could ever havegone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifyingimplement. Mixed with these were rusty old whalinglances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some werestoried weapons. With this once long lance, now wildlyelbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteenwhales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoonsolike a corkscrew nowwas flung in Javan seas, and run awaywith by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape ofBlanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like arestless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelledfull forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump.
Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-archedwaycut through what in old times must have been a greatcentral chimney with fireplaces all roundyou enter thepublic room. A still duskier place is this, with such lowponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planksbeneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some
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old crafts 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 coveredwith cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gatheredfrom this wide worlds remotest nooks. Projecting fromthe further angle of the room stands a dark-looking denthebara rude attempt at a right whales head. Be that how itmay, there stands the vast arched bone of the whales jaw,so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within areshabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles,flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like anothercursed 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 pourshis poison. Though true cylinders withoutwithin, thevillanous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapereddownwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridiansrudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpadsgoblets. Fill to _this_ mark, and your charge is but a penny;to _this_ a penny more; and so on to the full glassthe CapeHorn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling.
Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamengathered about a table, examining by a dim light diversspecimens of _skrimshander_. I sought the landlord, andtelling him I desired to be accommodated with a room,received for answer that his house was fullnot a bed
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unoccupied. But avast, he added, tapping his forehead, youhaint no objections to sharing a harpooneers blanket, haveye? I spose you are goin a-whalin, so youd better get usedto that sort of thing.
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; thatif I should ever do so, it would depend upon who theharpooneer might be, and that if he (the landlord) reallyhad no other place for me, and the harpooneer was notdecidedly objectionable, why rather than wander furtherabout a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put upwith the half of any decent mans blanket.
I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?you wantsupper? Supperll be ready directly.
I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like abench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was stillfurther adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over anddiligently working away at the space between his legs. Hewas trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didntmake much headway, I thought.
At last some four or five of us were summoned to our mealin an adjoining room. It was cold as Icelandno fire at allthelandlord said he couldnt afford it. Nothing but two dismaltallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain tobutton up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups ofscalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was
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of the most substantial kindnot only meat and potatoes,but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! Oneyoung fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself tothese dumplings in a most direful manner.
My boy, said the landlord, youll have the nightmare to adead sartainty.
Landlord, I whispered, that aint the harpooneer is it?
Oh, no, said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, theharpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eatsdumplings, he donthe eats nothing but steaks, and he likesem rare.
The devil he does, says I. Where is that harpooneer? Is hehere?
Hell be here afore long, was the answer.
I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of thisdark complexioned harpooneer. At any rate, I made up mymind 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 resolvedto spend the rest of the evening as a looker on.
Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up,the landlord cried, Thats the Grampuss crew. I seed her
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reported in the offing this morning; a three years voyage,and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now well have the latest newsfrom the Feegees.
A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the doorwas flung open, and in rolled a wild set of marinersenough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and withtheir heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarnedand ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemedan eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landedfrom their boat, and this was the first house they entered.No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for thewhales mouththe barwhen the wrinkled little old Jonah,there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers allround. One complained of a bad cold in his head, uponwhich Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin andmolasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for allcolds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how longstanding, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, oron the weather side of an ice-island.
The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generallydoes even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea,and they began capering about most obstreperously.
I observed, however, that one of them held somewhataloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil thehilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet uponthe whole he refrained from making as much noise as
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the rest. This man interested me at once; and since thesea-gods had ordained that he should soon become myshipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as thisnarrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a littledescription of him. He stood full six feet in height, withnoble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I haveseldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeplybrown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by thecontrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floatedsome reminiscences that did not seem to give him muchjoy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner,and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of thosetall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia.When the revelry of his companions had mounted to itsheight, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw nomore of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In afew minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates,and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite withthem, they raised a cry of Bulkington! Bulkington! wheresBulkington? and darted out of the house in pursuit of him.
It was now about nine oclock, and the room seemingalmost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began tocongratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred tome just previous to the entrance of the seamen.
No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you woulda good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I dont
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know how it is, but people like to be private when they aresleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknownstranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and thatstranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitelymultiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailorshould sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; forsailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelorKings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in oneapartment, but you have your own hammock, and coveryourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your ownskin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more Iabominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fairto presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen,as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainlynone of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it wasgetting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be homeand going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble inupon me at midnighthow could I tell from what vile holehe had been coming?
Landlord! Ive changed my mind about that harpooneer.Ishant sleep with him. Ill try the bench here.
Just as you please; Im sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth fora mattress, and its a plaguy rough board herefeeling of theknots and notches. But wait a bit, Skrimshander; Ive got a
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carpenters plane there in the barwait, I say, and Ill make yesnug enough. So saying he procured the plane; and with hisold silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorouslyset to planing away at my bed, the while grinning likean ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last theplane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. Thelandlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him forheavens sake to quitthe bed was soft enough to suit me, andI did not know how all the planing in the world could makeeider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavingswith another grin, and throwing them into the great stovein the middle of the room, he went about his business, andleft me in a brown study.
I now took the measure of the bench, and found that itwas a foot too short; but that could be mended with achair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other benchin the room was about four inches higher than the planedoneso there was no yoking them. I then placed the firstbench lengthwise along the only clear space against thewall, leaving a little interval between, for my back to settledown in. But I soon found that there came such a draughtof cold air over me from under the sill of the window,that this plan would never do at all, especially as anothercurrent from the rickety door met the one from the window,and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds inthe immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought tospend the night.
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The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop,couldnt I steal a march on himbolt his door inside, andjump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violentknockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon secondthoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what thenext morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, theharpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready toknock me down!
Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possiblechance of spending a sufferable night unless in some otherpersons bed, I began to think that after all I might becherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknownharpooneer. Thinks I, Ill wait awhile; he must be droppingin before long. Ill have a good look at him then, andperhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows afteralltheres no telling.
But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones,twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of myharpooneer.
Landlord! said I, what sort of a chap is hedoes he alwayskeep such late hours? It was now hard upon twelve oclock.
The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, andseemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond mycomprehension. No, he answered, generally hes an earlybirdairley to bed and airley to riseyes, hes the bird what
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catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, yousee, and I dont see what on airth keeps him so late, unless,may be, he cant sell his head.
Cant sell his head?What sort of a bamboozingly storyis this you are telling me? getting into a towering rage.Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer isactually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or ratherSunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?
Thats precisely it, said the landlord, and I told him hecouldnt sell it here, the markets overstocked.
With what? shouted I.
With heads to be sure; aint there too many heads in theworld?
I tell you what it is, landlord, said I quite calmly, youdbetter stop spinning that yarn to meIm not green.
May be not, taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick,but I rayther guess youll be done _brown_ if that ereharpooneer hears you a slanderin his head.
Ill break it for him, said I, now flying into a passion againat this unaccountable farrago of the landlords.
Its broke aready, said he.
Broke, said I_broke_, do you mean?
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Sartain, and thats the very reason he cant sell it, I guess.
Landlord, said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Heclain a snow-stormlandlord, stop whittling. You and I mustunderstand one another, and that too without delay. I cometo your house and want a bed; you tell me you can onlygive me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certainharpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have notyet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifyingand exasperating stories tending to beget in me anuncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you designfor my bedfellowa sort of connexion, landlord, which isan intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. Inow demand of you to speak out and tell me who and whatthis harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respectssafe to spend the night with him. And in the first place,you will be so good as to unsay that story about sellinghis head, which if true I take to be good evidence that thisharpooneer is stark mad, and Ive no idea of sleeping with amadman; and you, sir, _you_ I mean, landlord, _you_, sir,by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would therebyrender yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.
Wall, said the landlord, fetching a long breath, thats a purtylong sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. Butbe easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin youof has just arrived from the south seas, where he boughtup a lot of balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, youknow), and hes sold all on em but one, and that one hes
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trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrows Sunday, and itwould not do to be sellin human heads about the streetswhen folks is goin to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday,but I stopped him just as he was goin out of the door withfour heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a stringof inions.
This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountablemystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had noidea of fooling mebut at the same time what could I thinkof a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night cleaninto the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal businessas selling the heads of dead idolators?
Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerousman.
He pays reglar, was the rejoinder. But come, its gettingdreadful late, you had better be turning flukesits a nice bed;Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced.Theres plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed; itsan almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal usedto put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I gota dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow,Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking hisarm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldnt do. Come along here, Illgive ye a glim in a jiffy; and so saying he lighted a candleand held it towards me, offering to lead the way. But Istood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, he
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exclaimed I vum its Sundayyou wont see that harpooneerto-night; hes come to anchor somewherecome along then;_do_ come; _wont_ ye come?
I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs wewent, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as aclam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed,almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers tosleep abreast.
There, said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy oldsea chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and centretable; there, make yourself comfortable now, and goodnight to ye. I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he haddisappeared.
Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed.Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutinytolerably well. I then glanced round the room; and besidesthe bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniturebelonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls,and a papered fireboard representing a man striking awhale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, therewas a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floorin one corner; also a large seamans bag, containing theharpooneers wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk.Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hookson the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standingat the head of the bed.
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But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held itclose to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried everyway possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusionconcerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a largedoor mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinklingtags something like the stained porcupine quills round anIndian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle ofthis mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos.But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer wouldget into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christiantown in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try it, andit weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonlyshaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as thoughthis mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainyday. 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 outof 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 thinkingabout this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat.After thinking some time on the bed-side, I got up and tookoff my monkey jacket, and then stood in the middle of theroom thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a littlemore in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very coldnow, half undressed as I was, and remembering what thelandlord said about the harpooneers not coming home atall that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, butjumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing
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out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself tothe care of heaven.
Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs orbroken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about agood deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last Islid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made agood offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavyfootfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light comeinto 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, andresolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a lightin one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in theother, the stranger entered the room, and without lookingtowards the bed, placed his candle a good way off fromme on the floor in one corner, and then began workingaway at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spokeof as being in the room. I was all eagerness to see hisface, but he kept it averted for some time while employedin unlacing the bags mouth. This accomplished, however,he turned roundwhen, good heavens! what a sight! Sucha face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here andthere stuck over with large blackish looking squares. Yes,its just as I thought, hes a terrible bedfellow; hes been ina fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from thesurgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face
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so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not besticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks.They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knewnot what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truthoccurred to me. I remembered a story of a white manawhaleman toowho, falling among the cannibals, had beentattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in thecourse of his distant voyages, must have met with a similaradventure. And what is it, thought I, after all! Its only hisoutside; 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 ofthe squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothingbut a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard ofa hot suns tanning a white man into a purplish yellowone. However, I had never been in the South Seas; andperhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effectsupon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passingthrough me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticedme at all. But, after some difficulty having opened hisbag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulledout a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with thehair on. Placing these on the old chest in the middle of theroom, he then took the New Zealand heada ghastly thingenoughand crammed it down into the bag. He now tookoff his hata new beaver hatwhen I came nigh singing outwith fresh surprise. There was no hair on his headnone tospeak of at leastnothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up
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on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked forall the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the strangerstood between me and the door, I would have bolted outof it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner.
Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out ofthe window, but it was the second floor back. I am nocoward, but what to make of this head-peddling purplerascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance isthe parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed andconfounded about the stranger, I confess I was now asmuch afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who hadthus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I wasso afraid of him that I was not game enough just then toaddress him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerningwhat seemed inexplicable in him.
Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, andat last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these coveredparts of him were checkered with the same squares as hisface; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares;he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years War, and justescaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more,his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark greenfrogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It wasnow quite plain that he must be some abominable savageor other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas,and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to thinkof it. A peddler of heads tooperhaps the heads of his own
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brothers. He might take a fancy to mineheavens! look atthat tomahawk!
But there was no time for shuddering, for now thesavage went about something that completely fascinatedmy attention, and convinced me that he must indeedbe a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, ordreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, hefumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curiouslittle deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactlythe colour of a three days old Congo baby. Rememberingthe embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this blackmanikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner.But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glisteneda good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it mustbe nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved tobe. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, andremoving the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. Thechimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty,so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriatelittle shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.
I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hiddenimage, feeling but ill at ease meantimeto see what wasnext to follow. First he takes about a double handfulof shavings out of his grego pocket, and places themcarefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuiton top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled
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the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after manyhasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawalsof his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching thembadly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; thenblowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a politeoffer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did notseem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never movedhis lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by stillstranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemedto be praying in a sing-song or else singing some paganpsalmody or other, during which his face twitched aboutin the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing thefire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and baggedit again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were asportsman bagging a dead woodcock.
All these queer proceedings increased myuncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strongsymptoms of concluding his business operations, andjumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, nowor never, before the light was put out, to break the spell inwhich I had so long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, wasa fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, heexamined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it tothe light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out greatclouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light wasextinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between
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his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could nothelp it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment hebegan feeling me.
Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled awayfrom him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoeveror whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me getup and light the lamp again. But his guttural responsessatisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended mymeaning.
Who-e debel you?he at last saidyou no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e. And so saying the lighted tomahawk beganflourishing about me in the dark.
Landlord, for Gods 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! againgrowled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of thetomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till Ithought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, atthat moment the landlord came into the room light in hand,and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.
Dont be afraid now, said he, grinning again, Queequeghere wouldnt harm a hair of your head.
Stop your grinning, shouted I, and why didnt you tell methat that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?
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I thought ye knowd it;didnt I tell ye, he was a peddlinheads around town?but turn flukes again and go to sleep.Queequeg, look hereyou sabbee me, I sabbeeyou this mansleepe youyou sabbee?
Me sabbee plentygrunted Queequeg, puffing away at hispipe and sitting up in bed.
You gettee in, he added, motioning to me with histomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He reallydid this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitableway. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooingshe was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal.Whats all this fuss I have been making about, thought I tomyselfthe mans a human being just as I am: he has just asmuch reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Bettersleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Landlord, said I, tell him to stash his tomahawk there, orpipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, inshort, and I will turn in with him. But I dont fancy havinga man smoking in bed with me. Its dangerous. Besides, Iaint insured.
This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, andagain politely motioned me to get into bedrolling over toone side as much as to sayI wont touch a leg of ye.
Good night, landlord, said I, you may go.
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I turned in, and never slept better in my life.
CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
Upon waking next morning about daylight, I foundQueequegs arm thrown over me in the most loving andaffectionate manner. You had almost thought I had beenhis wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full ofodd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and thisarm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretanlabyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of oneprecise shadeowing I suppose to his keeping his arm atsea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt sleevesirregularly rolled up at various timesthis same arm of his,I say, looked for all the world like a strip of that samepatchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm didwhen I first awoke, I could hardly tell it from the quilt, theyso blended their hues together; and it was only by the senseof weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg washugging me.
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them.When I was a child, I well remember a somewhat similarcircumstance that befell me; whether it was a reality or adream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance wasthis. I had been cutting up some caper or otherI think it wastrying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweepdo a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehowor other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to
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bed supperless,my mother dragged me by the legs out ofthe chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was onlytwo oclock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longestday in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. Butthere was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little roomin the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possibleso as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between thesheets.
I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hoursmust elapse before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteenhours 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 thesound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse andworseat last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in mystockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenlythrew myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particularfavour to give me a good slippering for my misbehaviour;anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such anunendurable length of time. But she was the best andmost conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to goto 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 Imust have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; andslowly waking from ithalf steeped in dreamsI opened myeyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped in
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outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running throughall my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was tobe 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 handbelonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side. For whatseemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with themost awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yetever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch,the horrid spell would be broken. I knew not how thisconsciousness at last glided away from me; but wakingin the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and fordays and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself inconfounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to thisvery hour, I often puzzle myself with it.
Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations atfeeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar, intheir strangeness, to those which I experienced on wakingup and seeing Queequegs pagan arm thrown round me.But at length all the past nights events soberly recurred,one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive tothe comical predicament. For though I tried to move hisarmunlock his bridegroom claspyet, sleeping as he was, hestill hugged me tightly, as though naught but death shouldpart us twain. I now strove to rouse himQueequeg!buthis only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my neckfeeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felta slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there
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lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savages side, as if itwere a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thoughtI; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, witha cannibal and a tomahawk! Queequeg!in the name ofgoodness, Queequeg, wake! At length, by dint of muchwriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations uponthe unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in thatmatrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt;and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all overlike a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat upin bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing hiseyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to bethere, though a dim consciousness of knowing somethingabout me seemed slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, Ilay 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 thecharacter of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were,reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, andby certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that,if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me todress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself.Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is avery civilized overture; but, the truth is, these savageshave an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; itis marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay thisparticular compliment to Queequeg, because he treatedme with so much civility and consideration, while I was
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guilty of great rudeness; staring at him from the bed, andwatching all his toilette motions; for the time my curiositygetting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man likeQueequeg you dont see every day, he and his ways werewell worth unusual regarding.
He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, avery tall one, by the by, and thenstill minus his trowsershehunted up his boots. What under the heavens he did itfor, I cannot tell, but his next movement was to crushhimselfboots in hand, and hat onunder the bed; when,from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferredhe was hard at work booting himself; though by no lawof propriety that I ever heard of, is any man requiredto be private when putting on his boots. But Queequeg,do you see, was a creature in the transition stageneithercaterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilizedto show off his outlandishness in the strangest possiblemanners. His education was not yet completed. He was anundergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilized,he very probably would not have troubled himself withboots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage, henever would have dreamt of getting under the bed to putthem on. At last, he emerged with his hat very much dentedand crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking andlimping about the room, as if, not being much accustomedto boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide onesprobablynot made to order eitherrather pinched and tormented himat the first go off of a bitter cold morning.
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Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window,and that the street being very narrow, the house oppositecommanded a plain view into the room, and observingmore 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 toiletsomewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloonsas soon as possible. He complied, and then proceededto wash himself. At that time in the morning anyChristian would have washed his face; but Queequeg,to my amazement, contented himself with restricting hisablutions to his chest, arms, and hands. He then donned hiswaistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water and commencedlathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept hisrazor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from thebed corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes thehead, whets it a little on his boot, and striding up to the bitof mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, orrather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, thisis using Rogerss best cutlery with a vengeance. AfterwardsI wondered the less at this operation when I came to knowof what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and howexceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept.
The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudlymarched out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilotmonkey jacket, and sporting his harpoon like a marshalsbaton.
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CHAPTER 5. Breakfast.
I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-roomaccosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherishedno malice towards him, though he had been skylarkingwith me not a little in the matter of my bedfellow.
However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rathertoo scarce a good thing; the mores the pity. So, if any oneman, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joketo anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfullyallow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And theman that has anything bountifully laughable about him, besure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had beendropping in the night previous, and whom I had not asyet had a good look at. They were nearly all whalemen;chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, andsea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths,and harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawnycompany, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, allwearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.
You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had beenashore. This young fellows healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost asmusky; he cannot have been three days landed from hisIndian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades
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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 tarriedwhole weeks ashore. But who could show a cheek likeQueequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed likethe Andes western slope, to show forth in one array,contrasting climates, zone by zone.
Grub, ho! now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, andin we went to breakfast.
They say that men who have seen the world, therebybecome quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed incompany. Not always, though: Ledyard, the great NewEngland traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of allmen, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. Butperhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn bydogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk onan empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which wasthe sum of poor Mungos performancesthis kind of travel,I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a highsocial polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing isto be had anywhere.
These reflections just here are occasioned by thecircumstance that after we were all seated at the table, andI was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling;to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintaineda profound silence. And not only that, but they looked
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embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many ofwhom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded greatwhales on the high seasentire strangers to themand duelledthem dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at asocial breakfast tableall of the same calling, all of kindredtasteslooking round as sheepishly at each other as thoughthey had never been out of sight of some sheepfold amongthe Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears,these timid warrior whalemen!
But as for Queequegwhy, Queequeg sat there amongthemat the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool asan icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breeding.His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified hisbringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and usingit there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it,to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grapplingthe beefsteaks towards him. But _that_ was certainly verycoolly done by him, and every one knows that in mostpeoples estimation, to do anything coolly is to do itgenteelly.
We will not speak of all Queequegs peculiarities here;how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied hisundivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, thatwhen breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into thepublic room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sittingthere quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparablehat on, when I sallied out for a stroll.
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CHAPTER 6. The Street.
If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of sooutlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating amongthe polite society of a civilized town, that astonishmentsoon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll throughthe streets of New Bedford.
In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaportwill frequently offer to view the queerest lookingnondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway andChestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimesjostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknownto Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the ApolloGreen, live Yankees have often scared the natives. ButNew Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In theselast-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in NewBedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners;savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bonesunholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare.
But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs,Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and Brighggians, and,besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft whichunheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sightsstill more curious, certainly more comical. There weeklyarrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and NewHampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in thefishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows
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who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axeand snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as theGreen Mountains whence they came. In some things youwould think them but a few hours old. Look there! thatchap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hatand swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt andsheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou-wester and abombazine cloak.
No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bredoneI mean a downright bumpkin dandya fellow that, inthe dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin glovesfor fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandylike this takes it into his head to make a distinguishedreputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you shouldsee the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport.In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to hiswaistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the firsthowling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, andall, 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 uswhalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps havebeen in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. Asit is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one,they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest
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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 andwine. The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite ofthis, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in NewBedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this oncescraggy scoria of a country?
Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons roundyonder lofty mansion, and your question will be answered.Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came fromthe Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, theywere harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom ofthe sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?
In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowersto their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a fewporpoises a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to seea brilliant wedding; for, they say, they have reservoirs ofoil in every house, and every night recklessly burn theirlengths in spermaceti candles.
In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of finemapleslong avenues of green and gold. And in August,high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts,candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their taperingupright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotentis art; which in many a district of New Bedford has
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superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barrenrefuse rocks thrown aside at creations final day.
And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like theirown red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereasthe fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlightin the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom oftheirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me theyoung girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweetheartssmell them miles off shore, as though they were drawingnigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.
CHAPTER 7. The Chapel.
In this same New Bedford there stands a WhalemansChapel, and few are the moody fishermen, shortly boundfor the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sundayvisit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.
Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied outupon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear,sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself inmy shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought myway against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a smallscattered congregation of sailors, and sailors wives andwidows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at timesby the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemedpurposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silentgrief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had
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not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men andwomen sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, withblack borders, masoned into the wall on either side thepulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, butI do not pretend to quote:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT,Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Nearthe Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, _November_ 1_st_,1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HISSISTER.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG,WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTERCANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG,Forming one of the boats crews OF THE SHIP ELIZAWho were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shoreGround in the PACIFIC, _December_ 31_st_, 1839. THISMARBLE Is here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAINEZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows of his boat was killedby a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, _August_ 3_d_,1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HISWIDOW.
Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket,I seated myself near the door, and turning sideways wassurprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the
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solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze ofincredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage wasthe 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 thewall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whosenames appeared there were now among the congregation,I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in thefishery, and so plainly did several women present wear thecountenance 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 tabletssympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.
Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass;who standing among flowers can sayhere, _here_ lies mybeloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosomslike these. What bitter blanks in those black-borderedmarbles which cover no ashes! What despair in thoseimmovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbiddeninfidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith,and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelesslyperished without a grave. As well might those tablets standin the cave of Elephanta as here.
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankindare included; why it is that a universal proverb says ofthem, that they tell no tales, though containing moresecrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his
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name who yesterday departed for the other world, weprefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do notthus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indiesof this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companiespay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal,unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet liesantique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how itis that we still refuse to be comforted for those who wenevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss;why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; whereforebut the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a wholecity. All these things are not without their meanings.
But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and evenfrom these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eveof a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets,and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful dayread the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me.Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehowI grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark,fine chance for promotion, it seemsaye, a stove boat willmake me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in thisbusiness of whalinga speechlessly quick chaotic bundlingof a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we havehugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinksthat what they call my shadow here on earth is my truesubstance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we
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are too much like oysters observing the sun through thewater, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. Infact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. Andtherefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stoveboat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jovehimself cannot.
CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.
I had not been seated very long ere a man of acertain venerable robustness entered; immediately as thestorm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, aquick 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 thewhalemen, among whom he was a very great favourite.He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, butfor many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry.At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in thehardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old agewhich seems merging into a second flowering youth, foramong all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certainmild gleams of a newly developing bloomthe springverdure peeping forth even beneath Februarys snow. Noone having previously heard his history, could for the firsttime behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest,because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiaritiesabout him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he
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had led. When he entered I observed that he carried noumbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, forhis tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his greatpilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floorwith 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 longangle with the floor, seriously contract the already smallarea of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted uponthe hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit withouta stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like thoseused in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of awhaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsomepair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, beingitself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany colour,the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapelit was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting foran instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both handsgrasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, FatherMapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mountedthe steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usuallythe case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope,
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only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step therewas a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it hadnot escaped me that however convenient for a ship, thesejoints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For Iwas not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining theheight, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit,deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the wholewas deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his littleQuebec.
I pondered some time without fully comprehending thereason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a widereputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could notsuspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks ofthe stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reasonfor this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize somethingunseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physicalisolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time,from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, forreplenished with the meat and wine of the word, to thefaithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containingstrongholda lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well ofwater within the walls.
But the side ladder was not the only strange featureof the place, borrowed from the chaplains former sea-farings. Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand ofthe pulpit, the wall which formed its back was adornedwith a large painting representing a gallant ship beating
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against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks andsnowy breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, fromwhich beamed forth an angels face; and this bright faceshed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ships tosseddeck, something like that silver plate now inserted intothe Victorys plank where Nelson fell. Ah, noble ship, theangel seemed to say, beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, andbear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; theclouds are rolling offserenest 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. Itspanelled front was in the likeness of a ships bluff bows,and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scrollwork, fashioned after a ships fiddle-headed beak.
What could be more full of meaning?for the pulpit is everthis earths foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; thepulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of Godsquick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear theearliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair orfoul is first invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the worldsa ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; andthe pulpit is its prow.
CHAPTER 9. The Sermon.
Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming
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authority ordered the scattered people to condense.Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboardlarboardgangway to starboard! Midships! midships!
There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among thebenches, and a still slighter shuffling of womens shoes,and all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher.
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpits bows, foldedhis large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closedeyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemedkneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.
This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continualtolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a foginsuch 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 dismalgloom, While all Gods sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift medeepening down to doom.
I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains andsorrows 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 scarcebelieve him mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints Nomore the whale did me confine.
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With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphinborne; Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone The face ofmy Deliverer God.
My song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyfulhour; I give the glory to my God, His all the mercy and thepower.
Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled highabove the howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; thepreacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, andat last, folding his hand down upon the proper page, said:Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapterof JonahAnd God had prepared a great fish to swallow upJonah.
Shipmates, this book, containing only four chaptersfouryarnsis one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable ofthe Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does Jonahsdeep sealine sound! what a pregnant lesson to us is thisprophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the fishsbelly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feelthe floods surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpybottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the seais about us! But _what_ is this lesson that the book of Jonahteaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lessonto us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of theliving God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because itis a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened
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fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, andfinally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinnersamong men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in hiswilful disobedience of the command of Godnever mindnow what that command was, or how conveyedwhich hefound a hard command. But all the things that God wouldhave us do are hard for us to doremember thatand hence,he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. Andif we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in thisdisobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeyingGod consists.
With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still furtherflouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks thata ship made by men will carry him into countries whereGod does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth.He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a shipthats bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hithertounheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish couldhave been no other city than the modern Cadiz. Thats theopinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates?Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonahcould possibly have sailed in those ancient days, whenthe Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa,the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coastof the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadizmore than two thousand miles to the westward from that,just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then,
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shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide fromGod? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthyof all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulkingfrom his God; prowling among the shipping like a vileburglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemenin those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of somethingwrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck. Howplainly hes a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise,or carpet-bag,no friends accompany him to the wharf withtheir adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he findsthe Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; andas he steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all thesailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the goods,to mark the strangers evil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vainhe tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain essays hiswretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure themariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome butstill serious way, one whispers to the otherJack, hes robbeda widow; or, Joe, do you mark him; hes a bigamist; or,Harry lad, I guess hes the adulterer that broke jail in oldGomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers fromSodom. Another runs to read the bill thats stuck againstthe spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored,offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension ofa parricide, and containing a description of his person.He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all hissympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared
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to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, andsummoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so muchthe more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected;but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best ofit; and when the sailors find him not to be the man thatis advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into thecabin.
Whos there? cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedlymaking out his papers for the CustomsWhos there? Oh!how that harmless question mangles Jonah! For the instanthe almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. I seek a passagein this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir? Thus far thebusy Captain had not looked up to Jonah, though the mannow stands before him; but no sooner does he hear thathollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. We sailwith the next coming tide, at last he slowly answered, stillintently eyeing him. No sooner, sir?Soon enough for anyhonest man that goes a passenger. Ha! Jonah, thats anotherstab. But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent.Ill sail with ye,he says,the passage money how much isthat?Ill pay now. For it is particularly written, shipmates,as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, thathe paid the fare thereof ere the craft did sail. And takenwith the context, this is full of meaning.
Now Jonahs Captain, shipmates, was one whosediscernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidityexposes it only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates,
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sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without apassport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at allfrontiers. So Jonahs Captain prepares to test the length ofJonahs purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges himthrice the usual sum; and its assented to. Then the Captainknows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same time resolvesto help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonahfairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still molestthe Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Nota forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down forhis passage. Point out my state-room, Sir, says Jonah now,Im travel-weary; I need sleep. Thou lookest like it, says theCaptain, theres thy room. Jonah enters, and would lock thedoor, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishlyfumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, andmutters something about the doors of convicts cells beingnever allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dustyas he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds thelittle state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead.The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contractedhole, sunk, too, beneath the ships water-line, Jonah feelsthe heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when thewhale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels wards.
Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lampslightly oscillates in Jonahs room; and the ship, heelingover towards the wharf with the weight of the last balesreceived, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion,still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the
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room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but madeobvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. Thelamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berthhis tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus farsuccessful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance.But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appalshim. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.Oh! so my conscience hangs in me! he groans, straightupwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are allin crookedness!
Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to hisbed, still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him,as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so muchthe more strike his steel tags into him; as one who in thatmiserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish,praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; andat last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stuporsteals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, forconscience is the wound, and theres naught to staunch it;so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonahs prodigy ofponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.
And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts offher cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheeredship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship,my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! thecontraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bearthe wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is
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like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all handsto lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clatteringoverboard; when the wind is shrieking, and the men areyelling, and every plank thunders with trampling feet rightover Jonahs head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleepshis hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea,feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heedshe the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now withopen mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates,Jonah was gone down into the sides of the shipa berth inthe cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But thefrightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his deadear, What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise! Startled from hislethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, andstumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out uponthe sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a pantherbillow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thusleaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaringfore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowningwhile yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon shows heraffrighted face from the steep gullies in the blacknessoverhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointinghigh upward, but soon beat downward again towards thetormented deep.
Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In allhis cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainlyknown. The sailors mark him; more and more certain growtheir suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test the truth,
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by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they fall tocasting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest wasupon them. The lot is Jonahs; that discovered, then howfuriously they mob him with their questions. What is thineoccupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? Whatpeople? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poorJonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, andwhere from; whereas, they not only receive an answer tothose questions, but likewise another answer to a questionnot put by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced fromJonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.
I am a Hebrew, he criesand thenI fear the Lord the Godof Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land! Fearhim, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the LordGod _then!_ Straightway, he now goes on to make a fullconfession; whereupon the mariners became more andmore appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yetsupplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knewthe darkness of his deserts,when wretched Jonah cries outto them to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for heknew that for _his_ sake this great tempest was upon them;they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other meansto save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howlslouder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, withthe other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.
And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and droppedinto the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out
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from the east, and the sea is still, as Jonah carries downthe gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goesdown in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotionthat he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seethinginto the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon hisprison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fishsbelly. But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson.For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for directdeliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just.He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himselfwith this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will stilllook towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, istrue and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, butgrateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was thisconduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance ofhim from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not placeJonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do placehim before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but ifyou do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah.
While he was speaking these words, the howling of theshrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add newpower to the preacher, who, when describing Jonahs sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chestheaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemedthe warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolledaway from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from
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his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with aquick fear that was strange to them.
There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned overthe leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standingmotionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemedcommuning with God and himself.
But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowinghis head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliesthumility, he spake these words:
Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both hishands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky lightmay be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners;and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greatersinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come downfrom this mast-head and sit on the hatches there whereyou sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of youreads _me_ that other and more awful lesson which Jonahteaches to _me_, as a pilot of the living God. How beingan anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, andbidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in theears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostilityhe should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escapehis duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God iseverywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen,God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed himdown to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore
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him along into the midst of the seas, where the eddyingdepths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and theweeds were wrapped about his head, and all the wateryworld of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyondthe reach of any plummetout of the belly of hellwhenthe whale grounded upon the oceans utmost bones, eventhen, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet whenhe cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from theshuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale camebreeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and allthe delights of air and earth; and vomited out Jonah uponthe dry land; when the word of the Lord came a secondtime; and Jonah, bruised and beatenhis ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the oceanJonahdid the Almightys 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 thatpilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whomthis world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him whoseeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewedthem into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please ratherthan to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more tohim than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courtsnot dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, eventhough to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who,as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others ishimself a castaway!
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He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment;then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy inhis eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,Butoh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, thereis a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, thanthe bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truckhigher than the kelson is low? Delight is to hima far, farupward, and inward delightwho against the proud godsand commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his owninexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yetsupport him, when the ship of this base treacherous worldhas gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who givesno quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sinthough he pluck it out from under the robes of Senatorsand Judges. Delight,top-gallant delight is to him, whoacknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and isonly a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all thewaves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob cannever shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternaldelight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to layhim down, can say with his final breathO Father!chieflyknown to me by Thy rodmortal or immortal, here I die. Ihave striven to be Thine, more than to be this worlds, ormine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; forwhat is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?
He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, coveredhis face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till allthe people had departed, and he was left alone in the place.
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CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.
Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I foundQueequeg there quite alone; he having left the Chapelbefore the benediction some time. He was sitting on abench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, andin one hand was holding close up to his face that little negroidol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knifegently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming tohimself in his heathenish way.
But being now interrupted, he put up the image; andpretty soon, going to the table, took up a large bookthere, and placing it on his lap began counting thepages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth pageas Ifanciedstopping a moment, looking vacantly around him,and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle ofastonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty;seeming to commence at number one each time, as thoughhe could not count more than fifty, and it was only bysuch a large number of fifties being found together, thathis astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.
With much interest I sat watching him. Savage thoughhe was, and hideously marred about the faceat least tomy tastehis countenance yet had a something in it whichwas by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul.Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw thetraces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes,
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fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit thatwould dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, therewas a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which evenhis uncouthness could not altogether maim. He lookedlike a man who had never cringed and never had had acreditor. 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 Iwill not venture to decide; but certain it was his head wasphrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous,but it reminded me of General Washingtons head, as seenin the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularlygraded retreating slope from above the brows, whichwere likewise very projecting, like two long promontoriesthickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washingtoncannibalistically developed.
Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretendingmeanwhile to be looking out at the storm fromthe casement, he never heeded my presence, nevertroubled himself with so much as a single glance; butappeared wholly occupied with counting the pages ofthe marvellous book. Considering how sociably we hadbeen sleeping together the night previous, and especiallyconsidering the affectionate arm I had found thrown overme upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifferenceof his very strange. But savages are strange beings; attimes you do not know exactly how to take them. At
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first they are overawing; their calm self-collectedness ofsimplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed alsothat Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little,with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advanceswhatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circleof his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular;yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almostsublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand milesfrom home, by the way of Cape Horn, that iswhich wasthe only way he could get therethrown among people asstrange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter;and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving theutmost serenity; content with his own companionship;always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of finephilosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there wassuch a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers,we mortals should not be conscious of so living or sostriving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man giveshimself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like thedyspeptic old woman, he must have broken his digester.
As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burninglow, in that mild stage when, after its first intensity haswarmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at;the evening shades and phantoms gathering round thecasements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain;the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began tobe sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me.No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were
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turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage hadredeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking anature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies andbland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see;yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towardshim. And those same things that would have repelled mostothers, they were the very magnets that thus drew me.Ill try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindnesshas proved but hollow courtesy. I drew my bench nearhim, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing mybest to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticedthese advances; but presently, upon my referring to hislast nights hospitalities, he made out to ask me whetherwe were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat Ithought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.
We then turned over the book together, and I endeavoredto explain to him the purpose of the printing, and themeaning of the few pictures that were in it. Thus I soonengaged his interest; and from that we went to jabberingthe best we could about the various outer sights to be seenin this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and,producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered mea puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wildpipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us.
If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me inthe Pagans breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had,soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take
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to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; andwhen our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead againstmine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforthwe were married; meaning, in his countrys phrase, thatwe were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, ifneed should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame offriendship would have seemed far too premature, a thingto be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those oldrules would not apply.
After supper, and another social chat and smoke, wewent to our room together. He made me a presentof his embalmed head; took out his enormous tobaccowallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out somethirty 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. Iwas going to remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouringthem into my trowsers pockets. I let them stay. Hethen went about his evening prayers, took out his idol,and removed the paper fireboard. By certain signs andsymptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to joinhim; but well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated amoment whether, in case he invited me, I would complyor otherwise.
I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosomof the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could Iunite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of
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wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you supposenow, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven andearthpagans and all includedcan possibly be jealous ofan insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But whatis worship?to do the will of God_that_ is worship. Andwhat is the will of God?to do to my fellow man what Iwould have my fellow man to do to me_that_ is the willof God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what doI wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unitewith me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship.Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, Imust turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped propup the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit withQueequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed hisnose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, atpeace with our own consciences and all the world. But wedid not go to sleep without some little chat.
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed forconfidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife,they say, there open the very bottom of their souls toeach other; and some old couples often lie and chat overold times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our heartshoneymoon, lay I and Queequega cosy, loving pair.
CHAPTER 11. Nightgown.
We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at shortintervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately
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throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and thendrawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easywere 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 wasyet some way down the future.
Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that ourrecumbent position began to grow wearisome, and by littleand little we found ourselves sitting up; the clothes welltucked around us, leaning against the head-board with ourfour knees drawn up close together, and our two nosesbending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. We felt very nice and snug, the more so since itwas 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 smallpart of you must be cold, for there is no quality in thisworld that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothingexists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are allover comfortable, and have been so a long time, then youcannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, likeQueequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or thecrown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, inthe general consciousness you feel most delightfully andunmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartmentshould never be furnished with a fire, which is one of theluxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort
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of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket betweenyou and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Thenthere you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of anarctic crystal.
We had been sitting in this crouching manner for sometime, 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 alwayskeeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentratethe snugness of being in bed. Because no man can everfeel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as ifdarkness were indeed the proper element of our essences,though light be more congenial to our clayey part. Uponopening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasantand self-created darkness into the imposed and coarseouter gloom of the unilluminated twelve-oclock-at-night,I experienced a disagreeable revulsion. Nor did I at allobject to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were bestto strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; andbesides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffsfrom his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had feltsuch a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed thenight before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices growwhen love once comes to bend them. For now I likednothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me,even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serenehousehold joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for
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the landlords policy of insurance. I was only alive to thecondensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipeand a blanket with a real friend. With our shaggy jacketsdrawn about our shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawkfrom one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a bluehanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of thenew-lit lamp.
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savageaway to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spokeof his native island; and, eager to hear his history, I beggedhim to go on and tell it. He gladly complied. Though atthe time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words, yetsubsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiarwith his broken phraseology, now enable me to present thewhole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton Igive.
CHAPTER 12. Biographical.
Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away tothe West and South. It is not down in any map; true placesnever are.
When a new-hatched savage running wild about his nativewoodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats,as if he were a green sapling; even then, in Queequegsambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see somethingmore of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His
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father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest;and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were thewives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellentblood in his veinsroyal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear,by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutoredyouth.
A Sag Harbor ship visited his fathers bay, and Queequegsought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, havingher full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; andnot all the King his fathers influence could prevail. ButQueequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddledoff to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must passthrough when she quitted the island. On one side was acoral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered withmangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hidinghis canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prowseaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand;and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he dartedout; gained her side; with one backward dash of his footcapsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; andthrowing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled aring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hackedin pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard;suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg wasthe son of a King, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by
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his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visitChristendom, the captain at last relented, and told himhe might make himself at home. But this fine youngsavagethis sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captainscabin. They put him down among the sailors, and madea whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter content to toilin the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained noseeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain thepower of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For atbottomso he told mehe was actuated by a profound desireto learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to makehis people still happier than they were; and more thanthat, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices ofwhalemen soon convinced him that even Christians couldbe both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than allhis fathers heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor;and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on toNantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in _that_place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he,its a wicked world in all meridians; Ill die a pagan.
And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived amongthese Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk theirgibberish. Hence the queer ways about him, though nowsome time from home.
By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose goingback, and having a coronation; since he might nowconsider his father dead and gone, he being very old and
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feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; andadded that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians,had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiledthrone of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, hesaid, he would return,as soon as he felt himself baptizedagain. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about,and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had madea harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of asceptre now.
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose,touching his future movements. He answered, to go tosea again, in his old vocation. Upon this, I told himthat whaling was my own design, and informed him ofmy intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the mostpromising port for an adventurous whaleman to embarkfrom. He at once resolved to accompany me to that island,ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, thesame boat, the same mess with me, in short to share myevery hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into thePotluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; forbesides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was anexperienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be ofgreat usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorantof the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted withthe sea, as known to merchant seamen.
His story being ended with his pipes last dying puff,Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead against
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mine, and blowing out the light, we rolled over from eachother, this way and that, and very soon were sleeping.
CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.
Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmedhead to a barber, for a block, I settled my own andcomrades bill; using, however, my comrades money.The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemedamazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which hadsprung up between me and Queequegespecially as PeterCoffins cock and bull stories about him had previously somuch alarmed me concerning the very person whom I nowcompanied with.
We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things,including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequegs canvassack and hammock, away we went down to the Moss, thelittle Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. Aswe were going along the people stared; not at Queequegso muchfor they were used to seeing cannibals like himin their streets,but at seeing him and me upon suchconfidential terms. But we heeded them not, going alongwheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now andthen stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs.I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thingwith him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did notfind their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied,that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a
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particular affection for his own harpoon, because it wasof assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, anddeeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In short, likemany inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmersmeadows armed with their own scythesthough in no wiseobliged to furnish themeven so, Queequeg, for his ownprivate reasons, preferred his own harpoon.
Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me afunny 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 chestto his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about thethingthough in truth he was entirely so, concerning theprecise way in which to manage the barrowQueequeg putshis chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders thebarrow and marches up the wharf. Why, said I, Queequeg,you might have known better than that, one would think.Didnt the people laugh?
Upon this, he told me another story. The people of hisisland of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feastsexpress the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a largestained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowlalways forms the great central ornament on the braidedmat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchantship once touched at Rokovoko, and its commanderfromall accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at
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least for a sea captainthis commander was invited to thewedding feast of Queequegs sister, a pretty young princessjust turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guestswere assembled at the brides bamboo cottage, this Captainmarches in, and being assigned the post of honor, placedhimself over against the punchbowl, and between the HighPriest and his majesty the King, Queequegs father. Gracebeing said,for those people have their grace as well aswethough Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at suchtimes look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary,copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver ofall feastsGrace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens thebanquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; thatis, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers intothe bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeinghimself placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony,and thinking himselfbeing Captain of a shipas havingplain precedence over a mere island King, especiallyin the Kings own housethe Captain coolly proceeds towash his hands in the punchbowl;taking it I suppose fora huge finger-glass. Now, said Queequeg, what you tinknow?Didnt our people laugh?
At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on boardthe schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnetriver. 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
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upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wanderingwhale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; whilefrom 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; thatone most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins asecond; and a second ended, only begins a third, and soon, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, theintolerableness of all earthly effort.
Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxedfresh; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from herbows, as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed thatTartar air!how I spurned that turnpike earth!that commonhighway all over dented with the marks of slavish heelsand hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity ofthe sea which will permit no records.
At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drinkand reel with me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart; heshowed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew; and ouroffing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast; duckedand dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sidewaysleaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling likea wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes inland tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene were we, aswe stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some timewe did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers,a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow
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beings should be so companionable; as though a whiteman were anything more dignified than a whitewashednegro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there,who, by their intense greenness, must have come from theheart and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one ofthese young saplings mimicking him behind his back. Ithought the bumpkins hour of doom was come. Droppinghis harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms,and by an almost miraculous dexterity and strength, senthim high up bodily into the air; then slightly tapping hisstern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with burstinglungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his backupon him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to mefor a puff.
Capting! Capting! yelled the bumpkin, running towardsthat officer; Capting, Capting, heres the devil.
Hallo, _you_ sir, cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea,stalking up to Queequeg, what in thunder do you mean bythat? Dont 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 anunearthly expression of disdain, ah! him bevy small-e fish-
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e; Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-ebig whale!
Look you, roared the Captain, Ill kill-e _you_, youcannibal, 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 forthe Captain to mind his own eye. The prodigious strainupon the main-sail had parted the weather-sheet, andthe 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 toattempt snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed madness.It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in oneticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the pointof snapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothingseemed capable of being done; those on deck rushedtowards the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it werethe lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst of thisconsternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, andcrawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of arope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flingingthe other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it sweptover his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that waytrapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into thewind, and while the hands were clearing away the sternboat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the
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side with a long living arc of a leap. For three minutesor more he was seen swimming like a dog, throwing hislong arms straight out before him, and by turns revealinghis brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I lookedat the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to besaved. The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himselfperpendicularly from the water, Queequeg, now took aninstants glance around him, and seeming to see just howmatters were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutesmore, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and withthe other dragging a lifeless form. The boat soon pickedthem up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands votedQueequeg 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 seemto think that he at all deserved a medal from the Humaneand Magnanimous Societies. He only asked for waterfreshwatersomething to wipe the brine off; that done, he puton dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against thebulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed tobe saying to himselfIts a mutual, joint-stock world, in allmeridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.
CHAPTER 14. Nantucket.
Nothing more happened on the passage worthy thementioning; so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in
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Nantucket.
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See whata real corner of the world it occupies; how it standsthere, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystonelighthouse. Look at ita mere hillock, and elbow of sand;all beach, without a background. There is more sand therethan you would use in twenty years as a substitute forblotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you thatthey have to plant weeds there, they dont grow naturally;that they import Canada thistles; that they have to sendbeyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; thatpieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits ofthe true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstoolsbefore their houses, to get under the shade in summertime; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three bladesin a days walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes,something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are soshut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded,and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to theirvery chairs and tables small clams will sometimes befound adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But theseextravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.
Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how thisisland was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend.In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the NewEngland coast, and carried off an infant Indian in histalons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne
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out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to followin the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, aftera perilous passage they discovered the island, and therethey found an empty ivory casket,the poor little Indiansskeleton.
What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on abeach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They firstcaught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, theywaded 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 thiswatery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigationsround it; peeped in at Behrings Straits; and in allseasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with themightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; mostmonstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan,salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness ofunconscious power, that his very panics are more to bedreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these seahermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun andconquered the watery world like so many Alexanders;parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, andIndian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland.Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba uponCanada; let the English overswarm all India, and hangout their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this
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terraqueous globe are the Nantucketers. For the sea ishis; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamenhaving but a right of way through it. Merchant shipsare but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts;even pirates and privateers, though following the sea ashighwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, otherfragments of the land like themselves, without seekingto draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. TheNantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; healone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to andfro ploughing it as his own special plantation. _There_is his home; _there_ lies his business, which a Noahsflood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all themillions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks inthe prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them aschamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows notthe land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells likeanother world, more strangely than the moon would toan Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset foldsher wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so atnightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls hissails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillowrush herds of walruses and whales.
CHAPTER 15. Chowder.
It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss camesnugly to anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; sowe could attend to no business that day, at least none
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but a supper and a bed. The landlord of the Spouter-Innhad recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of theTry Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of oneof the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover hehad assured us that Cousin Hosea, as he called him, wasfamous for his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted thatwe could not possibly do better than try pot-luck at theTry Pots. But the directions he had given us about keepinga yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we openeda white church to the larboard, and then keeping that onthe larboard hand till we made a corner three points tothe starboard, and that done, then ask the first man wemet where the place was: these crooked directions of hisvery much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset,Queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouseour first pointof departuremust be left on the larboard hand, whereas Ihad 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 toinquire the way, we at last came to something which therewas no mistaking.
Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspendedby asses ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an old doorway. The horns of thecross-trees were sawed off on the other side, so that thisold top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. PerhapsI was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but
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I could not help staring at this gallows with a vaguemisgiving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazedup to the two remaining horns; yes, _two_ of them, onefor Queequeg, and one for me. Its ominous, thinks I. ACoffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whalingport; tombstones staring at me in the whalemens 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 freckledwoman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing inthe porch of the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there,that looked much like an injured eye, and carrying on abrisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen shirt.
Get along with ye, said she to the man, or Ill be combingye!
Come on, Queequeg, said I, all right. Theres Mrs. Hussey.
And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home,but leaving Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to allhis affairs. Upon making known our desires for a supperand a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing further scolding forthe present, ushered us into a little room, and seating us at atable spread with the relics of a recently concluded repast,turned round to us and saidClam or Cod?
Whats that about Cods, maam? said I, with muchpoliteness.
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Clam or Cod? she repeated.
A clam for supper? a cold clam; is _that_ what you mean,Mrs. Hussey? says I, but thats a rather cold and clammyreception in the winter time, aint it, Mrs. Hussey?
But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man inthe purple Shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, andseeming to hear nothing but the word clam, Mrs. Husseyhurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, andbawling out clam for two, disappeared.
Queequeg, said I, do you think that we can make out asupper for us both on one clam?
However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen servedto belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. Butwhen that smoking chowder came in, the mystery wasdelightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me.It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger thanhazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and saltedpork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched withbutter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, andin particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing foodbefore him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent,we despatched it with great expedition: when leaningback a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Husseys clamand cod announcement, I thought I would try a little
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experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered theword cod with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In afew moments the savoury steam came forth again, but witha different flavor, and in good time a fine cod-chowder wasplaced before us.
We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in thebowl, thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here hasany effect on the head? Whats that stultifying saying aboutchowder-headed people? But look, Queequeg, aint that alive eel in your bowl? Wheres your harpoon?
Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which welldeserved its name; for the pots there were always boilingchowders. 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 thehouse was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore apolished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Husseyhad his account books bound in superior old shark-skin.There was a fishy flavor to the milk, too, which I couldnot at all account for, till one morning happening to takea stroll along the beach among some fishermens boats,I saw Hoseas brindled cow feeding on fish remnants,and marching along the sand with each foot in a codsdecapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.
Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directionsfrom Mrs. Hussey concerning the nearest way to bed; but,
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as Queequeg was about to precede me up the stairs, thelady reached forth her arm, and demanded his harpoon;she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. Why not? saidI; every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoonbut whynot? Because its dangerous, says she. Ever since youngStiggs coming from that unfortnt vyge of his, when hewas gone four years and a half, with only three barrelsof _ile_, was found dead in my first floor back, with hisharpoon in his side; ever since then I allow no boarders totake sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night. So,Mr. Queequeg (for she had learned his name), I will justtake this here iron, and keep it for you till morning. Butthe chowder; clam or cod to-morrow for breakfast, men?
Both, says I; and lets have a couple of smoked herring byway of variety.
CHAPTER 16. The Ship.
In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to mysurprise and no small concern, Queequeg now gave me tounderstand, that he had been diligently consulting Yojothename of his black little godand Yojo had told him two orthree times over, and strongly insisted upon it everyway,that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleetin harbor, and in concert selecting our craft; instead of this,I say, Yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of the shipshould rest wholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposedbefriending us; and, in order to do so, had already pitched
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upon a vessel, which, if left to myself, I, Ishmael, shouldinfallibly light upon, for all the world as though it hadturned out by chance; and in that vessel I must immediatelyship myself, for the present irrespective of Queequeg.
I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequegplaced great confidence in the excellence of Yojosjudgment and surprising forecast of things; and cherishedYojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good sort ofgod, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, butin all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.
Now, this plan of Queequegs, or rather Yojos, touching theselection of our craft; I did not like that plan at all. I hadnot a little relied upon Queequegs sagacity to point out thewhaler best fitted to carry us and our fortunes securely.But as all my remonstrances produced no effect uponQueequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce; and accordinglyprepared to set about this business with a determinedrushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quicklysettle that trifling little affair. Next morning early, leavingQueequeg shut up with Yojo in our little bedroomfor itseemed that it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan, or day offasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojothat day; _how_ it was I never could find out, for, thoughI applied myself to it several times, I never could masterhis liturgies and XXXIX Articlesleaving Queequeg, then,fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himselfat his sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among
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the shipping. After much prolonged sauntering and manyrandom inquiries, I learnt that there were three ships upfor three-years voyagesThe Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and thePequod. _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 MassachusettsIndians; now extinct as the ancient Medes. I peered andpryed about the Devil-dam; from her, hopped over to theTit-bit; and finally, going on board the Pequod, lookedaround her for a moment, and then decided that this wasthe very ship for us.
You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, foraught I know;square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanesejunks; butter-box galliots, and what not; but take my wordfor it, you never saw such a rare old craft as this same rareold Pequod. She was a ship of the old school, rather smallif anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed look abouther. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoonsand calms of all four oceans, her old hulls complexion wasdarkened like a French grenadiers, who has alike foughtin Egypt and Siberia. Her venerable bows looked bearded.Her mastscut somewhere on the coast of Japan, where heroriginal ones were lost overboard in a galeher masts stoodstiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne.Her ancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like thepilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedralwhere Becket bled. But to all these her old antiquities,
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were added new and marvellous features, pertaining tothe wild business that for more than half a century shehad 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 ownersof the Pequod,this old Peleg, during the term of his chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, andinlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both of material anddevice, unmatched by anything except it be Thorkill-Hakes carved buckler or bedstead. She was apparelledlike any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy withpendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies.A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chasedbones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, openbulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, withthe long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there forpins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Thosethews ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftlytravelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstilewheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; andthat tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the longnarrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsmanwho steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar,when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. Anoble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noblethings are touched with that.
Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some onehaving authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate
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for the voyage, at first I saw nobody; but I could not welloverlook a strange sort of tent, or rather wigwam, pitcheda little behind the main-mast. It seemed only a temporaryerection used in port. It was of a conical shape, some tenfeet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limberblack bone taken from the middle and highest part of thejaws of the right-whale. Planted with their broad ends onthe deck, a circle of these slabs laced together, mutuallysloped towards each other, and at the apex united in a tuftedpoint, where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro likethe top-knot on some old Pottowottamie Sachems head. Atriangular opening faced towards the bows of the ship, sothat the insider commanded a complete view forward.
And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at lengthfound one who by his aspect seemed to have authority; andwho, it being noon, and the ships work suspended, wasnow enjoying respite from the burden of command. Hewas seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling allover with curious carving; and the bottom of which wasformed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff ofwhich the wigwam was constructed.
There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about theappearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown andbrawny, like most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in bluepilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only there was a fineand almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinklesinterlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from
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his continual sailings in many hard gales, and alwayslooking to windward;for this causes the muscles about theeyes to become pursed together. Such eye-wrinkles arevery effectual in a scowl.
Is this the Captain of the Pequod? said I, advancing to thedoor of the tent.
Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thouwant of him? he demanded.
I was thinking of shipping.
Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketereverbeen in a stove boat?
No, Sir, I never have.
Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare sayeh?
Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. Ivebeen several voyages in the merchant service, and I thinkthat
Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo tome. Dost see that leg?Ill take that leg away from thystern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to meagain. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now ye feelconsiderable proud of having served in those marchantships. But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a
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whaling, eh?it looks a little suspicious, dont it, eh?Hastnot been a pirate, hast thou?Didst not rob thy last Captain,didst thou?Dost not think of murdering the officers whenthou gettest to sea?
I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that underthe mask of these half humorous innuendoes, this oldseaman, as an insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was fullof 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 beforeI think of shipping ye.
Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see theworld.
Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye onCaptain Ahab?
Who is Captain Ahab, sir?
Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of thisship.
I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captainhimself.
Thou art speaking to Captain Pelegthats who ye arespeaking to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain
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Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage, andsupplied with all her needs, including crew. We are partowners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thouwantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, Ican put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourselfto it, past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, youngman, 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: itwas devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousestparmacetty that ever chipped a boat!ah, ah!
I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a littletouched at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation,but said as calmly as I could, What you say is no doubt trueenough, sir; but how could I know there was any peculiarferocity in that particular whale, though indeed I mighthave inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident.
Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, dyesee; thou dost not talk shark a bit. _Sure_, yeve been to seabefore now; sure of that?
Sir, said I, I thought I told you that I had been four voyagesin the merchant
Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about themarchant servicedont aggravate meI wont have it. But let
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us understand each other. I have given thee a hint aboutwhat whaling is; do ye yet feel inclined for it?
I do, sir.
Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon downa live whales 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 dont 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 yealso want to go in order to see the world? Was not that whatye said? I thought so. Well then, just step forward there,and take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back to meand tell me what ye see there.
For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curiousrequest, not knowing exactly how to take it, whetherhumorously or in earnest. But concentrating all his crowsfeet into one scowl, Captain Peleg started me on the errand.
Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, Iperceived that the ship swinging to her anchor withthe flood-tide, was now obliquely pointing towards theopen ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but exceedinglymonotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety thatI could see.
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Well, whats the report? said Peleg when I came back; whatdid ye see?
Not much, I repliednothing but water; considerablehorizon though, and theres a squall coming up, I think.
Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Doye wish to go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh?Cant ye see the world where you stand?
I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and Iwould; and the Pequod was as good a ship as anyI thoughtthe bestand all this I now repeated to Peleg. Seeing me sodetermined, he expressed his willingness to ship me.
And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off, headdedcome along with ye. And so saying, he led the waybelow deck into the cabin.
Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a mostuncommon and surprising figure. It turned out to beCaptain Bildad, who along with Captain Peleg was oneof the largest owners of the vessel; the other shares, as issometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd ofold annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancerywards; each owning about the value of a timber head, ora foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People inNantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the sameway that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing ingood interest.
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Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many otherNantucketers, was a Quaker, the island having beenoriginally settled by that sect; and to this day itsinhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measurethe peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously andanomalously modified by things altogether alien andheterogeneous. For some of these same Quakers are themost sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They arefighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.
So that there are instances among them of men, who,named with Scripture namesa singularly common fashionon the islandand in childhood naturally imbibing thestately dramatic thee and thou of the Quaker idiom;still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless adventureof their subsequent lives, strangely blend with theseunoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes ofcharacter, not unworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or apoetical Pagan Roman. And when these things unite ina man of greatly superior natural force, with a globularbrain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillnessand seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotestwaters, and beneath constellations never seen here at thenorth, been led to think untraditionally and independently;receiving all natures sweet or savage impressions freshfrom her own virgin voluntary and confiding breast,and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidentaladvantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty languagethat
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man makes one in a whole nations censusa mighty pageantcreature, formed for noble tragedies. Nor will it at alldetract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birthor other circumstances, he have what seems a half wilfuloverruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. Forall men tragically great are made so through a certainmorbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortalgreatness is but disease. But, as yet we have not to do withsuch an one, but with quite another; and still a man, who,if indeed peculiar, it only results again from another phaseof the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.
Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do,retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Pelegwho carednot a rush for what are called serious things, and indeeddeemed those self-same serious things the veriest ofall triflesCaptain Bildad had not only been originallyeducated according to the strictest sect of NantucketQuakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and thesight of many unclad, lovely island creatures, round theHornall that had not moved this native born Quaker onesingle jot, had not so much as altered one angle of hisvest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there somelack of common consistency about worthy Captain Bildad.Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to beararms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitablyinvaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foeto human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied
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coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How nowin the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildadreconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know;but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probablyhe had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusionthat a mans religion is one thing, and this practical worldquite another. This world pays dividends. Rising froma little cabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab,to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; fromthat becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, andfinally a ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, hadconcluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring fromactive life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating hisremaining days to the quiet receiving of his well-earnedincome.
Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of beingan incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, abitter, hard task-master. They told me in Nantucket, thoughit certainly seems a curious story, that when he sailed theold Categut whaleman, his crew, upon arriving home, weremostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore exhaustedand worn out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, hewas certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least. He neverused to swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehowhe got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hardwork out of them. When Bildad was a chief-mate, to havehis drab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made you
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feel completely nervous, till you could clutch somethingahammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad,at something or other, never mind what. Indolence andidleness perished before him. His own person was theexact 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 wornnap of his broad-brimmed hat.
Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on thetransom when I followed Captain Peleg down into thecabin. The space between the decks was small; and there,bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so, and neverleaned, and this to save his coat tails. His broad-brim wasplaced beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his drabvesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles onnose, he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderousvolume.
Bildad, cried Captain Peleg, at it again, Bildad, eh? Yehave been studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirtyyears, to my certain knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad?
As if long habituated to such profane talk from his oldshipmate, Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence,quietly looked up, and seeing me, glanced againinquiringly towards Peleg.
He says hes our man, Bildad, said Peleg, he wants to ship.
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Dost thee? said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning roundto me.
I _dost_, said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.
What do ye think of him, Bildad? said Peleg.
Hell do, said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spellingaway 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, seemedsuch a blusterer. But I said nothing, only looking roundme sharply. Peleg now threw open a chest, and drawingforth the ships articles, placed pen and ink before him,and seated himself at a little table. I began to think it washigh time to settle with myself at what terms I would bewilling to engage for the voyage. I was already aware thatin the whaling business they paid no wages; but all hands,including the captain, received certain shares of the profitscalled _lays_, and that these lays were proportioned to thedegree of importance pertaining to the respective dutiesof the ships company. I was also aware that being a greenhand at whaling, my own lay would not be very large; butconsidering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship,splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from allI had heard I should be offered at least the 275th laythatis, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage,whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the
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275th lay was what they call a rather _long lay_, yet it wasbetter than nothing; and if we had a lucky voyage, mightpretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out on it,not to speak of my three years beef and board, for whichI would not have to pay one stiver.
It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulatea princely fortuneand so it was, a very poor way indeed.But I am one of those that never take on about princelyfortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready toboard and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim signof the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the275th lay would be about the fair thing, but would not havebeen surprised had I been offered the 200th, considering Iwas of a broad-shouldered make.
But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a littledistrustful about receiving a generous share of the profitswas this: Ashore, I had heard something of both CaptainPeleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad; howthat they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod,therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scatteredowners, left nearly the whole management of the shipsaffairs to these two. And I did not know but what the stingyold Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about shippinghands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod,quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible asif at his own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly tryingto mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no
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small surprise, considering that he was such an interestedparty in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, butwent on mumbling to himself out of his book, _Lay_ notup for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth
Well, Captain Bildad, interrupted Peleg, what dye say,what lay shall we give this young man?
Thou knowest best, was the sepulchral reply, the sevenhundred and seventy-seventh wouldnt be too much, wouldit?where moth and rust do corrupt, but _lay_
_Lay_, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the sevenhundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you aredetermined that I, for one, shall not _lay_ up many _lays_here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was anexceedingly _long lay_ that, indeed; and though from themagnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman,yet the slightest consideration will show that though sevenhundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet,when you come to make a _teenth_ of it, you will thensee, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventhpart of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundredand seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at thetime.
Why, blast your eyes, Bildad, cried Peleg, thou dost notwant to swindle this young man! he must have more thanthat.
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Seven hundred and seventy-seventh, again said Bildad,without lifting his eyes; and then went on mumblingforwhere your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
I am going to put him down for the three hundredth, saidPeleg, do ye hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, Isay.
Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towardshim said, Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; butthou must consider the duty thou owest to the other ownersof this shipwidows and orphans, many of themand that ifwe too abundantly reward the labors of this young man,we may be taking the bread from those widows and thoseorphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay,Captain Peleg.
Thou Bildad! roared Peleg, starting up and clattering aboutthe cabin. Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followedthy advice in these matters, I would afore now had aconscience to lug about that would be heavy enough tofounder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn.
Captain Peleg, said Bildad steadily, thy conscience maybe drawing ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I cant tell;but as thou art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, Igreatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one; andwill in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit,Captain Peleg.
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Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all naturalbearing, ye insult me. Its an all-fired outrage to tell anyhuman creature that hes bound to hell. Flukes and flames!Bildad, say that again to me, and start my soul-bolts, butIllIllyes, Ill swallow a live goat with all his hair and hornson. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured son of awooden guna straight wake with ye!
As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but witha marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that timeeluded him.
Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principaland responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mindto give up all idea of sailing in a vessel so questionablyowned and temporarily commanded, I stepped aside fromthe door to give egress to Bildad, who, I made no doubt,was all eagerness to vanish from before the awakenedwrath of Peleg. But to my astonishment, he sat down againon the transom very quietly, and seemed to have not theslightest intention of withdrawing. He seemed quite usedto impenitent Peleg and his ways. As for Peleg, after lettingoff his rage as he had, there seemed no more left in him,and he, too, sat down like a lamb, though he twitched alittle as if still nervously agitated. Whew! he whistled atlastthe squalls gone off to leeward, I think. Bildad, thouused to be good at sharpening a lance, mend that pen, willye. My jack-knife here needs the grindstone. Thats he;thank ye, Bildad. Now then, my young man, Ishmaels thy
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name, didnt 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 wantsto ship tooshall I bring him down to-morrow?
To be sure, said Peleg. Fetch him along, and well look athim.
What lay does he want? groaned Bildad, glancing up fromthe book in which he had again been burying himself.
Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad, said Peleg. Has heever 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 doubtingbut that I had done a good mornings work, and that thePequod was the identical ship that Yojo had provided tocarry Queequeg and me round the Cape.
But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink methat the Captain with whom I was to sail yet remainedunseen by me; though, indeed, in many cases, a whale-shipwill be completely fitted out, and receive all her crew onboard, ere the captain makes himself visible by arrivingto take command; for sometimes these voyages are soprolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly
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brief, that if the captain have a family, or any absorbingconcernment of that sort, he does not trouble himself muchabout his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners till all isready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a lookat him before irrevocably committing yourself into hishands. Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg, inquiringwhere Captain Ahab was to be found.
And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? Its all rightenough; thou art shipped.
Yes, but I should like to see him.
But I dont think thou wilt be able to at present. I dontknow exactly whats the matter with him; but he keeps closeinside the house; a sort of sick, and yet he dont look so.In fact, he aint sick; but no, he isnt well either. Any how,young man, he wont always see me, so I dont suppose hewill thee. Hes a queer man, Captain Ahabso some thinkbuta good one. Oh, thoult like him well enough; no fear, nofear. Hes a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab;doesnt speak much; but, when he does speak, then youmay well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahabs abovethe common; Ahabs been in colleges, as well as mong thecannibals; 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 ourisle! Oh! he aint Captain Bildad; no, and he aint CaptainPeleg; _hes Ahab_, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest,
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was a crowned king!
And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, thedogs, did they not lick his blood?
Come hither to mehither, hither, said Peleg, with asignificance in his eye that almost startled me. Look ye,lad; never say that on board the Pequod. Never say itanywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself. Twas afoolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, whodied when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet theold squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name wouldsomehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools likeher may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. Its a lie.I know Captain Ahab well; Ive sailed with him as mateyears ago; I know what he isa good mannot a pious, goodman, like Bildad, but a swearing good mansomething likemeonly theres a good deal more of him. Aye, aye, I knowthat he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passagehome, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it wasthe sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that broughtthat about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever sincehe lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, hes beena kind of moodydesperate moody, and savage sometimes;but that will all pass off. And once for all, let me tell theeand assure thee, young man, its better to sail with a moodygood captain than a laughing bad one. So good-bye totheeand wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens tohave a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wifenot
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three voyages weddeda sweet, resigned girl. Think of that;by that sweet girl that old man has a child: hold ye thenthere can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, mylad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!
As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; whathad been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab,filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulnessconcerning him. And somehow, at the time, I felt asympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I dont know what,unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felta strange awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannotat all describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what itwas. But I felt it; and it did not disincline me towards him;though I felt impatience at what seemed like mystery inhim, so imperfectly as he was known to me then. However,my thoughts were at length carried in other directions, sothat for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind.
CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.
As Queequegs Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation,was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb himtill towards night-fall; for I cherish the greatest respecttowards everybodys religious obligations, never mind howcomical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalueeven a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; orthose other creatures in certain parts of our earth, whowith a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other
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planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landedproprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessionsyet owned and rented in his name.
I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitablein these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastlysuperior to other mortals, pagans and what not, becauseof their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There wasQueequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurdnotions 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 ourarguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: andHeaven have mercy on us allPresbyterians and Pagansalikefor we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about thehead, and sadly need mending.
Towards evening, when I felt assured that all hisperformances and rituals must be over, I went up to hisroom and knocked at the door; but no answer. I tried toopen it, but it was fastened inside. Queequeg, said I softlythrough the key-hole:all silent. I say, Queequeg! why dontyou speak? Its IIshmael. But all remained still as before. Ibegan to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundanttime; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. Ilooked through the key-hole; but the door opening intoan odd corner of the room, the key-hole prospect was buta crooked and sinister one. I could only see part of thefoot-board of the bed and a line of the wall, but nothing
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more. I was surprised to behold resting against the wall thewooden shaft of Queequegs harpoon, which the landladythe evening previous had taken from him, before ourmounting to the chamber. Thats strange, thought I; but atany rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he seldomor never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be insidehere, and no possible mistake.
Queequeg!Queequeg!all still. Something must havehappened. Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but itstubbornly resisted. Running down stairs, I quickly statedmy suspicions to the first person I metthe chamber-maid.La! la! she cried, I thought something must be the matter.I went to make the bed after breakfast, and the door waslocked; and not a mouse to be heard; and its been just sosilent ever since. But I thought, may be, you had both goneoff and locked your baggage in for safe keeping. La! la,maam!Mistress! murder! Mrs. Hussey! apoplexy!and withthese cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I following.
Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in onehand and a vinegar-cruet in the other, having just brokenaway from the occupation of attending to the castors, andscolding her little black boy meantime.
Wood-house! cried I, which way to it? Run for Godssake, and fetch something to pry open the doorthe axe!theaxe! hes had a stroke; depend upon it!and so sayingI was unmethodically rushing up stairs again empty-
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handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot andvinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her countenance.
Whats the matter with you, young man?
Get the axe! For Gods sake, run for the doctor, some one,while I pry it open!
Look here, said the landlady, quickly putting down thevinegar-cruet, so as to have one hand free; look here; areyou talking about prying open any of my doors?and withthat she seized my arm. Whats the matter with you? Whatsthe matter with you, shipmate?
In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her tounderstand the whole case. Unconsciously clapping thevinegar-cruet to one side of her nose, she ruminated foran instant; then exclaimedNo! I havent seen it since Iput it there. Running to a little closet under the landingof the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me thatQueequegs harpoon was missing. Hes killed himself, shecried. Its unfortnate Stiggs done over againthere goesanother counterpaneGod pity his poor mother!it will be theruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister? Wheres thatgirl?there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him topaint me a sign, withno suicides permitted here, and nosmoking in the parlor;might as well kill both birds at once.Kill? The Lord be merciful to his ghost! Whats that noisethere? You, young man, avast there!
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And running up after me, she caught me as I was againtrying to force open the door.
I dont allow it; I wont have my premises spoiled. Go forthe locksmith, theres one about a mile from here. Butavast! putting her hand in her side-pocket, heres a keythatll fit, I guess; lets see. And with that, she turned it inthe lock; but, alas! Queequegs supplemental bolt remainedunwithdrawn within.
Have to burst it open, said I, and was running down theentry a little, for a good start, when the landlady caught atme, again vowing I should not break down her premises;but I tore from her, and with a sudden bodily rush dashedmyself full against the mark.
With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knobslamming against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling;and there, good heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogethercool 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 likea carved image with scarce a sign of active life.
Queequeg, said I, going up to him, Queequeg, whats thematter with you?
He haint been a sittin so all day, has he? said the landlady.
But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him;
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I almost felt like pushing him over, so as to changehis position, for it was almost intolerable, it seemed sopainfully and unnaturally constrained; especially, as in allprobability he had been sitting so for upwards of eight orten hours, going too without his regular meals.
Mrs. Hussey, said I, hes _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 toprevail upon Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain. Therehe sat; and all he could dofor all my polite arts andblandishmentshe would not move a peg, nor say a singleword, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in theslightest way.
I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of hisRamadan; do they fast on their hams that way in his nativeisland. It must be so; yes, its part of his creed, I suppose;well, then, let him rest; hell get up sooner or later, no doubt.It cant last for ever, thank God, and his Ramadan onlycomes once a year; and I dont believe its very punctualthen.
I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listeningto the long stories of some sailors who had just comefrom a plum-pudding voyage, as they called it (that is,a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or brig, confinedto the north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only);
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after listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly elevenoclock, I went up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sureby this time Queequeg must certainly have brought hisRamadan to a termination. But no; there he was just whereI had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began to growvexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless andinsane to be sitting there all day and half the night on hishams in a cold room, holding a piece of wood on his head.
For heavens sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself;get up and have some supper. Youll starve; youll killyourself, Queequeg. But not a word did he reply.
Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bedand to sleep; and no doubt, before a great while, he wouldfollow me. But previous to turning in, I took my heavybearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as it promised tobe a very cold night; and he had nothing but his ordinaryround jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I couldnot get into the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle;and the mere thought of Queequegnot four feet offsittingthere in that uneasy position, stark alone in the cold anddark; this made me really wretched. Think of it; sleepingall night in the same room with a wide awake pagan on hishams in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan!
But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing moretill break of day; when, looking over the bedside, theresquatted Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down to the
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floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered thewindow, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with acheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed hisforehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan wasover.
Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any personsreligion, be it what it may, so long as that person does notkill or insult any other person, because that other persondont believe it also. But when a mans religion becomesreally frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and,in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn tolodge in; then I think it high time to take that individualaside and argue the point with him.
And just so I now did with Queequeg. Queequeg, saidI, get into bed now, and lie and listen to me. I thenwent on, beginning with the rise and progress of theprimitive religions, and coming down to the variousreligions of the present time, during which time I laboredto show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, andprolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms werestark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul;opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene andcommon sense. I told him, too, that he being in otherthings such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage,it pained me, very badly pained me, to see him nowso deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan ofhis. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in;
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hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of afast must necessarily be half-starved. This is the reasonwhy most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholynotions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg,said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on anundigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuatedthrough the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was evertroubled with dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly,so that he could take it in. He said no; only upon onememorable occasion. It was after a great feast given by hisfather the king, on the gaining of a great battle whereinfifty of the enemy had been killed by about two oclock inthe afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening.
No more, Queequeg, said I, shuddering; that will do; forI knew the inferences without his further hinting them. Ihad seen a sailor who had visited that very island, and hetold me that it was the custom, when a great battle hadbeen gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yardor garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they wereplaced in great wooden trenchers, and garnished roundlike a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts; and withsome parsley in their mouths, were sent round with thevictors compliments to all his friends, just as though thesepresents were so many Christmas turkeys.
After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion
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made much impression upon Queequeg. Because, in thefirst place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing on thatimportant subject, unless considered from his own pointof view; and, in the second place, he did not more than onethird understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would;and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal moreabout the true religion than I did. He looked at me with asort of condescending concern and compassion, as thoughhe thought it a great pity that such a sensible young manshould be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety.
At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking aprodigiously hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, sothat the landlady should not make much profit by reasonof 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 towardsthe ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Pelegin his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam,saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, andfurthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on boardthat 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 comradestanding on the wharf.
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I mean, he replied, he must show his papers.
Yes, said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, stickinghis head from behind Pelegs, out of the wigwam. Hemust show that hes converted. Son of darkness, he added,turning to Queequeg, art thou at present in communionwith any Christian church?
Why, said I, hes a member of the first CongregationalChurch. Here be it said, that many tattooed savages sailingin Nantucket ships at last come to be converted into thechurches.
First Congregational Church, cried Bildad, what! thatworships in Deacon Deuteronomy Colemans meeting-house? and so saying, taking out his spectacles, he rubbedthem with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, andputting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam,and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good longlook at Queequeg.
How long hath he been a member? he then said, turning tome; not very long, I rather guess, young man.
No, said Peleg, and he hasnt been baptized right either, orit would have washed some of that devils blue off his face.
Do tell, now, cried Bildad, is this Philistine a regularmember of Deacon Deuteronomys meeting? I never sawhim going there, and I pass it every Lords day.
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I dont know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or hismeeting, said I; all I know is, that Queequeg here is aborn member of the First Congregational Church. He is adeacon himself, Queequeg is.
Young man, said Bildad sternly, thou art skylarking withmeexplain thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dostthee mean? answer me.
Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. I mean, sir,the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, andCaptain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, andevery mothers son and soul of us belong; the great andeverlasting First Congregation of this whole worshippingworld; we all belong to that; only some of us cherishsome queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief;in _that_ we all join hands.
Splice, thou meanst _splice_ hands, cried Peleg, drawingnearer. Young man, youd better ship for a missionary,instead of a fore-mast hand; I never heard a better sermon.Deacon Deuteronomywhy Father Mapple himself couldntbeat it, and hes reckoned something. Come aboard, comeaboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohogtherewhats that you call him? tell Quohog to step along.By the great anchor, what a harpoon hes got there! lookslike good stuff that; and he handles it about right. I say,Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you ever stand inthe head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?
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Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way,jumped upon the bulwarks, from thence into the bowsof one of the whale-boats hanging to the side; and thenbracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out insome such way as this:
Capain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You seehim? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den! and takingsharp aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bildadsbroad brim, clean across the ships decks, and struck theglistening tar spot out of sight.
Now, said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, spos-eehim whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead.
Quick, Bildad, said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at theclose vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towardsthe cabin gangway. Quick, I say, you Bildad, and getthe ships papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I meanQuohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, well giveye the ninetieth lay, and thats more than ever was given aharpooneer yet out of Nantucket.
So down we went into the cabin, and to my greatjoy Queequeg was soon enrolled among the same shipscompany to which I myself belonged.
When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had goteverything ready for signing, he turned to me and said, Iguess, Quohog there dont know how to write, does he? I
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say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name or makethy mark?
But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thricebefore taken part in similar ceremonies, looked no waysabashed; but taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper,in the proper place, an exact counterpart of a queer roundfigure which was tattooed upon his arm; so that throughCaptain Pelegs obstinate mistake touching his appellative,it stood something like this:
Quohog. his X mark.
Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastlyeyeing Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumblingin the huge pockets of his broad-skirted drab coat, took outa bundle of tracts, and selecting one entitled The LatterDay Coming; or No Time to Lose, placed it in Queequegshands, 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 stillclingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseechthee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idolBell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come;mind thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer clearof the fiery pit!
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildads
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language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural anddomestic phrases.
Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling ourharpooneer, cried Peleg. Pious harpooneers never makegood voyagersit takes the shark out of em; no harpooneeris worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish. There wasyoung Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of allNantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, andnever came to good. He got so frightened about his plaguysoul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, forfear of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to DavyJones.
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, canst thou prate in this ungodly guise. Thoubeliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this samePequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoonon Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate withCaptain Ahab, didst thou not think of Death and theJudgment then?
Hear him, hear him now, cried Peleg, marching acrossthe cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into hispockets,hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When everymoment we thought the ship would sink! Death and theJudgment then? What? With all three masts making such
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an everlasting thundering against the side; and every seabreaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and theJudgment then? No! no time to think about Death then.Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; andhow to save all handshow to rig jury-mastshow to get intothe nearest port; that was what I was thinking of.
Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalkedon deck, where we followed him. There he stood, veryquietly overlooking some sailmakers who were mendinga top-sail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick upa patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which otherwisemight have been wasted.
CHAPTER 19. The Prophet.
Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?
Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and weresauntering away from the water, for the moment eachoccupied with his own thoughts, when the above wordswere put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us,levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. Hewas but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patchedtrowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck.A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over hisface, 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.
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You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose, said I, trying to gaina little more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
Aye, the Pequodthat ship there, he said, drawing back hiswhole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out fromhim, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted fullat the object.
Yes, said I, we have just signed the articles.
Anything down there about your souls?
About what?
Oh, perhaps you havnt got any, he said quickly. No matterthough, I know many chaps that havnt got any,good luckto em; and they are all the better off for it. A souls a sortof a fifth wheel to a wagon.
What are you jabbering about, shipmate? said I.
_Hes_ got enough, though, to make up for all deficienciesof that sort in other chaps, abruptly said the stranger,placing a nervous emphasis upon the word _he_.
Queequeg, said I, lets go; this fellow has broken loose fromsomewhere; hes talking about something and somebodywe dont know.
Stop! cried the stranger. Ye said trueye havnt seen OldThunder yet, have ye?
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Whos Old Thunder? said I, again riveted with the insaneearnestness of his manner.
Captain Ahab.
What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?
Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by thatname. Ye havnt seen him yet, have ye?
No, we havnt. Hes sick they say, but is getting better, andwill be all right again before long.
All right again before long! laughed the stranger, with asolemnly derisive sort of laugh. Look ye; when CaptainAhab 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 didnt tell much of anything about him; only Ive heardthat hes a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to hiscrew.
Thats true, thats trueyes, both true enough. But you mustjump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl andgothats the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing aboutthat thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago,when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing
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about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore thealtar in Santa?heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing aboutthe silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about hislosing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didntye hear a word about them matters and something more,eh? No, I dont think ye did; how could ye? Who knowsit? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But howsever, mayhap,yeve heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, yehave heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, _that_ every oneknows amostI mean they know hes only one leg; and thata parmacetti took the other off.
My friend, said I, what all this gibberish of yours is about,I dont know, and I dont much care; for it seems to me thatyou must be a little damaged in the head. But if you arespeaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod,then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of hisleg.
_All_ about it, ehsure you do?all?
Pretty sure.
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, thebeggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubledreverie; then starting a little, turned and said:Yeve shipped,have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well, whatssigned, is signed; and whats to be, will be; and thenagain, perhaps it wont be, after all. Anyhow, its all fixed
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and arranged aready; and some sailors or other must gowith him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, Godpity em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffableheavens bless ye; Im sorry I stopped ye.
Look here, friend, said I, if you have anything important totell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozleus, you are mistaken in your game; thats all I have to say.
And its said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up thatway; you are just the man for himthe likes of ye. Morningto ye, shipmates, morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell emIve concluded not to make one of em.
Ah, my dear fellow, you cant fool us that wayyou cant foolus. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look asif he had a great secret in him.
Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.
Morning it is, said I. Come along, Queequeg, lets leavethis crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?
Elijah.
Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting,after each others fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; andagreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be abugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundredyards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back
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as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us,though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck meso, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, butpassed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether thestranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did;and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but withwhat intent I could not for the life of me imagine. Thiscircumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting,half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me allkinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, andall connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; andthe leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silvercalabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, whenI left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of thesquaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves tosail; and a hundred other shadowy things.
I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijahwas really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossedthe way with Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced oursteps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us.This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemedto me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.
CHAPTER 20. All Astir.
A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboardthe Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended,but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas,
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and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened thatthe ships preparations were hurrying to a close. CaptainPeleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwamkeeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did allthe purchasing and providing at the stores; and the menemployed in the hold and on the rigging were working tilllong after night-fall.
On the day following Queequegs signing the articles, wordwas given at all the inns where the ships company werestopping, that their chests must be on board before night,for there was no telling how soon the vessel might besailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving,however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems theyalways give very long notice in these cases, and the shipdid not sail for several days. But no wonder; there was agood deal to be done, and there is no telling how manythings to be thought of, before the Pequod was fullyequipped.
Every one knows what a multitude of thingsbeds, sauce-pans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the businessof housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which necessitatesa three-years housekeeping upon the wide ocean, farfrom all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, andbankers. And though this also holds true of merchantvessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with
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whalemen. For besides the great length of the whalingvoyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecutionof the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing themat the remote harbors usually frequented, it must beremembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are themost exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially tothe destruction and loss of the very things upon whichthe success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spareboats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spareeverythings, almost, but a spare Captain and duplicateship.
At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heavieststorage of the Pequod had been almost completed;comprising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoopsand staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there wasa continual fetching and carrying on board of divers oddsand ends of things, both large and small.
Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying wasCaptain Bildads sister, a lean old lady of a most determinedand indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, whoseemed resolved that, if _she_ could help it, nothingshould be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairlygetting to sea. At one time she would come on board witha jar of pickles for the stewards pantry; another time witha bunch of quills for the chief mates desk, where he kepthis log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small ofsome ones rheumatic back. Never did any woman better
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deserve her name, which was CharityAunt Charity, aseverybody called her. And like a sister of charity did thischaritable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither,ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promisedto yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board aship 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 Quakeresscoming on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer whaling lance in theother. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at allbackward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a longlist of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, downwent his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Everyonce in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whaleboneden, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up tothe riggers at the mast-head, and then concluded by roaringback into his wigwam.
During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I oftenvisited the craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab,and how he was, and when he was going to come onboard his ship. To these questions they would answer, thathe was getting better and better, and was expected aboardevery day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad,could attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel forthe voyage. If I had been downright honest with myself,
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I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did buthalf fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage,without once laying my eyes on the man who was to bethe absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed outupon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong,it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in thematter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicionseven from himself. And much this way it was with me. Isaid nothing, and tried to think nothing.
At last it was given out that some time next day the shipwould certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and Itook a very early start.
CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.
It was nearly six oclock, but only grey imperfect mistydawn, when we drew nigh the wharf.
There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right,said I to Queequeg, it cant be shadows; shes off by sunrise,I guess; come on!
Avast! cried a voice, whose owner at the same time comingclose behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders,and then insinuating himself between us, stood stoopingforward a little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peeringfrom Queequeg to me. It was Elijah.
Going aboard?
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Hands off, will you, said I.
Lookee here, said Queequeg, shaking himself, go way!
Aint 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 littleimpertinent?
No, no, no; I wasnt aware of that, said Elijah, slowly andwonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the mostunaccountable glances.
Elijah, said I, you will oblige my friend and me bywithdrawing. We are going to the Indian and PacificOceans, and would prefer not to be detained.
Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?
Hes cracked, Queequeg, said I, come on.
Holloa! cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we hadremoved a few paces.
Never mind him, said I, Queequeg, come on.
But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his handon my shoulder, saidDid ye see anything looking like mengoing towards that ship a while ago?
Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered,
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saying, Yes, I thought I did see four or five men; but it wastoo dim to be sure.
Very dim, very dim, said Elijah. Morning to ye.
Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softlyafter us; and touching my shoulder again, said, See if youcan find em now, will ye?
Find who?
Morning to ye! morning to ye! he rejoined, again movingoff. Oh! I was going to warn ye againstbut never mind,never mindits all one, all in the family too;sharp frostthis morning, aint it? Good-bye to ye. Shant see ye againvery soon, I guess; unless its before the Grand Jury. Andwith these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me,for the moment, in no small wonderment at his franticimpudence.
At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we foundeverything in profound quiet, not a soul moving. Thecabin entrance was locked within; the hatches were all on,and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to theforecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeinga light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there,wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at wholelength upon two chests, his face downwards and inclosedin his folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept uponhim.
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Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they havegone to? said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But itseemed that, when on the wharf, Queequeg had not at allnoticed what I now alluded to; hence I would have thoughtmyself to have been optically deceived in that matter,were it not for Elijahs otherwise inexplicable question.But I beat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper,jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had bestsit up with the body; telling him to establish himselfaccordingly. He put his hand upon the sleepers rear, asthough feeling if it was soft enough; and then, withoutmore ado, sat quietly down there.
Gracious! Queequeg, dont sit there, said I.
Oh! perry dood seat, said Queequeg, my country way;wont hurt him face.
Face! said I, call that his face? very benevolentcountenance then; but how hard he breathes, hes heavinghimself; get off, Queequeg, you are heavy, its grinding theface of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look, hell twitch youoff soon. I wonder he dont wake.
Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of thesleeper, and lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet.We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper, from one tothe other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him in his brokenfashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land,
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owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts,the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in thecustom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans;and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you hadonly to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them roundin the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient onan excursion; much better than those garden-chairs whichare convertible into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chiefcalling his attendant, and desiring him to make a setteeof himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some dampmarshy place.
While narrating these things, every time Queequegreceived the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleepers head.
Whats that for, Queequeg?
Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!
He was going on with some wild reminiscences abouthis tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two usesboth brained his foes and soothed his soul, when we weredirectly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong vapornow completely filling the contracted hole, it began to tellupon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; thenseemed troubled in the nose; then revolved over once ortwice; then sat up and rubbed his eyes.
Holloa! he breathed at last, who be ye smokers?
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Shipped men, answered I, when does she sail?
Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. TheCaptain came aboard last night.
What Captain?Ahab?
Who but him indeed?
I was going to ask him some further questions concerningAhab, when we heard a noise on deck.
Holloa! Starbucks astir, said the rigger. Hes a lively chiefmate, that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I mustturn to. And so saying he went on deck, and we followed.
It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on boardin twos and threes; the riggers bestirred themselves; themates were actively engaged; and several of the shorepeople were busy in bringing various last things on board.Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrinedwithin his cabin.
CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.
At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of theships riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled outfrom the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity hadcome off in a whale-boat, with her last gifta night-cap forStubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spareBible for the stewardafter all this, the two Captains, Peleg
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and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chiefmate, Peleg said:
Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right?Captain Ahab is all readyjust spoke to himnothing more tobe got from shore, eh? Well, call all hands, then. Musterem aft hereblast em!
No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg,said Bildad, but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and doour bidding.
How now! Here upon the very point of starting for thevoyage, Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going itwith a high hand on the quarter-deck, just as if they were tobe joint-commanders at sea, as well as to all appearancesin port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him was yetto be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then, theidea was, that his presence was by no means necessary ingetting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out tosea. Indeed, as that was not at all his proper business, butthe pilots; and as he was not yet completely recoveredsothey saidtherefore, Captain Ahab stayed below. And allthis seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchantservice many captains never show themselves on deck fora considerable time after heaving up the anchor, but remainover the cabin table, having a farewell merry-making withtheir shore friends, before they quit the ship for good withthe pilot.
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But there was not much chance to think over the matter,for Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do mostof the talking and commanding, and not Bildad.
Aft here, ye sons of bachelors, he cried, as the sailorslingered 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 tostrike the tent was well known to be the next thing toheaving up the anchor.
Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!jump!was the nextcommand, and the crew sprang for the handspikes.
Now in getting under weigh, the station generallyoccupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. Andhere Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition tohis other officers, was one of the licensed pilots of theporthe being suspected to have got himself made a pilot inorder to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he wasconcerned in, for he never piloted any other craftBildad,I say, might now be seen actively engaged in lookingover the bows for the approaching anchor, and at intervalssinging what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheerthe hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of achorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty goodwill. Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had told
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them that no profane songs would be allowed on board thePequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and Charity,his sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in eachseamans berth.
Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, CaptainPeleg ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner.I almost thought he would sink the ship before the anchorcould be got up; involuntarily I paused on my handspike,and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils weboth ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for apilot. I was comforting myself, however, with the thoughtthat in pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spiteof his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay; when I felta sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, washorrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act ofwithdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That wasmy first kick.
Is that the way they heave in the marchant service? heroared. Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thybackbone! Why dont ye spring, I say, all of yespring!Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers; springthere, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say,all of ye, and spring your eyes out! And so saying, hemoved along the windlass, here and there using his legvery freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading offwith his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have beendrinking something to-day.
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At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off weglided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the shortnorthern day merged into night, we found ourselves almostbroad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray casedus in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth onthe bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the whiteivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving iciclesdepended from the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever andanon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, andsent 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 dressedin living green. So to the Jews old Canaan stood, WhileJordan rolled between._
Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to methan then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of thisfrigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of mywet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed tome, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and gladesso 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 pilotswere needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that hadaccompanied us began ranging alongside.
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It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildadwere affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad.For loath to depart, yet; very loath to leave, for good, aship bound on so long and perilous a voyagebeyond bothstormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of hishard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an oldshipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, oncemore starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw;loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful ofevery interest to him,poor old Bildad lingered long; pacedthe deck with anxious strides; ran down into the cabin tospeak another farewell word there; again came on deck,and looked to windward; looked towards the wide andendless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen EasternContinents; looked towards the land; looked aloft; lookedright and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and atlast, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsivelygrasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern,for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as muchas to say, Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, Ican.
As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher;but for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in hiseye, when the lantern came too near. And he, too, did nota little run from cabin to decknow a word below, and nowa word with Starbuck, the chief mate.
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But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sortof look about him,Captain Bildadcome, old shipmate, wemust go. Back the main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Standby to come close alongside, now! Careful, careful!come,Bildad, boysay your last. Luck to ye, Starbuckluck to ye,Mr. Stubbluck to ye, Mr. Flaskgood-bye and good luck toye alland this day three years Ill have a hot supper smokingfor 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 yellhave fine weather now, so that Captain Ahab may soon bemoving among yea pleasant sun is all he needs, and yellhave plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be carefulin the hunt, ye mates. Dont stave the boats needlessly, yeharpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full threeper cent. within the year. Dont forget your prayers, either.Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper dont waste the sparestaves. Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker! Dontwhale it too much a Lords days, men; but dont miss a fairchance either, thats rejecting Heavens good gifts. Have aneye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky,I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware offornication. Good-bye, good-bye! Dont keep that cheesetoo long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; itll spoil. Becareful with the buttertwenty cents the pound it was, andmind ye, if
Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,away! and
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with that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and both droptinto the boat.
Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blewbetween; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hullswildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, andblindly 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 theinn.
When on that shivering winters night, the Pequod thrusther vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, whoshould I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I lookedwith sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, whoin mid-winter just landed from a four years dangerousvoyage, could so unrestingly push off again for stillanother tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching tohis feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable;deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapteris the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only saythat it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, thatmiserably drives along the leeward land. The port wouldfain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety,comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, allthats kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port,
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the land, is that ships direst jeopardy; she must fly allhospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel,would make her shudder through and through. With allher might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fightsgainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward;seeks all the lashed seas landlessness again; for refugessake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend herbitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to seeof that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnestthinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep theopen independence of her sea; while the wildest winds ofheaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous,slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth,shoreless, indefinite as Godso, better is it to perish in thathowling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee,even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! whowould craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is allthis agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington!Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thyocean-perishingstraight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
CHAPTER 24. The Advocate.
As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in thisbusiness of whaling; and as this business of whaling has
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somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as arather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I amall anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injusticehereby done to us hunters of whales.
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous toestablish the fact, that among people at large, the businessof whaling is not accounted on a level with what arecalled the liberal professions. If a stranger were introducedinto any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would butslightly advance the general opinion of his merits, werehe presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; andif in emulation of the naval officers he should appendthe initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visitingcard, such a procedure would be deemed pre-eminentlypresuming and ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declineshonoring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, ourvocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and thatwhen actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by allmanner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. Butbutchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge havebeen all Martial Commanders whom the world invariablydelights to honor. And as for the matter of the allegeduncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiatedinto certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, andwhich, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the spermwhale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this
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tidy earth. But even granting the charge in question to betrue; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship arecomparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in allladies plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhancesthe popular conceit of the soldiers profession; let meassure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched upto a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of thesperm whales vast tail, fanning into eddies the air overhis head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of mancompared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet doesit unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, andcandles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so manyshrines, to our glory!
But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sortsof scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.
Why did the Dutch in De Witts time have admirals of theirwhaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his ownpersonal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, andpolitely invite to that town some score or two of familiesfrom our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britainbetween the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen inbounties upwards of 1,000,000? And lastly, how comesit that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the
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rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy ofupwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteenthousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; theships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and everyyear importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of$7,000,000. How comes all this, if there be not somethingpuissant 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, whichwithin the last sixty years has operated more potentiallyupon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate,than the high and mighty business of whaling. Oneway and another, it has begotten events so remarkablein themselves, and so continuously momentous in theirsequential issues, that whaling may well be regardedas that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselvespregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endlesstask to catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice.For many years past the whale-ship has been the pioneerin ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of theearth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which hadno chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed.If American and European men-of-war now peacefullyride in once savage harbors, let them fire salutes tothe honor and glory of the whale-ship, which originallyshowed them the way, and first interpreted between
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them and the savages. They may celebrate as they willthe heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, yourKrusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captainshave sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, andgreater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in theirsuccourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenishsharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelinislands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cookwith all his marines and muskets would not willinglyhave dared. All that is made such a flourish of in theold 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 theships common log. Ah, the world! Oh, the world!
Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commercebut colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, wascarried on between Europe and the long line of theopulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It wasthe whaleman who first broke through the jealous policyof the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, ifspace permitted, it might be distinctly shown how fromthose whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru,Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and theestablishment 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
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whaleman. After its first blunder-born discovery by aDutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores aspestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there.The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mightycolony. Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australiansettlement, the emigrants were several times saved fromstarvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-shipluckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncountedisles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and docommercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared theway for the missionary and the merchant, and in manycases carried the primitive missionaries to their firstdestinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever tobecome hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom thecredit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whalinghas no sthetically noble associations connected with it,then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, andunhorse you with a split helmet every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famouschronicler, you will say.
_The whale no famous author, and whaling no famouschronicler?_ Who wrote the first account of ourLeviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed thefirst narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less aprince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen,
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took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowingeulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poordevils; they have no good blood in their veins.
_No good blood in their veins?_ They have somethingbetter than royal blood there. The grandmother ofBenjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards, bymarriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers ofNantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgersand harpooneersall kith and kin to noble Benjaminthis daydarting the barbed iron from one side of the world to theother.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling isnot respectable.
_Whaling not respectable?_ Whaling is imperial! By oldEnglish statutory law, the whale is declared a royal fish. *
Oh, thats only nominal! The whale himself has neverfigured in any grand imposing way.
_The whale never figured in any grand imposing way?_In one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman generalupon his entering the worlds capital, the bones of a whale,brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were the mostconspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*
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*See subsequent chapters for something more on thishead.
Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there isno real dignity in whaling.
_No dignity in whaling?_ The dignity of our calling thevery 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. Iaccount that man more honorable than that great captainof antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yetundiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserveany real repute in that small but high hushed world whichI might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafterI shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man mightrather have done than to have left undone; if, at mydeath, my executors, or more properly my creditors, findany precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectivelyascribe 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 advancenaught but substantiated facts. But after embattling hisfacts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not
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unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently uponhis causesuch 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 seasoningthem for their functions is gone through. There is asaltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor ofstate. How they use the salt, preciselywho knows? CertainI am, however, that a kings head is solemnly oiled at hiscoronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though,that they anoint it with a view of making its interior runwell, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminatedhere, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process,because in common life we esteem but meanly andcontemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpablysmells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who useshair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got aquoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he cantamount to much in his totality.
But the only thing to be considered here, is thiswhat kindof oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be oliveoil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bears oil, nortrain oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be,but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, thesweetest of all oils?
Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply yourkings and queens with coronation stuff!
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CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a nativeof Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long,earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemedwell adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hardas twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his liveblood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have beenborn in some time of general drought and famine, or uponone of those fast days for which his state is famous. Onlysome thirty arid summers had he seen; those summershad dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, histhinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wastinganxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of anybodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man.He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. Hispure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrappedup in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength,like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed preparedto endure for long ages to come, and to endure always,as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patentchronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do wellin all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to seethere the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perilshe had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfastman, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomimeof action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, forall his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certainqualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases
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seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonlyconscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deepnatural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life didtherefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to thatsort of superstition, which in some organizations seemsrather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than fromignorance. Outward portents and inward presentimentswere his. And if at times these things bent the weldediron of his soul, much more did his far-away domesticmemories of his young Cape wife and child, tend tobend him still more from the original ruggedness of hisnature, and open him still further to those latent influenceswhich, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush ofdare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the moreperilous vicissitudes of the fishery. I will have no man inmy boat, said Starbuck, who is not afraid of a whale. Bythis, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliableand useful courage was that which arises from the fairestimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterlyfearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than acoward.
Aye, aye, said Stubb, the second mate, Starbuck, there, isas careful a man as youll find anywhere in this fishery.But we shall ere long see what that word careful preciselymeans when used by a man like Stubb, or almost any otherwhale hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage
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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 ofwhaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits ofthe ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to befoolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for loweringfor whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting afish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thoughtStarbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales formy living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and thathundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew.What doom was his own fathers? Where, in the bottomlessdeeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover, givento a certain superstitiousness, as has been said; thecourage of this Starbuck which could, nevertheless, stillflourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it was notin reasonable nature that a man so organized, and withsuch terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; itwas not in nature that these things should fail in latentlyengendering an element in him, which, under suitablecircumstances, would break out from its confinement, andburn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it wasthat sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men,which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict withseas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrationalhorrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those moreterrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes
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menace you from the concentrating brow of an enragedand mighty man.
But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, thecomplete abasement of poor Starbucks fortitude, scarcemight I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing mostsorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in thesoul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companiesand nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be;men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in theideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand andglowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish inhim all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, sofar within us, that it remains intact though all the outercharacter seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at theundraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can pietyitself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle herupbraidings against the permitting stars. But this augustdignity 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 ordrives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands,radiates without end from God; Himself! The great Godabsolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy!His omnipresence, our divine equality!
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades andcastaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though
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dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the mostmournful, perchance the most abased, among them all,shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shalltouch that workmans arm with some ethereal light; if Ishall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; thenagainst all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit ofEquality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanityover all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democraticGod! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan,the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doublyhammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and pauperedarm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up AndrewJackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thouwho, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thyselectest champions from the kingly commons; bear meout in it, O God!
CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.
Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of CapeCod; and hence, according to local usage, was calleda Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven norvaliant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air;and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of thechase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeymanjoiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, andcareless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the mostdeadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all
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invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortablearrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver isabout the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, inthe very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpityinglance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker hishammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes whileflank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Longusage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of deathinto an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, thereis no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, mightbe a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mindthat way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a goodsailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumblealoft, and bestir themselves there, about something whichhe would find out when he obeyed the order, and notsooner.
What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such aneasy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off withthe burden of life in a world full of grave pedlars, all bowedto the ground with their packs; what helped to bring aboutthat almost impious good-humor of his; that thing musthave been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black littlepipe was one of the regular features of his face. You wouldalmost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunkwithout his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole rowof pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easyreach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smokedthem all out in succession, lighting one from the other to
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the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be inreadiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of firstputting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into hismouth.
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, atleast, of his peculiar disposition; for every one knows thatthis earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infectedwith the nameless miseries of the numberless mortalswho have died exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera,some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief totheir mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations,Stubbs tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort ofdisinfecting agent.
The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in MarthasVineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, verypugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemedto think that the great leviathans had personally andhereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sortof point of honor with him, to destroy them wheneverencountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense ofreverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk andmystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehensionof any possible danger from encountering them; that inhis poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a speciesof magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring onlya little circumvention and some small application of timeand trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignorant,
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unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggishin the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the funof it; and a three years voyage round Cape Horn was onlya jolly joke that lasted that length of time. As a carpentersnails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails; somankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask was one ofthe wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. Theycalled him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because,in form, he could be well likened to the short, squaretimber known by that name in Arctic whalers; and whichby the means of many radiating side timbers inserted intoit, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions ofthose battering seas.
Now these three matesStarbuck, Stubb, and Flask,were momentous men. They it was who by universalprescription commanded three of the Pequods boats asheadsmen. In that grand order of battle in which CaptainAhab would probably marshal his forces to descend onthe whales, these three headsmen were as captains ofcompanies. Or, being armed with their long keen whalingspears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as theharpooneers were flingers of javelins.
And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman,like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by hisboat-steerer or harpooneer, who in certain conjuncturesprovides him with a fresh lance, when the former onehas been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and
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moreover, as there generally subsists between the two,a close intimacy and friendliness; it is therefore butmeet, that in this place we set down who the Pequodsharpooneers were, and to what headsman each of thembelonged.
First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chiefmate, had selected for his squire. But Queequeg is alreadyknown.
Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head,the most westerly promontory of Marthas Vineyard, wherethere still exists the last remnant of a village of redmen, which has long supplied the neighboring island ofNantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers.In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name ofGay-Headers. Tashtegos long, lean, sable hair, his highcheek bones, and black rounding eyesfor an Indian,Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their glitteringexpressionall this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritorof the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters,who, in quest of the great New England moose, hadscoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main.But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of thewoodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the greatwhales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitlyreplacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at thetawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almosthave credited the superstitions of some of the earlier
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Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son ofthe Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubbthe second mates squire.
Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic,coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like treadanAhasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were twogolden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards tothem. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped onboard of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his nativecoast. And never having been anywhere in the world but inAfrica, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequentedby whalemen; and having now led for many years thebold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonlyheedful of what manner of men they shipped; Daggooretained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe,moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five inhis socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking upat him; and a white man standing before him seemed awhite flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell,this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire oflittle Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. Asfor the residue of the Pequods company, be it said, thatat the present day not one in two of the many thousandmen before the mast employed in the American whalefishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all theofficers are. Herein it is the same with the Americanwhale fishery as with the American army and military and
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merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed inthe construction of the American Canals and Railroads.The same, I say, because in all these cases the nativeAmerican liberally provides the brains, the rest of theworld as generously supplying the muscles. No smallnumber of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores,where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequentlytouch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants ofthose rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalerssailing out of Hull or London, put in at the ShetlandIslands, 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 makethe best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in thePequod, _Isolatoes_ too, I call such, not acknowledgingthe common continent of men, but each _Isolato_ living ona separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated alongone keel, what a set these Isolatoes were! An AnacharsisClootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all theends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequodto lay the worlds grievances before that bar from whichnot very many of them ever come back. Black Little Piphenever didoh, no! he went before. Poor Alabama boy! Onthe grim Pequods forecastle, ye shall ere long see him,beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, whensent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strikein with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called acoward here, hailed a hero there!
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CHAPTER 28. Ahab.
For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing abovehatches was seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularlyrelieved each other at the watches, and for aught thatcould be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the onlycommanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued fromthe cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that afterall it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes,their supreme lord and dictator was there, though hithertounseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the nowsacred retreat of the cabin.
Every time I ascended to the deck from my watchesbelow, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange facewere visible; for my first vague disquietude touching theunknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, becamealmost a perturbation. This was strangely heightenedat times by the ragged Elijahs diabolical incoherencesuninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I couldnot have before conceived of. But poorly could I withstandthem, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smileat the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet ofthe wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness oruneasinessto call it sowhich I felt, yet whenever I came tolook about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantryto cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers,with the great body of the crew, were a far morebarbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame
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merchant-ship companies which my previous experienceshad made me acquainted with, still I ascribed thisandrightly ascribed itto the fierce uniqueness of the verynature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I hadso abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspectof the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, whichwas most forcibly calculated to allay these colourlessmisgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness inevery presentment of the voyage. Three better, more likelysea-officers and men, each in his own different way,could not readily be found, and they were every one ofthem Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Capeman. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot fromout 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 wesailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all itsintolerable weather behind us. It was one of those lesslowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings ofthe transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushingthrough the water with a vindictive sort of leaping andmelancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck atthe call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled myglance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me.Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon hisquarter-deck.
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness abouthim, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man
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cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunninglywasted all the limbs without consuming them, or takingaway one particle from their compacted aged robustness.His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze,and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellinis castPerseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs,and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorchedface and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you sawa slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled thatperpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, loftytrunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearinglydarts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peelsand grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere runningoff into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive,but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, orwhether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, noone could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughoutthe voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especiallyby the mates. But once Tashtegos senior, an old Gay-HeadIndian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that nottill he was full forty years old did Ahab become that waybranded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury ofany mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, thiswild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a greyManxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, havingnever before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this laideye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions,the immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old
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Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. Sothat no white sailor seriously contradicted him when hesaid that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laidoutwhich might hardly come to pass, so he mutteredthen,whoever should do that last office for the dead, would finda birth-mark on him from crown to sole.
So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affectme, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for thefirst few moments I hardly noted that not a little of thisoverbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric whiteleg upon which he partly stood. It had previously cometo me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned fromthe polished bone of the sperm whales jaw. Aye, he wasdismasted off Japan, said the old Gay-Head Indian once;but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mastwithout coming home for it. He has a quiver of em.
I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Uponeach side of the Pequods quarter deck, and pretty close tothe mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored abouthalf an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadiedin that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud;Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond theships ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmestfortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in thefixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Nota word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him;though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they
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plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness ofbeing under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, butmoody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixionin his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignityof some mighty woe.
Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into hiscabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible tothe crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated uponan ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. Asthe sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a littlegenial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, whenthe ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintrybleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And,by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continuallyin the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptiblydid, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessarythere as another mast. But the Pequod was only makinga passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whalingpreparatives needing supervision the mates were fullycompetent to, so that there was little or nothing, out ofhimself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chaseaway, for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layerwere piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose theloftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasivenessof the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemedgradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when
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the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip hometo the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest,ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least sendforth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respondto the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than oncedid he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in anyother 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 Quitospring, which, at sea, almost perpetually reigns on thethreshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmlycool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundantdays, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heapedupflaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and statelynights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursingat home in lonely pride, the memory of their absentconquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleepingman, twas hard to choose between such winsome daysand such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of thatunwaning weather did not merely lend new spells andpotencies to the outward world. Inward they turned uponthe soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve cameon; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice mostforms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies,more and more they wrought on Ahabs texture.
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Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked withlife, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenestleave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was sowith Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much tolive in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were moreto the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. It feels likegoing down into ones tomb,he would mutter to himselfforan 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 watchesof the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelledthe slumbers of the band below; and when if a ropewas to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung itnot rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousnessdropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their slumberingshipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would beginto prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watchthe 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; forat times like these, he usually abstained from patrollingthe quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates, seekingrepose within six inches of his ivory heel, such wouldhave been the reverberating crack and din of that bonystep, that their dreams would have been on the crunchingteeth of sharks. But once, the mood was on him too deep
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for common regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-likepace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast,Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with acertain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted thatif Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then,no one could say nay; but there might be some wayof muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly andhesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it,of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahabthen.
Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb, said Ahab, that thou wouldstwad me that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Belowto thy nightly grave; where such as ye sleep betweenshrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last.Down, dog, andkennel!
Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of theso suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless amoment; then said excitedly, I am not used to be spokento that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir.
Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violentlymoving away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.
No, sir; not yet, said Stubb, emboldened, I will not tamelybe called a dog, sir.
Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass,and begone, or Ill clear the world of thee!
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As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with suchoverbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarilyretreated.
I was never served so before without giving a hard blowfor it, muttered Stubb, as he found himself descendingthe cabin-scuttle. Its very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow,now, I dont well know whether to go back and strike him,orwhats that?down here on my knees and pray for him?Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it wouldbe the first time I ever _did_ pray. Its queer; very queer;and hes queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, hes about thequeerest old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed atme!his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad? Anyway theressomething on his mind, as sure as there must be somethingon a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either,more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he dontsleep then. Didnt that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell methat of a morning he always finds the old mans hammockclothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down atthe foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and thepillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick hadbeen on it? A hot old man! I guess hes got what some folksashore call a conscience; its a kind of Tic-Dolly-row theysayworse nor a toothache. Well, well; I dont know whatit is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. Hes full ofriddles; I wonder what he goes into the after hold for, everynight, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; whats that for, Ishould like to know? Whos made appointments with him
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in the hold? Aint that queer, now? But theres no telling, itsthe old gameHere goes for a snooze. Damn me, its worth afellows while to be born into the world, if only to fall rightasleep. And now that I think of it, thats about the first thingbabies do, and thats a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but allthings are queer, come to think of em. But thats against myprinciples. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; andsleep when you can, is my twelfthSo here goes again. Buthows that? didnt he call me a dog? blazes! he called meten 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 didnt observe it, I was sotaken all aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like ableached bone. What the devils the matter with me? I dontstand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man hasa sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I musthave been dreaming, thoughHow? how? how?but the onlyways to stash it; so here goes to hammock again; and inthe morning, Ill see how this plaguey juggling thinks overby daylight.
CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.
When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaningover the bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with himof late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below forhis ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at thebinnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather sideof the deck, he sat and smoked.
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In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danishkings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of thenarwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on thattripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty itsymbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of thesea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor camefrom his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blewback 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 pleasuringaye,and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; towindward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like thedying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullestof trouble. What business have I with this pipe? This thingthat is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vaporsamong mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey lockslike mine. Ill smoke no more
He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissedin the waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubblethe sinking pipe made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchinglypaced the planks.
CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.
Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.
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Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You knowthe old mans ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me withit; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my littleman, I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto! Ahabseemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kickingat it. But what was still more curious, Flaskyou know howcurious all dreams arethrough all this rage that I was in, Isomehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all,it was not much of an insult, that kick from Ahab. Why,thinks I, whats the row? Its not a real leg, only a false leg.And theres a mighty difference between a living thumpand a dead thump. Thats what makes a blow from the hand,Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from acane. The living memberthat makes the living insult, mylittle man. And thinks I to myself all the while, mind,while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursedpyramidso confoundedly contradictory was it all, all thewhile, I say, I was thinking to myself, whats his leg now,but a canea whalebone cane. Yes, thinks I, it was only aplayful cudgellingin fact, only a whaleboning that he gavemenot a base kick. Besides, thinks I, look at it once; why,the end of itthe foot partwhat a small sort of end it is;whereas, if a broad footed farmer kicked me, _theres_ adevilish broad insult. But this insult is whittled down to apoint only. But now comes the greatest joke of the dream,Flask. While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sortof badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back,takes me by the shoulders, and slews me round. What are
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you bout? says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened. Sucha phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright.What am I about? says I at last. And what business isthat of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do_you_ want a kick? By the lord, Flask, I had no soonersaid that, than he turned round his stern to me, bent over,and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a cloutwhatdo you think, I saw?why thunder alive, man, his stern wasstuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, onsecond thoughts, I guess I wont kick you, old fellow. WiseStubb, said he, wise Stubb; and kept muttering it all thetime, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimneyhag. Seeing he wasnt going to stop saying over his wiseStubb, wise Stubb, I thought I might as well fall to kickingthe pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot forit, when he roared out, Stop that kicking! Halloa, says I,whats the matter now, old fellow? Look ye here, says he;lets argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didnt he?Yes, he did, says Iright _here_ it was. Very good, says heheused his ivory leg, didnt he? Yes, he did, says I. Well then,says he, wise Stubb, what have you to complain of? Didnthe kick with right good will? it wasnt a common pitchpine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you were kicked bya great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. Its anhonor; I consider it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In oldEngland the greatest lords think it great glory to be slappedby a queen, and made garter-knights of; but, be _your_boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a
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wise man of. Remember what I say; _be_ kicked by him;account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back;for you cant help yourself, wise Stubb. Dont you see thatpyramid? 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, whatdo you think of that dream, Flask?
I dont know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.
May be; may be. But its made a wise man of me, Flask.Dye see Ahab standing there, sideways looking over thestern? Well, the best thing you can do, Flask, is to letthe old man alone; never speak to him, whatever he says.Halloa! Whats that he shouts? Hark!
Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whaleshereabouts!
If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!
What do you think of that now, Flask? aint there a smalldrop of something queer about that, eh? A white whaledidye mark that, man? Look yetheres something special in thewind. Stand by for it, Flask. Ahab has that thats bloody onhis mind. But, mum; he comes this way.
CHAPTER 32. Cetology.
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon
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we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities.Ere that come to pass; ere the Pequods weedy hull rollsside by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan;at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almostindispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding ofthe more special leviathanic revelations and allusions ofall sorts which are to follow.
It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broadgenera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it noeasy task. The classification of the constituents of a chaos,nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the best andlatest authorities have laid down.
No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that whichis entitled Cetology, says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into theinquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea intogroups and families. * * * Utter confusion exists amongthe historians of this animal (sperm whale), says SurgeonBeale, A.D. 1839.
Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomablewaters. Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of thecetacea. A field strewn with thorns. All these incompleteindications but serve to torture us naturalists.
Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and JohnHunter, and Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy.
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Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little,yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some smalldegree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Manyare the men, small and great, old and new, landsmenand seamen, who have at large or in little, written of thewhale. Run over a few:The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle;Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray;Linnus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald;Brisson; Marten; Lacpde; Bonneterre; Desmarest; BaronCuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby;Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of MiriamCoffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to whatultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, theabove cited extracts will show.
Of the names in this list of whale authors, only thosefollowing Owen ever saw living whales; and but one ofthem was a real professional harpooneer and whaleman.I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of theGreenland or right-whale, he is the best existing authority.But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the greatsperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whaleis almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, thatthe Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of theseas. He is not even by any means the largest of the whales.Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and theprofound ignorance which, till some seventy years back,invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-
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whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reignsin all but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports;this usurpation has been every way complete. Referenceto nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poetsof 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. Thisis Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all,the Greenlandwhale is deposed,the great sperm whale now reigneth!
There are only two books in being which at all pretendto put the living sperm whale before you, and at thesame time, in the remotest degree succeed in the attempt.Those books are Beales and Bennetts; both in their timesurgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and bothexact and reliable men. The original matter touching thesperm whale to be found in their volumes is necessarilysmall; but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, thoughmostly confined to scientific description. As yet, however,the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete inany literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is anunwritten life.
Now the various species of whales need some sort ofpopular comprehensive classification, if only an easyoutline one for the present, hereafter to be filled in allits departments by subsequent laborers. As no better manadvances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer myown poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete; because
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any human thing supposed to be complete, must for thatvery reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to aminute anatomical description of the various species, orinthis place at leastto much of any description. My objecthere is simply to project the draught of a systematizationof cetology. I am the architect, not the builder.
But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter inthe Post-Office is equal to it. To grope down into thebottom of the sea after them; to have ones hands amongthe unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of theworld; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essayto hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings inJob might well appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make acovenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain! But Ihave swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; Ihave had to do with whales with these visible hands; I amin earnest; and I will try. There are some preliminaries tosettle.
First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science ofCetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that insome quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whalebe a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnusdeclares, I hereby separate the whales from the fish. Butof my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850,sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnussexpress edict, were still found dividing the possession ofthe same seas with the Leviathan.
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The grounds upon which Linnus would fain have banishedthe whales from the waters, he states as follows: Onaccount of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, theirmovable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantemfeminam mammis lactantem, and finally, ex lege naturjure meritoque. I submitted all this to my friends SimeonMacey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmatesof mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinionthat the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient.Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.
Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good oldfashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call uponholy Jonah to back me. This fundamental thing settled,the next point is, in what internal respect does the whalediffer from other fish. Above, Linnus has given you thoseitems. 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 obviousexternals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time tocome? To be short, then, a whale is _a spouting fish with ahorizontal tail_. There you have him. However contracted,that definition is the result of expanded meditation. Awalrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not afish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of thedefinition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first.Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiarto landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-
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down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though itmay be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontalposition.
By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by nomeans exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any seacreature hitherto identified with the whale by the bestinformed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link with itany fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.* Hence,all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish must beincluded in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, comethe grand divisions of the entire whale host.
*I am aware that down to the present time, the fishstyled Lamatins and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish ofthe Coffins of Nantucket) are included by many naturalistsamong 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 donot spout, I deny their credentials as whales; and havepresented them with their passports to quit the Kingdomof Cetology.
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales intothree 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.
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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 followingchapters:I. The _Sperm Whale_; II. the _Right Whale_;III. the _Fin-Back Whale_; IV. the _Hump-backedWhale_; V. the _Razor Back Whale_; VI. the _SulphurBottom Whale_.
BOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER I. (_Sperm Whale_).Thiswhale, among the English of old vaguely known as theTrumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the AnvilHeaded whale, is the present Cachalot of the French,and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalusof the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largestinhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whalesto encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, byfar the most valuable in commerce; he being the onlycreature 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 nowhave to do. Philologically considered, it is absurd. Somecenturies ago, when the Sperm whale was almost whollyunknown in his own proper individuality, and when hisoil was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish;in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularlysupposed to be derived from a creature identical with theone then known in England as the Greenland or Right
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Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermacetiwas that quickening humor of the Greenland Whale whichthe first syllable of the word literally expresses. In thosetimes, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not beingused for light, but only as an ointment and medicament.It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadaysbuy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the courseof time, the true nature of spermaceti became known, itsoriginal name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt toenhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of itsscarcity. And so the appellation must at last have come tobe bestowed upon the whale from which this spermacetiwas really derived.
BOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER II. (_Right Whale_).Inone respect this is the most venerable of the leviathans,being the one first regularly hunted by man. It yields thearticle commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and theoil specially known as whale oil, an inferior article incommerce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminatelydesignated by all the following titles: The Whale; theGreenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; theTrue Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurityconcerning the identity of the species thus multitudinouslybaptised. What then is the whale, which I include in thesecond species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetusof the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of theEnglish whalemen; the Baleine Ordinaire of the French
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whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is thewhale which for more than two centuries past has beenhunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas; it is thewhale which the American fishermen have long pursuedin the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor WestCoast, and various other parts of the world, designated bythem Right Whale Cruising Grounds.
Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenlandwhale of the English and the right whale of the Americans.But they precisely agree in all their grand features; norhas there yet been presented a single determinate factupon which to ground a radical distinction. It is byendless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusivedifferences, that some departments of natural historybecome so repellingly intricate. The right whale will beelsewhere treated of at some length, with reference toelucidating the sperm whale.
BOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER III. (_Fin-Back_).Underthis head I reckon a monster which, by the various namesof Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and Long-John, has been seenalmost in every sea and is commonly the whale whosedistant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing theAtlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length heattains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the rightwhale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour,approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-likeaspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large
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wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, fromwhich he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object.This fin is some three or four feet long, growing verticallyfrom the hinder part of the back, of an angular shape, andwith a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightestother part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, attimes, be seen plainly projecting from the surface. Whenthe sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked withspherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up andcasts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well besupposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhatresembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines gravedon it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. TheFin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, assome men are man-haters. Very shy; always going solitary;unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and mostsullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising likea tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted withsuch wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as todefy all present pursuit from man; this leviathan seems thebanished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing forhis mark that style upon his back. From having the baleenin his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included withthe right whale, among a theoretic species denominated_Whalebone whales_, that is, whales with baleen. Ofthese so called Whalebone whales, there would seem tobe several varieties, most of which, however, are littleknown. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-
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headed whales; bunched whales; under-jawed whales androstrated whales, are the fishermens names for a few sorts.
In connection with this appellative of Whalebone whales,it is of great importance to mention, that however such anomenclature may be convenient in facilitating allusionsto some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt aclear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon eitherhis baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstandingthat those marked parts or features very obviously seembetter adapted to afford the basis for a regular systemof 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 thingswhose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed amongall sorts of whales, without any regard to what may bethe nature of their structure in other and more essentialparticulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbackedwhale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases.Then, this same humpbacked whale and the Greenlandwhale, each of these has baleen; but there again thesimilitude ceases. And it is just the same with the otherparts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales, theyform such irregular combinations; or, in the case of anyone of them detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterlyto defy all general methodization formed upon such abasis. On this rock every one of the whale-naturalists hassplit.
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But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal partsof the whale, in his anatomythere, at least, we shall be ableto hit the right classification. Nay; what thing, for example,is there in the Greenland whales anatomy more strikingthan his baleen? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it isimpossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale. Andif you descend into the bowels of the various leviathans,why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part asavailable to the systematizer as those external ones alreadyenumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take holdof the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, andboldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographicalsystem here adopted; and it is the only one that canpossibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed.
BOOK I. (_Folio_) CHAPTER IV. (_Hump Back_).Thiswhale is often seen on the northern American coast. Hehas been frequently captured there, and towed into harbor.He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you mightcall him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, thepopular name for him does not sufficiently distinguishhim, since the sperm whale also has a hump though asmaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. Heis the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales,making more gay foam and white water generally than anyother of them.
BOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER V. (_Razor Back_).Of thiswhale little is known but his name. I have seen him at a
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distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring nature, he eludes bothhunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he has neveryet shown any part of him but his back, which rises in along sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him,nor does anybody else.
BOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER VI. (_SulphurBottom_).Another retiring gentleman, with a brimstonebelly, doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tilesin some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen; atleast I have never seen him except in the remoter southernseas, and then always at too great a distance to studyhis countenance. He is never chased; he would run awaywith 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 middlingmagnitude, 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 Quartois very plain. Because, while the whales of this order,though smaller than those of the former order, neverthelessretain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the
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bookbinders Quarto volume in its dimensioned form doesnot preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavovolume does.
BOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER I.(_Grampus_).Though this fish, whose loud sonorousbreathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb tolandsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet ishe not popularly classed among whales. But possessingall the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, mostnaturalists have recognised him for one. He is of moderateoctavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet inlength, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist.He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted, though hisoil is considerable in quantity, and pretty good for light. Bysome fishermen his approach is regarded as premonitoryof the advance of the great sperm whale.
BOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER II. (_Black Fish_).Igive the popular fishermens names for all these fish, forgenerally they are the best. Where any name happens to bevague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another.I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called, becauseblackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, callhim the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is wellknown, and from the circumstance that the inner anglesof his lips are curved upwards, he carries an everlastingMephistophelean grin on his face. This whale averagessome sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in
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almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing hisdorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks somethinglike a Roman nose. When not more profitably employed,the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyenawhale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domesticemploymentas some frugal housekeepers, in the absenceof company, and quite alone by themselves, burn unsavorytallow instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber isvery thin, some of these whales will yield you upwards ofthirty gallons of oil.
BOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER III. (_Narwhale_), thatis, _Nostril whale_.Another instance of a curiously namedwhale, so named I suppose from his peculiar horn beingoriginally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature issome sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages fivefeet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteenfeet. Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk,growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressedfrom the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinisterside, which has an ill effect, giving its owner somethinganalogous to the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. Whatprecise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it wouldbe hard to say. It does not seem to be used like the bladeof the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell methat the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over thebottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was usedfor an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the surface
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of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrustshis horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot proveeither of these surmises to be correct. My own opinionis, that however this one-sided horn may really be usedby the Narwhalehowever that may beit would certainly bevery convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets.The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, theHorned whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly acurious example of the Unicornism to be found in almostevery kingdom of animated nature. From certain cloisteredold authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicornshorn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidoteagainst poison, and as such, preparations of it broughtimmense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts forfainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the maledeer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was initself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Lettertells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from thatvoyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelledhand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, ashis bold ship sailed down the Thames; when Sir Martinreturned from that voyage, saith Black Letter, on bendedknees he presented to her highness a prodigious long hornof the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung inthe castle at Windsor. An Irish author avers that the Earlof Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to herhighness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of theunicorn nature.
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The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look,being of a milk-white ground colour, dotted with roundand oblong spots of black. His oil is very superior, clearand 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 thiswhale little is precisely known to the Nantucketer, andnothing at all to the professed naturalist. From what Ihave seen of him at a distance, I should say that he wasabout the bigness of a grampus. He is very savagea sort ofFeegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales bythe lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty bruteis worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I neverheard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken tothe name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of itsindistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea;Bonapartes and Sharks included.
BOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER V. (_Thrasher_).Thisgentleman is famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferulein thrashing his foes. He mounts the Folio whales back,and as he swims, he works his passage by flogging him;as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similarprocess. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of theKiller. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.
Thus ends BOOK II. (_Octavo_), and begins BOOK III.(_Duodecimo_).
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DUODECIMOES.These include the smaller whales. I.The Huzza Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. TheMealy-mouthed Porpoise.
To those who have not chanced specially to studythe subject, it may possibly seem strange, that fishesnot commonly exceeding four or five feet should bemarshalled among WHALESa word, which, in the popularsense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But thecreatures set down above as Duodecimoes are infalliblywhales, by the terms of my definition of what a whaleis_i.e._ a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail.
BOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER 1. (_HuzzaPorpoise_).This is the common porpoise found almost allover the globe. The name is of my own bestowal; forthere are more than one sort of porpoises, and somethingmust be done to distinguish them. I call him thus, becausehe always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon thebroad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like capsin a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their appearance is generallyhailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine spirits, theyinvariably come from the breezy billows to windward.They are the lads that always live before the wind. Theyare accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstandthree cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then heavenhelp ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. Awell-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good
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gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extractedfrom his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in requestamong jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on theirhones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It maynever 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 youwill then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature.
BOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER II. (_AlgerinePorpoise_).A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, Ithink, in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the HuzzaPorpoise, but much of the same general make. Provokehim, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for himmany times, but never yet saw him captured.
BOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER III. (_Mealy-mouthed Porpoise_).The largest kind of Porpoise; andonly found in the Pacific, so far as it is known. The onlyEnglish name, by which he has hitherto been designated,is that of the fishersRight-Whale Porpoise, from thecircumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of thatFolio. In shape, he differs in some degree from the HuzzaPorpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, heis of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has no finson his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovelytail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But hismealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire back down tohis side fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct
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as the mark in a ships hull, called the bright waist, that linestreaks him from stem to stern, with two separate colours,black above and white below. The white comprises part ofhis head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes himlook as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to ameal-bag. A most mean and mealy aspect! His oil is muchlike 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 arabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which,as an American whaleman, I know by reputation, but notpersonally. I shall enumerate them by their fore-castleappellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable tofuture investigators, who may complete what I have herebut begun. If any of the following whales, shall hereafterbe caught and marked, then he can readily be incorporatedinto this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, orDuodecimo magnitude:The Bottle-Nose Whale; the JunkWhale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; theLeading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; theCoppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale;the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic,Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quotedother lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner ofuncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete;
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and can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, fullof Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system wouldnot be here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainlysee that I have kept my word. But I now leave mycetological System standing thus unfinished, even as thegreat Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane stillstanding upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For smallerections may be finished by their first architects; grandones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. Godkeep me from ever completing anything. This whole bookis but a draughtnay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time,Strength, Cash, and Patience!
CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder.
Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seemsas good a place as any to set down a little domesticpeculiarity on ship-board, arising from the existence of theharpooneer class of officers, a class unknown of course inany other marine than the whale-fleet.
The large importance attached to the harpooneers vocationis evinced by the fact, that originally in the old DutchFishery, two centuries and more ago, the command ofa whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person nowcalled the captain, but was divided between him and anofficer called the Specksnyder. Literally this word means
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Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent toChief Harpooneer. In those days, the captains authoritywas restricted to the navigation and general managementof the vessel; while over the whale-hunting departmentand all its concerns, the Specksnyder or Chief Harpooneerreigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, underthe corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch officialis still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged.At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and assuch, is but one of the captains more inferior subalterns.Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the harpooneersthe success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and sincein the American Fishery he is not only an important officerin the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watcheson a whaling ground) the command of the ships deck isalso his; therefore the grand political maxim of the seademands, that he should nominally live apart from the menbefore the mast, and be in some way distinguished as theirprofessional superior; though always, by them, familiarlyregarded as their social equal.
Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer andman at sea, is thisthe first lives aft, the last forward.Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen alike, the mateshave their quarters with the captain; and so, too, in mostof the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged inthe after part of the ship. That is to say, they take theirmeals in the captains cabin, and sleep in a place indirectlycommunicating with it.
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Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (byfar the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man),the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interestprevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low,depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upontheir common luck, together with their common vigilance,intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do insome cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline thanin merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how muchlike 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 areseldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away.Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you willsee the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elatedgrandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extortingalmost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperialpurple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequodwas 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 toremove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon thequarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing topeculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter tobe detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whetherof condescension or _in terrorem_, or otherwise; yet
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even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of theparamount forms and usages of the sea.
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived,that behind those forms and usages, as it were, hesometimes masked himself; incidentally making use ofthem for other and more private ends than they werelegitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanismof his brain, which had otherwise in a good degreeremained unmanifested; through those forms that samesultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship.For be a mans intellectual superiority what it will, it cannever assume the practical, available supremacy over othermen, without the aid of some sort of external arts andentrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltryand base. This it is, that for ever keeps Gods true princesof the Empire from the worlds hustings; and leaves thehighest honors that this air can give, to those men whobecome famous more through their infinite inferiority tothe choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than throughtheir undoubted superiority over the dead level of themass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things whenextreme political superstitions invest them, that in someroyal instances even to idiot imbecility they have impartedpotency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, theringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperialbrain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before thetremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatistwho would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest
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sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally soimportant in his art, as the one now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all hisNantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episodetouching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that Ihave only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him; and,therefore, all outward majestical trappings and housingsare denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, itmust needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for inthe deep, and featured in the unbodied air!
CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.
It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting hispale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announcesdinner to his lord and master; who, sitting in the leequarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of thesun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on thesmooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that dailypurpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From hiscomplete inattention to the tidings, you would think thatmoody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently,catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himselfto the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying,Dinner, Mr. Starbuck, disappears into the cabin.
When the last echo of his sultans step has died away,and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose
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that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude,takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peepinto the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness,Dinner, Mr. Stubb, and descends the scuttle. The secondEmir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightlyshaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all rightwith that important rope, he likewise takes up the oldburden, and with a rapid Dinner, Mr. Flask, follows afterhis predecessors.
But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on thequarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curiousrestraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in allsorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikesinto a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right overthe Grand Turks head; and then, by a dexterous sleight,pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, hegoes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visiblefrom the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringingup the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabindoorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether,and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters KingAhabs presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.
It is not the least among the strange things bred by theintense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the openair of the deck some officers will, upon provocation,bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towardstheir commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers
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the next moment go down to their customary dinnerin that same commanders cabin, and straightway theirinoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towardshim, as he sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous,sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? Aproblem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King ofBabylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily butcourteously, therein certainly must have been some touchof mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regaland intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that mans unchallenged power anddominion of individual influence for the time; that mansroyalty of state transcends Belshazzars, for Belshazzarwas not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends,has tasted what it is to be Csar. It is a witchery of socialczarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to thisconsideration you superadd the official supremacy of aship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the causeof 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 byhis warlike but still deferential cubs. In his own properturn, each officer waited to be served. They were as littlechildren before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed notto lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind, theirintent eyes all fastened upon the old mans knife, as hecarved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for
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the world they would have profaned that moment with theslightest observation, even upon so neutral a topic as theweather. No! And when reaching out his knife and fork,between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab therebymotioned Starbucks plate towards him, the mate receivedhis meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly;and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed againstthe plate; and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, notwithout circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquetat Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly dineswith the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin mealswere somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; andyet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only hehimself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb,when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. Andpoor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boyof this weary family party. His were the shinbones of thesaline beef; his would have been the drumsticks. For Flaskto have presumed to help himself, this must have seemedto him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had hehelped himself at that table, doubtless, never more wouldhe have been able to hold his head up in this honest world;nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. Andhad Flask helped himself, the chances were Ahab hadnever so much as noticed it. Least of all, did Flask presumeto help himself to butter. Whether he thought the ownersof the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting hisclear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on
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so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter wasat 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 thedinner, and Flask is the first man up. Consider! For herebyFlasks dinner was badly jammed in point of time. Starbuckand Stubb both had the start of him; and yet they alsohave the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even,who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but asmall appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concludinghis repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not getmore than three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holyusage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. Therefore itwas that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since hehad arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment hehad never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry,more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve hishunger, 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 wasbefore the mast. Theres the fruits of promotion now; theresthe vanity of glory: theres the insanity of life! Besides, ifit were so that any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudgeagainst Flask in Flasks official capacity, all that sailor hadto do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft atdinner-time, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.
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Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may becalled the first table in the Pequods cabin. After theirdeparture, taking place in inverted order to their arrival,the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored tosome hurried order by the pallid steward. And then thethree harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being itsresiduary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servantshall of the high and mighty cabin.
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint andnameless invisible domineerings of the captains table, wasthe entire care-free license and ease, the almost franticdemocracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers.While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the soundof the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewedtheir food with such a relish that there was a report toit. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies likeIndian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentousappetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out thevacancies made by the previous repast, often the paleDough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if hewere not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimblehop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanlyway of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back,harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a suddenhumor, assisted Dough-Boys memory by snatching him upbodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden
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trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying outthe circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally avery nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and ahospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle ofthe black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuousvisitations of these three savages, Dough-Boys whole lifewas one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing theharpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, hewould escape from their clutches into his little pantryadjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through theblinds of its door, till all was over.
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over againstTashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indians: crosswiseto them, Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench wouldhave brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines;at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the lowcabin framework to shake, as when an African elephantgoes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the greatnegro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. Itseemed hardly possible that by such comparatively smallmouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through sobroad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, thisnoble savage fed strong and drank deep of the aboundingelement of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed inthe sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread,are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had amortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eatingan ugly sound
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enoughso much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almostlooked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in hisown lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singingout for him to produce himself, that his bones mightbe picked, the simple-witted steward all but shatteredthe crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by hissudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which theharpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances andother weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, theywould ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that gratingsound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy.How could he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, forone, must certainly have been guilty of some murderous,convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares thewhite waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkinshould he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time,though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriorswould rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongeringears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step,like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.
But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, andnominally lived there; still, being anything but sedentaryin their habits, they were scarcely ever in it exceptat mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time, when theypassed through it to their own peculiar quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to mostAmerican whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to
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the opinion that by rights the ships cabin belongs to them;and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is, atany time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the matesand harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly besaid to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For whenthey did enter it, it was something as a street-door enters ahouse; turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned outthe next; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the openair. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin was nocompanionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Thoughnominally included in the census of Christendom, he wasstill an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of theGrisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Springand Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods,burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winterthere, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howlingold age, Ahabs 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 duerotation with the other seamen my first mast-head cameround.
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are mannedalmost simultaneously with the vessels leaving her port;even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, andmore, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. And
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if, after a three, four, or five years voyage she is drawingnigh home with anything empty in hersay, an empty vialeventhen, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; andnot till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of theport, does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturingone whale more.
Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore orafloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in somemeasure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standersof mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all myresearches, I find none prior to them. For though theirprogenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by theirtower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in allAsia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it)as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have goneby the board, in the dread gale of Gods wrath; therefore,we cannot give these Babel builders priority over theEgyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general beliefamong archologists, that the first pyramids were foundedfor astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supportedby the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides ofthose edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings oftheir legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount tothe apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outsof a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearingin sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit ofold times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert
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and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit,hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him wehave a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his place by fogs orfrosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everythingout to the last, literally died at his post. Of modernstanders-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; merestone, iron, and bronze men; who, though well capableof facing out a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent tothe business of singing out upon discovering any strangesight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the columnof Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundredand fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules thedecks below; whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, orLouis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high alofton his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one ofHercules pillars, his column marks that point of humangrandeur beyond which few mortals will go. AdmiralNelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscuredby that London smoke, token is yet given that a hiddenhero is there; for where there is smoke, must be fire. Butneither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, willanswer a single hail from below, however madly invokedto befriend by their counsels the distracted decks uponwhich they gaze; however it may be surmised, that theirspirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future, anddescry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.
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It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect themast-head standers of the land with those of the sea; butthat in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an itemfor which Obed Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket,stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that in theearly times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularlylaunched in pursuit of the game, the people of that islanderected lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats, something asfowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this sameplan 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 nowbecome obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads arekept manned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen takingtheir regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each otherevery two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics itis exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamymeditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundredfeet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, asif the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you andbetween your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monstersof the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots ofthe famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lostin the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled butthe waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsytrade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor.
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For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublimeuneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read nogazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplacesnever delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hearof no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall ofstocks; are never troubled with the thought of what youshall have for dinnerfor all your meals for three years andmore are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare isimmutable.
In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long threeor four years voyage, as often happens, the sum of thevarious hours you spend at the mast-head would amount toseveral entire months. And it is much to be deplored thatthe place to which you devote so considerable a portionof the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadlydestitute 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 sentrybox, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snugcontrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves.Your most usual point of perch is the head of the tgallant-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 feelsabout as cosy as he would standing on a bulls horns. To besure, in cold weather you may carry your house aloft withyou, in the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speakingthe thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the
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unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshytabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor evenmove out of it, without running great risk of perishing (likean ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter);so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mereenvelope, or additional skin encasing you. You cannot puta shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more canyou make a convenient closet of your watch-coat.
Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that themast-heads of a southern whale ship are unprovidedwith those enviable little tents or pulpits, called _crows-nests_, in which the look-outs of a Greenland whalerare protected from the inclement weather of the frozenseas. In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled AVoyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the GreenlandWhale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the LostIcelandic Colonies of Old Greenland; in this admirablevolume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with acharmingly circumstantial account of the then recentlyinvented _crows-nest_ of the Glacier, which was the nameof Captain Sleets good craft. He called it the _Sleetscrows-nest_, in honor of himself; he being the originalinventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous falsedelicacy, and holding that if we call our own children afterour own names (we fathers being the original inventorsand patentees), so likewise should we denominate afterourselves any other apparatus we may beget. In shape,the Sleets crows-nest is something like a large tierce or
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pipe; it is open above, however, where it is furnishedwith a movable side-screen to keep to windward of yourhead in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of themast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch inthe bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern ofthe ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneathfor umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leatherrack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe,telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When CaptainSleet in person stood his mast-head in this crows-nestof his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him(also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask andshot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales,or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for youcannot successfully shoot at them from the deck owingto the resistance of the water, but to shoot down uponthem is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a laborof love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all thelittle detailed conveniences of his crows-nest; but thoughhe so enlarges upon many of these, and though he treatsus to a very scientific account of his experiments in thiscrows-nest, with a small compass he kept there for thepurpose of counteracting the errors resulting from whatis called the local attraction of all binnacle magnets; anerror ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in theships planks, and in the Glaciers case, perhaps, to therehaving been so many broken-down blacksmiths among hercrew; I say, that though the Captain is very discreet and
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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 somuch immersed in those profound magnetic meditations,as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that wellreplenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on oneside of his crows nest, within easy reach of his hand.Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even lovethe brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take itvery ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it musthave been, while with mittened fingers and hooded headhe was studying the mathematics aloft there in that birdsnest within three or four perches of the pole.
But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housedaloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet thatdisadvantage is greatly counter-balanced by the widelycontrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which weSouth fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge upthe rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chatwith Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might findthere; then ascending a little way further, and throwing alazy leg over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view ofthe watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimatedestination.
Let me make a clean breast of it here, and franklyadmit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem
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of the universe revolving in me, how could Ibeingleft completely to myself at such a thought-engenderingaltitudehow could I but lightly hold my obligationsto observe all whale-ships standing orders, Keep yourweather 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 vigilantfisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given tounseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship withthe Phdon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware ofsuch an one, I say; your whales must be seen before theycan be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist willtow you ten wakes round the world, and never make youone pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions atall unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishesan asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares ofearth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. ChildeHarold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and inmoody phrase ejaculates:
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousandblubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.
Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them withnot feeling sufficient interest in the voyage; half-hinting
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that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition,as that in their secret souls they would rather not seewhales than otherwise. But all in vain; those youngPlatonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; theyare 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,weve been cruising now hard upon three years, and thouhast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hensteeth whenever thou art up here. Perhaps they were; orperhaps there might have been shoals of them in the farhorizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness ofvacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youthby the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that atlast he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feetfor 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 thoughtsthat only people the soul by continually flitting through it.In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whenceit came; becomes diffused through time and space; likeCranmers sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last apart of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking lifeimparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from
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the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. Butwhile this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot orhand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comesback in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. Andperhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air intothe summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, yePantheists!
CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.
(_Enter Ahab: Then, all._)
It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that onemorning 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 hepaced 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, youwould see still stranger foot-printsthe foot-prints of his oneunsleeping, 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
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turn that he made, now at the main-mast and now at thebinnacle, you could almost see that thought turn in himas he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completelypossessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inwardmould of every outer movement.
Dye mark him, Flask? whispered Stubb; the chick thats inhim 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 ofpurpose in his aspect.
It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt bythe bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-holethere, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he orderedStarbuck to send everybody aft.
Sir! said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or nevergiven on ship-board except in some extraordinary case.
Send everybody aft, repeated Ahab. Mast-heads, there!come down!
When the entire ships company were assembled, and withcurious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeinghim, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon whena storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing overthe bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew,started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were
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nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. Withbent 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 musthave summoned them there for the purpose of witnessinga pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehementlypausing, he cried:
What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?
Sing out for him! was the impulsive rejoinder from a scoreof clubbed voices.
Good! cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones;observing the hearty animation into which his unexpectedquestion 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; whilethe mariners began to gaze curiously at each other, as ifmarvelling how it was that they themselves became soexcited at such seemingly purposeless questions.
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But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his pivot-hole, with one hand reaching highup a shroud, and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it,addressed them thus:
All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give ordersabout a white whale. Look ye! dye see this Spanish ounceof gold?holding up a broad bright coin to the sunit is asixteen dollar piece, men. Dye see it? Mr. Starbuck, handme yon top-maul.
While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, withoutspeaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against theskirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, andwithout using any words was meanwhile lowly hummingto himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled andinarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of thewheels of his vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advancedtowards the main-mast with the hammer uplifted in onehand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a highraised voice exclaiming: Whosoever of ye raises me awhite-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crookedjaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale,with three holes punctured in his starboard flukelook ye,whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shallhave this gold ounce, my boys!
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Huzza! huzza! cried the seamen, as with swingingtarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to themast.
Its a white whale, I say, resumed Ahab, as he threw downthe 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 hadlooked on with even more intense interest and surprisethan the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled brow andcrooked jaw they had started as if each was separatelytouched by some specific recollection.
Captain Ahab, said Tashtego, that white whale must be thesame that some call Moby Dick.
Moby Dick? shouted Ahab. Do ye know the white whalethen, 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, threeoh! good many iron in himhide, too, Captain, cried Queequeg disjointedly, all twiske-tee be-twisk, like himhim faltering hard for a word, and
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screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking abottlelike himhim
Corkscrew! cried Ahab, aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lieall twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spoutis a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as apile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib ina squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye haveseenMoby DickMoby Dick!
Captain Ahab, said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask,had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasingsurprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought whichsomewhat explained all the wonder. Captain Ahab, I haveheard of Moby Dickbut it was not Moby Dick that took offthy leg?
Who told thee that? cried Ahab; then pausing, Aye,Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dickthat dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this deadstump 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 heshouted out: Aye, aye! and Ill chase him round Good Hope,and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom,and round perditions flames before I give him up. And
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this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that whitewhale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, tillhe 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, runningcloser to the excited old man: A sharp eye for the whitewhale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!
God bless ye, he seemed to half sob and half shout. Godbless ye, men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog.But whats this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou notchase the white whale? art not game for Moby Dick?
I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Deathtoo, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of thebusiness we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, notmy commanders vengeance. How many barrels will thyvengeance 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; thourequirest a little lower layer. If moneys to be the measurer,man, and the accountants have computed their greatcounting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, oneto every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, thatmy vengeance will fetch a great premium _here!_
He smites his chest, whispered Stubb, whats that for?methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.
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Vengeance on a dumb brute! cried Starbuck, that simplysmote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enragedwith a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.
Hark ye yet againthe little lower layer. All visible objects,man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each eventinthe living act, the undoubted deedthere, some unknownbut still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of itsfeatures from behind the unreasoning mask. If man willstrike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reachoutside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, thewhite whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes Ithink theres naught beyond. But tis enough. He tasks me;he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with aninscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing ischiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or bethe white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; Id strike the sun if itinsulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do theother; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousypresiding over all creations. But not my master, man, iseven that fair play. Whos over me? Truth hath no confines.Take off thine eye! more intolerable than fiends glaringsis a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; myheat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck,what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are menfrom whom warm words are small indignity. I meant notto incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks
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of spotted tawnliving, breathing pictures painted by thesun. The Pagan leopardsthe unrecking and unworshippingthings, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for thetorrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are theynot one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts tothink of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy onetost 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 bestlance 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, hehas inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannotoppose me now, without rebellion.
God keep me!keep us all! murmured Starbuck, lowly.
But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of themate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation; noryet the low laugh from the hold; nor yet the presagingvibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollowflap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment theirhearts sank in. For again Starbucks downcast eyes lightedup with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laughdied away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the
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ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions andwarnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather areye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so muchpredictions from without, as verifications of the foregoingthings within. For with little external to constrain us, theinnermost necessities in our being, these still drive us on.
The measure! the measure! cried Ahab.
Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to theharpooneers, he ordered them to produce their weapons.Then ranging them before him near the capstan, with theirharpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at hisside with their lances, and the rest of the ships companyformed a circle round the group; he stood for an instantsearchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wildeyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolvesmeet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head inthe trail of the bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hiddensnare of the Indian.
Drink and pass! he cried, handing the heavy chargedflagon to the nearest seaman. The crew alone now drink.Round with it, round! Short draughtslong swallows, men;tis hot as Satans 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 itcomes. Hand it meheres a hollow! Men, ye seem the years;so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!
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Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round thiscapstan; and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and yeharpooneers, stand there with your irons; and ye, stoutmariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noblecustom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, youwill yet see thatHa! boy, come back? bad pennies comenot sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had runbrimming again, wert not thou St. Vitus impaway, thouague!
Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Welldone! Let me touch the axis. So saying, with extended arm,he grasped the three level, radiating lances at their crossedcentre; while so doing, suddenly and nervously twitchedthem; meanwhile, glancing intently from Starbuck toStubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by somenameless, interior volition, he would fain have shockedinto them the same fiery emotion accumulated within theLeyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three matesquailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect.Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eyeof Starbuck fell downright.
In vain! cried Ahab; but, maybe, tis well. For did ye threebut once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electricthing, _that_ had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance,too, it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance ye needit not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do appointye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen thereyon
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three most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiantharpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the great Popewashes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh,my sweet cardinals! your own condescension, _that_ shallbend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizingsand draw the poles, ye harpooneers!
Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers nowstood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, somethree feet long, held, barbs up, before him.
Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant themover! 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 oneofficer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets withthe fiery waters from the pewter.
Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderouschalices! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties tothis indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed isdone! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink,ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man thedeathful whaleboats bowDeath to Moby Dick! God huntus all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death! Thelong, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries andmaledictions against the white whale, the spirits weresimultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled,and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the
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replenished pewter went the rounds among the franticcrew; when, waving his free hand to them, they alldispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.
CHAPTER 37. Sunset.
_The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, andgazing out_.
I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks,whereer I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell towhelm my track; let them; but first I pass.
Yonder, by ever-brimming goblets rim, the warm wavesblush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diversunslow dived from noongoes down; my soul mounts up!she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown tooheavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet isit bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its farflashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlinglyconfounds. Tis ironthat I knownot gold. Tis split, toothat Ifeel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beatagainst the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort thatneeds no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!
Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrisenobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. Thislovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish tome, since I can neer enjoy. Gifted with the high perception,I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and
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most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Goodnightgood night! (_waving his hand, he moves from thewindow_.)
Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, atthe least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their variouswheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so manyant-hills of powder, they all stand before me; and I theirmatch. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself mustneeds be wasting! What Ive dared, Ive willed; and what Ivewilled, Ill do! They think me madStarbuck does; but Imdemoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madnessthats only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy wasthat I should be dismembered; andAye! I lost this leg. I nowprophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now,then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. Thats more thanye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, yecricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blindedBendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bulliesTakesome one of your own size; dont pommel _me!_ No, yeveknocked me down, and I am up again; but _ye_ have runand hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! Ihave no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahabs complimentsto ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me?ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! manhas ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purposeis laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved torun. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of
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mountains, under torrents beds, unerringly I rush! Naughtsan obstacle, naughts an angle to the iron way!
CHAPTER 38. Dusk.
_By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it_.
My soul is more than matched; shes overmanned; and bya madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should groundarms on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and blastedall my reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; butfeel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffablething has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I haveno knife to cut. Horrible old man! Whos over him, hecries;aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, howhe lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserableoffice,to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touchof pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivelme 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 clocks run down; myheart 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 smalltouch of human mothers in them! Whelped somewhereby the sharkish sea. The white whale is their demigorgon.
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Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward! markthe unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life.Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay,embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahabafter 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 methrough! Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life!tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held toknowledge,as wild, untutored things are forced to feedOh,life! tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but tisnot me! that horrors out of me! and with the soft feelingof the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim,phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O yeblessed influences!
CHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch.
Fore-Top.
(_Stubb solus, and mending a brace_.)
Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!Ive been thinkingover it ever since, and that ha, has the final consequence.Why so? Because a laughs the wisest, easiest answer toall thats queer; and come what will, one comforts alwaysleftthat unfailing comfort is, its all predestinated. I heardnot all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor eye Starbuckthen looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure
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the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it; hadhad the gift, might readily have prophesied itfor when Iclapped my eye upon his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, _wise_Stubbthats my titlewell, Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Heres acarcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it whatit will, Ill go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering aslurks in all your horribles! I feel funny. Fa, la! lirra, skirra!Whats my juicy little pear at home doing now? Crying itseyes out?Giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers, Idare say, gay as a frigates pennant, and so am Ifa, la! lirra,skirra! Oh
Well drink to-night with hearts as light, To love, as gay andfleeting As bubbles that swim, on the beakers brim, Andbreak on the lips while meeting.
A brave stave thatwho calls? Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye,sir(_Aside_) hes my superior, he has his too, if Im notmistaken.Aye, aye, sir, just through with this jobcoming.
CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.
HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.
(_Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing,lounging, leaning, and lying in various attitudes, allsinging in chorus_.)
Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies! Farewell andadieu to you, ladies of Spain! Our captains commanded.
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1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, dont besentimental; its bad for the digestion! Take a tonic, followme!
(_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 everystrand. Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys, And byyour braces stand, And well have one of those fine whales,Hand, boys, over hand! So, be cheery, my lads! may yourhearts never fail! While the bold harpooner is striking thewhale!
MATES VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eightbells there, forward!
2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eightbells there! dye hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thouPip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch. Ive the sortof mouth for thatthe hogshead mouth. So, so, (_thrusts hishead down the scuttle_,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eightbells there below! Tumble up!
DUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fatnight for that. I mark this in our old Moguls wine; itsquite as deadening to some as filliping to others. We sing;they sleepaye, lie down there, like ground-tier butts. At emagain! There, take this copper-pump, and hail em throughit. Tell em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell em its
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the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come tojudgment. Thats the way_thats_ it; thy throat aint spoiledwith eating Amsterdam butter.
FRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! lets have a jig or twobefore we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye?There comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip! littlePip! hurrah with your tambourine!
PIP. (_Sulky and sleepy._) Dont know where it is.
FRENCH SAILOR. Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears.Jig it, men, I say; merrys the word; hurrah! Damn me,wont you dance? Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop intothe double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs! legs!
ICELAND SAILOR. I dont like your floor, maty; its toospringy to my taste. Im used to ice-floors. Im sorry to throwcold water on the subject; but excuse me.
MALTESE SAILOR. Me too; wheres your girls? Who buta fool would take his left hand by his right, and say tohimself, how dye do? Partners! I must have partners!
SICILIAN SAILOR. Aye; girls and a green!then Ill hopwith ye; yea, turn grasshopper!
LONG-ISLAND SAILOR. Well, well, ye sulkies, theresplenty more of us. Hoe corn when you may, say I. All legsgo to harvest soon. Ah! here comes the music; now for it!
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AZORE SAILOR. (_Ascending, and pitching thetambourine up the scuttle_.) Here you are, Pip; and theresthe windlass-bitts; up you mount! Now, boys! (_The halfof them dance to the tambourine; some go below; somesleep 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; Ipound 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._) Thats a white man; hecalls that fun: humph! I save my sweat.
OLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether those jolly ladsbethink them of what they are dancing over. Ill dance overyour grave, I willthats the bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round corners. O Christ! tothink of the green navies and the green-skulled crews!Well, well; belike the whole worlds a ball, as you scholarshave it; and so tis right to make one ballroom of it. Danceon, lads, youre young; I was once.
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3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!whew! this is worsethan pulling after whales in a calmgive us a whiff, Tash.
(_They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantimethe sky darkensthe wind rises_.)
LASCAR SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, itll be douse sailsoon. The sky-born, high-tide Ganges turned to wind!Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!
MALTESE SAILOR. (_Reclining and shaking his cap_.)Its the wavesthe snows caps turn to jig it now. Theyll shaketheir tassels soon. Now would all the waves were women,then Id go drown, and chassee with them evermore! Theresnaught so sweet on earthheaven may not match it!as thoseswift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, whenthe over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR. (_Reclining_.) Tell me not ofit! Hark ye, ladfleet interlacings of the limbslitheswayingscoyingsflutterings! lip! heart! hip! all graze:unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else comesatiety. Eh, Pagan? (_Nudging_.)
TAHITAN SAILOR. (_Reclining on a mat_.) Hail, holynakedness of our dancing girls!the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! lowveiled, high palmed Tahiti! I still rest me on thy mat, butthe soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven in the wood, mymat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn and
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wilted quite. Ah me!not thou nor I can bear the change!How then, if so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I theroaring streams from Pirohitees peak of spears, when theyleap down the crags and drown the villages?The blast! theblast! Up, spine, and meet it! (_Leaps to his feet_.)
PORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashinggainst the side! Stand by for reefing, hearties! the winds arejust crossing swords, pell-mell theyll go lunging presently.
DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thoucrackest, thou holdest! Well done! The mate there holds yeto it stiffly. Hes no more afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat,put there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, onwhich the sea-salt cakes!
4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind yethat. I heard old Ahab tell him he must always kill a squall,something as they burst a waterspout with a pistolfire yourship right into it!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old mans a grand oldcove! We are the lads to hunt him up his whale!
ALL. Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pinesare the hardest sort of tree to live when shifted to anyother soil, and here theres none but the crews cursed clay.Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort of weather when
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brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea.Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, theresanother in the skylurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.
DAGGOO. What of that? Whos afraid of blacks afraid ofme! Im 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 ofmankinddevilish dark at that. No offence.
DAGGOO (_grimly_). None.
ST. JAGOS SAILOR. That Spaniards mad or drunk. Butthat cant be, or else in his one case our old Moguls fire-waters are somewhat long in working.
5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. Whats that I sawlightning?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!
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TASHTEGO (_with a whiff_). A row alow, and a rowaloftGods and menboth brawlers! Humph!
BELFAST SAILOR. A row! arrah a row! The Virgin beblessed, a row! Plunge in with ye!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Fair play! Snatch the Spaniardsknife! A ring, a ring!
OLD MANX SAILOR. Ready formed. There! the ringedhorizon. In that ring Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, rightwork! No? Why then, God, madst thou the ring?
MATES VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Handsby the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reeftopsails!
ALL. The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (_Theyscatter_.)
PIP (_shrinking under the windlass_). Jollies? Lord helpsuch jollies! Crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal yard!Its worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day ofthe year! Whod go climbing after chestnuts now? But therethey go, all cursing, and here I dont. Fine prospects to em;theyre on the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, whata squall! But those chaps there are worse yetthey are yourwhite squalls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr!shirr! Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the
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white whaleshirr! shirr!but spoken of once! and only thiseveningit makes me jingle all over like my tambourinethatanaconda of an old man swore em in to hunt him! Oh, thoubig white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, havemercy on this small black boy down here; preserve himfrom all men that have no bowels to feel fear!
CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick.
I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone upwith the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; andstronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch myoath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical,sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahabs quenchless feudseemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of thatmurderous monster against whom I and all the others hadtaken our oaths of violence and revenge.
For some time past, though at intervals only, theunaccompanied, secluded White Whale had haunted thoseuncivilized seas mostly frequented by the Sperm Whalefishermen. But not all of them knew of his existence; onlya few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen him;while the number who as yet had actually and knowinglygiven battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing tothe large number of whale-cruisers; the disorderly waythey were sprinkled over the entire watery circumference,many of them adventurously pushing their quest alongsolitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole
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twelvemonth or more on a stretch, to encounter a singlenews-telling sail of any sort; the inordinate length of eachseparate voyage; the irregularity of the times of sailingfrom home; all these, with other circumstances, direct andindirect, long obstructed the spread through the wholeworld-wide whaling-fleet of the special individualizingtidings concerning Moby Dick. It was hardly to bedoubted, 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 notan unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in questionmust have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as of latethe Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various andnot unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, andmalice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that thosewho by accident ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick;such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were content toascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, tothe perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than tothe individual cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrousencounter between Ahab and the whale had hitherto beenpopularly regarded.
And as for those who, previously hearing of the WhiteWhale, by chance caught sight of him; in the beginningof the thing they had every one of them, almost, as boldly
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and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any other whale ofthat species. But at length, such calamities did ensue inthese assaultsnot restricted to sprained wrists and ankles,broken limbs, or devouring amputationsbut fatal to the lastdegree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, allaccumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick;those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of manybrave hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale hadeventually come.
Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, andstill the more horrify the true histories of these deadlyencounters. For not only do fabulous rumors naturallygrow out of the very body of all surprising terribleevents,as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, inmaritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wildrumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality forthem to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in thismatter, so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort ofmaritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of therumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only arewhalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance andsuperstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors,they are by all odds the most directly brought into contactwith whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face toface they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw,give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, thatthough you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousandshores, you would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone,
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or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in suchlatitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as hedoes, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tendingto make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.
No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume fromthe mere transit over the widest watery spaces, theoutblown rumors of the White Whale did in the endincorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints,and half-formed ftal suggestions of supernatural agencies,which eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrorsunborrowed from anything that visibly appears. So that inmany cases such a panic did he finally strike, that few whoby those rumors, at least, had heard of the White Whale,few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perilsof his jaw.
But there were still other and more vital practicalinfluences at work. Not even at the present day hasthe original prestige of the Sperm Whale, as fearfullydistinguished from all other species of the leviathan, diedout of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There arethose this day among them, who, though intelligent andcourageous enough in offering battle to the Greenlandor Right whale, would perhapseither from professionalinexperience, or incompetency, or timidity, decline acontest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are plentyof whalemen, especially among those whaling nations notsailing under the American flag, who have never hostilely
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encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledgeof the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monsterprimitively pursued in the North; seated on their hatches,these men will hearken with a childish fireside interest andawe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern whaling. Nor isthe pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whaleanywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board ofthose prows which stem him.
And as if the now tested reality of his might had in formerlegendary times thrown its shadow before it; we findsome book naturalistsOlassen and Povelsondeclaring theSperm Whale not only to be a consternation to every othercreature in the sea, but also to be so incredibly ferociousas continually to be athirst for human blood. Nor evendown to so late a time as Cuviers, were these or almostsimilar impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, theBaron himself affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale,all fish (sharks included) are struck with the most livelyterrors, and often in the precipitancy of their flight dashthemselves against the rocks with such violence as to causeinstantaneous death. And however the general experiencesin the fishery may amend such reports as these; yet in theirfull terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty item of Povelson,the superstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes oftheir vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters.
So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerninghim, not a few of the fishermen recalled, in reference to
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Moby Dick, the earlier days of the Sperm Whale fishery,when it was oftentimes hard to induce long practisedRight whalemen to embark in the perils of this new anddaring warfare; such men protesting that although otherleviathans might be hopefully pursued, yet to chase andpoint lance at such an apparition as the Sperm Whale wasnot for mortal man. That to attempt it, would be inevitablyto be torn into a quick eternity. On this head, there are someremarkable documents that may be consulted.
Nevertheless, some there were, who even in the faceof these things were ready to give chase to MobyDick; and a still greater number who, chancing only tohear of him distantly and vaguely, without the specificdetails of any certain calamity, and without superstitiousaccompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee fromthe battle if offered.
One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last comingto be linked with the White Whale in the minds of thesuperstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit thatMoby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually beenencountered in opposite latitudes at one and the sameinstant of time.
Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, wasthis conceit altogether without some faint show ofsuperstitious probability. For as the secrets of the currentsin the seas have never yet been divulged, even to the
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most erudite research; so the hidden ways of the SpermWhale when beneath the surface remain, in great part,unaccountable to his pursuers; and from time to time haveoriginated the most curious and contradictory speculationsregarding them, especially concerning the mystic modeswhereby, after sounding to a great depth, he transportshimself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distantpoints.
It is a thing well known to both American and Englishwhale-ships, and as well a thing placed upon authoritativerecord years ago by Scoresby, that some whales have beencaptured far north in the Pacific, in whose bodies have beenfound the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas.Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances ithas been declared that the interval of time between the twoassaults could not have exceeded very many days. Hence,by inference, it has been believed by some whalemen, thatthe Nor West Passage, so long a problem to man, was nevera problem to the whale. So that here, in the real livingexperience of living men, the prodigies related in old timesof the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose topthere was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of shipsfloated up to the surface); and that still more wonderfulstory of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whosewaters were believed to have come from the Holy Landby an underground passage); these fabulous narrations arealmost fully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.
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Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these;and knowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, theWhite Whale had escaped alive; it cannot be much matterof surprise that some whalemen should go still furtherin their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not onlyubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquityin time); that though groves of spears should be plantedin his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed; orif indeed he should ever be made to spout thick blood,such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for againin unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, hisunsullied jet would once more be seen.
But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings,there was enough in the earthly make and incontestablecharacter of the monster to strike the imagination withunwonted power. For, it was not so much his uncommonbulk that so much distinguished him from other spermwhales, but, as was elsewhere thrown outa peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical whitehump. These were his prominent features; the tokenswhereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he revealedhis identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him.
The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, andmarbled with the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, hehad gained his distinctive appellation of the White Whale;a name, indeed, literally justified by his vivid aspect, whenseen gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea, leaving a
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milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with goldengleamings.
Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkablehue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that somuch invested the whale with natural terror, as thatunexampled, intelligent malignity which, according tospecific accounts, he had over and over again evincedin his assaults. More than all, his treacherous retreatsstruck more of dismay than perhaps aught else. For,when swimming before his exulting pursuers, with everyapparent symptom of alarm, he had several times beenknown to turn round suddenly, and, bearing down uponthem, either stave their boats to splinters, or drive themback in consternation to their ship.
Already several fatalities had attended his chase. Butthough similar disasters, however little bruited ashore,were by no means unusual in the fishery; yet, inmost instances, such seemed the White Whales infernalaforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or deaththat he caused, was not wholly regarded as having beeninflicted by an unintelligent agent.
Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted furythe minds of his more desperate hunters were impelled,when amid the chips of chewed boats, and the sinkinglimbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white curdsof the whales direful wrath into the serene, exasperating
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sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men bothwhirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knifefrom his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as anArkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a sixinch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale.That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenlysweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, MobyDick had reaped away Ahabs leg, as a mower a blade ofgrass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian orMalay, could have smote him with more seeming malice.Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever sincethat almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wildvindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for thatin his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify withhim, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectualand spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swambefore him as the monomaniac incarnation of all thosemalicious agencies which some deep men feel eating inthem, till they are left living on with half a heart and halfa lung. That intangible malignity which has been from thebeginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christiansascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophitesof the east reverenced in their statue devil;Ahab did not falldown and worship it like them; but deliriously transferringits idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, allmutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments;all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it;
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all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtledemonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab,were visibly personified, and made practically assailablein Moby Dick. He piled upon the whales white hump thesum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole racefrom Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been amortar, he burst his hot hearts shell upon it.
It is not probable that this monomania in him tookits instant rise at the precise time of his bodilydismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster, knifein hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate,corporal animosity; and when he received the strokethat tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing bodilylaceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this collisionforced to turn towards home, and for long months of daysand weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in onehammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howlingPatagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and gashedsoul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made himmad. 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 intervalsduring the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and, thoughunlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked inhis Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by hisdelirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, eventhere, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And,
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when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, withmild stunsails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics,and, to all appearances, the old mans delirium seemedleft behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he cameforth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; eventhen, when he bore that firm, collected front, howeverpale, and issued his calm orders once again; and his matesthanked God the direful madness was now gone; eventhen, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madnessis oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When youthink it fled, it may have but become transfigured intosome still subtler form. Ahabs full lunacy subsided not, butdeepeningly contracted; like the unabated Hudson, whenthat noble Northman flows narrowly, but unfathomablythrough the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowingmonomania, not one jot of Ahabs broad madness hadbeen left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jotof his great natural intellect had perished. That beforeliving agent, now became the living instrument. If sucha furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed hisgeneral sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentredcannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from havinglost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possessa thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanelybrought to bear upon any one reasonable object.
This is much; yet Ahabs larger, darker, deeper part remainsunhinted. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truthis profound. Winding far down from within the very heart
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of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here standhowevergrand and wonderful, now quit it;and take your way,ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls ofThermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers of mansupper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essencesits in bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities,and throned on torsoes! So with a broken throne, the greatgods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he patientsits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablaturesof ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls!question that proud, sad king! A family likeness! aye, hedid beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from your grimsire 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 dissemblingwas only subject to his perceptibility, not to his willdeterminate. Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in thatdissembling, that when with ivory leg he stepped ashoreat last, no Nantucketer thought him otherwise than butnaturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the terriblecasualty which had overtaken him.
The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewisepopularly ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all theadded moodiness which always afterwards, to the very
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day of sailing in the Pequod on the present voyage, satbrooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely, that farfrom distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, onaccount of such dark symptoms, the calculating people ofthat prudent isle were inclined to harbor the conceit, thatfor those very reasons he was all the better qualified andset on edge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness asthe bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorchedwithout, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of someincurable idea; such an one, could he be found, wouldseem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance againstthe most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reasonthought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet suchan one would seem superlatively competent to cheer andhowl on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as itmay, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabatedrage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposelysailed upon the present voyage with the one only and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had anyone of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamedof what was lurking in him then, how soon would theiraghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship fromsuch a fiendish man! They were bent on profitable cruises,the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. Hewas intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernaturalrevenge.
Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man,chasing with curses a Jobs whale round the world, at the
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head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades,and castaways, and cannibalsmorally enfeebled also,by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity ofindifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervadingmediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemedspecially picked and packed by some infernal fatality tohelp him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was thatthey so aboundingly responded to the old mans ireby whatevil magic their souls were possessed, that at times hishate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much theirinsufferable foe as his; how all this came to bewhat theWhite Whale was to them, or how to their unconsciousunderstandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, hemight have seemed the gliding great demon of the seasof life,all this to explain, would be to dive deeper thanIshmael can go. The subterranean miner that works in usall, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the evershifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not feelthe irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand still? For one, I gave myself up to theabandonment of the time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see naught in that brutebut 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.
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Aside from those more obvious considerations touchingMoby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken inany mans soul some alarm, there was another thought, orrather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which attimes by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest;and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, thatI almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form.It was the whiteness of the whale that above all thingsappalled 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 refininglyenhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue ofits own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and thoughvarious nations have in some way recognised a certainroyal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grandold kings of Pegu placing the title Lord of the WhiteElephants above all their other magniloquent ascriptionsof dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling thesame snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; andthe Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Csarian,heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colourthe same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in itapplies to the human race itself, giving the white man idealmastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, allthis, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness,for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day;
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and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings,this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noblethingsthe innocence of brides, the benignity of age; thoughamong the Red Men of America the giving of the whitebelt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor; thoughin many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice inthe ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily stateof kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; thougheven in the higher mysteries of the most august religions ithas been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness andpower; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forkedflame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greekmythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate ina snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, themidwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by farthe holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithfulcreature being held the purest envoy they could send to theGreat Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity;and though directly from the Latin word for white, allChristian priests derive the name of one part of their sacredvesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; andthough among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, whiteis specially employed in the celebration of the Passion ofour Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robesare given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty eldersstand clothed in white before the great white throne, andthe Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for allthese accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet,
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and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusivesomething in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikesmore of panic to the soul than that redness which affrightsin blood.
This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought ofwhiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations,and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heightenthat terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bearof the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what buttheir smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendenthorrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is whichimparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsomethan terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So thatnot the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can sostagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark.*
*With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urgedby him who would fain go still deeper into this matter,that it is not the whiteness, separately regarded, whichheightens the intolerable hideousness of that brute; for,analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said,only rises from the circumstance, that the irresponsibleferociousness of the creature stands invested in the fleeceof celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringingtogether two such opposite emotions in our minds, thePolar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. Buteven assuming all this to be true; yet, were it not for thewhiteness, you would not have that intensified terror.
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As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostlinessof repose in that creature, when beheld in his ordinarymoods, strangely tallies with the same quality in thePolar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly hit bythe French in the name they bestow upon that fish. TheRomish mass for the dead begins with Requiem eternam(eternal rest), whence _Requiem_ denominating the massitself, and any other funeral music. Now, in allusion to thewhite, silent stillness of death in this shark, and the milddeadliness of his habits, the French call him _Requin_.
Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those cloudsof spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which thatwhite phantom sails in all imaginations? Not Coleridgefirst threw that spell; but Gods great, unflattering laureate,Nature.*
*I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was duringa prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarcticseas. From my forenoon watch below, I ascended tothe overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the mainhatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspottedwhiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. Atintervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, asif to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings andthrobbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it utteredcries, as some kings ghost in supernatural distress.Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought Ipeeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham
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before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing wasso white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiledwaters, I had lost the miserable warping memories oftraditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy ofplumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that dartedthrough me then. But at last I awoke; and turning, askeda sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney!never had heard that name before; is it conceivable thatthis glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore!never! But some time after, I learned that goney was someseamans name for albatross. So that by no possibility couldColeridges wild Rhyme have had aught to do with thosemystical impressions which were mine, when I saw thatbird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme,nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, Ido but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit ofthe poem and the poet.
I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness ofthe bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth themore evinced in this, that by a solecism of terms there arebirds called grey albatrosses; and these I have frequentlyseen, but never with such emotions as when I beheld theAntarctic fowl.
But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not,and I will tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as thefowl floated on the sea. At last the Captain made a postmanof it; tying a lettered, leathern tally round its neck, with
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the ships time and place; and then letting it escape. ButI doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was takenoff 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 isthat 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 vastherds of wild horses, whose pastures in those days wereonly fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies.At their flaming head he westward trooped it like thatchosen star which every evening leads on the hosts of light.The flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet ofhis tail, invested him with housings more resplendent thangold and silver-beaters could have furnished him. A mostimperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen,western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers andhunters revived the glories of those primeval times whenAdam walked majestic as a god, bluff-browed and fearlessas this mighty steed. Whether marching amid his aidesand marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlesslystreamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whetherwith his circumambient subjects browsing all around atthe horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed themwith warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness;in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the
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bravest Indians he was the object of trembling reverenceand awe. Nor can it be questioned from what standson legendary record of this noble horse, that it was hisspiritual whiteness chiefly, which so clothed him withdivineness; and that this divineness had that in it which,though commanding worship, at the same time enforced acertain nameless terror.
But there are other instances where this whiteness losesall that accessory and strange glory which invests it in theWhite Steed and Albatross.
What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels andoften shocks the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by hisown kith and kin! It is that whiteness which invests him,a thing expressed by the name he bears. The Albino is aswell made as other menhas no substantive deformityandyet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes himmore strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Whyshould this be so?
Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her leastpalpable but not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlistamong her forces this crowning attribute of the terrible.From its snowy aspect, the gauntleted ghost of theSouthern Seas has been denominated the White Squall.Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of humanmalice omitted so potent an auxiliary. How wildly itheightens the effect of that passage in Froissart, when,
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masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the desperateWhite Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market-place!
Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditaryexperience of all mankind fail to bear witness to thesupernaturalism of this hue. It cannot well be doubted,that the one visible quality in the aspect of the dead whichmost appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there;as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge ofconsternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidationhere. And from that pallor of the dead, we borrow theexpressive hue of the shroud in which we wrap them. Noreven in our superstitions do we fail to throw the samesnowy mantle round our phantoms; all ghosts rising ina milk-white fogYea, while these terrors seize us, let usadd, that even the king of terrors, when personified by theevangelist, rides on his pallid horse.
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grandor gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can denythat in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up apeculiar apparition to the soul.
But though without dissent this point be fixed, how ismortal man to account for it? To analyse it, would seemimpossible. Can we, then, by the citation of some of thoseinstances wherein this thing of whitenessthough for thetime either wholly or in great part stripped of all direct
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associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful, butnevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery,however modified;can we thus hope to light upon somechance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek?
Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appealsto subtlety, and without imagination no man can followanother into these halls. And though, doubtless, some atleast of the imaginative impressions about to be presentedmay have been shared by most men, yet few perhaps wereentirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore maynot be able to recall them now.
Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to bebut loosely acquainted with the peculiar character of theday, does the bare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in thefancy such long, dreary, speechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded with new-fallensnow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of theMiddle American States, why does the passing mention ofa White Friar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statuein the soul?
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeonedwarriors and kings (which will not wholly account for it)that makes the White Tower of London tell so much morestrongly on the imagination of an untravelled American,than those other storied structures, its neighborstheByward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer
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towers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence,in peculiar moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness overthe soul at the bare mention of that name, while thethought of Virginias Blue Ridge is full of a soft, dewy,distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudesand longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert sucha spectralness over the fancy, while that of the YellowSea lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mildafternoons on the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yetsleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantialinstance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in readingthe old fairy tales of Central Europe, does the tallpale man of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallorunrustlingly glides through the green of the groveswhy isthis phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps ofthe Blocksburg?
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her franticseas; nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; northe sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenchedcope-stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards ofanchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of house-wallslying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;itis not these things alone which make tearless Lima,the strangest, saddest city thou canst see. For Lima hastaken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in thiswhiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keepsher ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness
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of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts therigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.
I know that, to the common apprehension, thisphenomenon of whiteness is not confessed to be theprime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwiseterrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught ofterror in those appearances whose awfulness to anothermind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon,especially when exhibited under any form at allapproaching to muteness or universality. What I meanby these two statements may perhaps be respectivelyelucidated by the following examples.
First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts offoreign lands, if by night he hear the roar of breakers, startsto vigilance, and feels just enough of trepidation to sharpenall his faculties; but under precisely similar circumstances,let him be called from his hammock to view his ship sailingthrough a midnight sea of milky whitenessas if fromencircling headlands shoals of combed white bears wereswimming round him, then he feels a silent, superstitiousdread; the shrouded phantom of the whitened waters ishorrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the lead assureshim he is still off soundings; heart and helm they both godown; he never rests till blue water is under him again. Yetwhere is the mariner who will tell thee, Sir, it was not somuch the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of thathideous whiteness that so stirred me?
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Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sightof the snow-howdahed Andes conveys naught of dread,except, perhaps, in the mere fancying of the eternal frosteddesolateness reigning at such vast altitudes, and the naturalconceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneselfin such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it withthe backwoodsman of the West, who with comparativeindifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted withdriven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to break thefixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding thescenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by someinfernal trick of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air,he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead of rainbowsspeaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seemsa boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its leanice monuments and splintered crosses.
But thou sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter aboutwhiteness 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 somepeaceful valley of Vermont, far removed from all beasts ofpreywhy is it that upon the sunniest day, if you but shake afresh buffalo robe behind him, so that he cannot even see it,but only smells its wild animal muskinesswhy will he start,snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensiesof affright? There is no remembrance in him of any goringsof wild creatures in his green northern home, so that the
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strange muskiness he smells cannot recall to him anythingassociated with the experience of former perils; for whatknows he, this New England colt, of the black bisons ofdistant Oregon?
No: but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, theinstinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world.Though thousands of miles from Oregon, still when hesmells that savage musk, the rending, goring bison herdsare 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 bleakrustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolateshiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies; all these,to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to thefrightened colt!
Though neither knows where lie the nameless things ofwhich the mystic sign gives forth such hints; yet withme, as with the colt, somewhere those things must exist.Though in many of its aspects this visible world seemsformed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.
But not yet have we solved the incantation of thiswhiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power tothe soul; and more strange and far more portentouswhy,as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol ofspiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christians Deity;
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and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in thingsthe most appalling to mankind.
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartlessvoids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabsus from behind with the thought of annihilation, whenbeholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it,that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour asthe visible absence of colour; and at the same time theconcrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that thereis such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a widelandscape of snowsa colourless, all-colour of atheismfrom which we shrink? And when we consider that othertheory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthlyhuesevery stately or lovely emblazoningthe sweet tingesof sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvetsof butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls;all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent insubstances, but only laid on from without; so that alldeified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whoseallurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within;and when we proceed further, and consider that themystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues,the great principle of light, for ever remains white orcolorless in itself, and if operating without medium uponmatter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, withits own blank tingepondering all this, the palsied universelies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland,who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon
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their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind atthe monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospectaround him. And of all these things the Albino whale wasthe 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 seamenwere 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 precinctsof the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak orrustle their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went inthe deepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap ofa sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly advancingkeel.
It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of thecordon, whose post was near the after-hatches, whisperedto his neighbor, a Cholo, the words above.
Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?
Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise dye mean?
There it is againunder the hatchesdont you hear ita coughitsounded like a cough.
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Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket.
There againthere it is!it sounds like two or three sleepersturning over, now!
Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? Its the threesoaked biscuits ye eat for supper turning over inside ofyenothing else. Look to the bucket!
Say what ye will, shipmate; Ive sharp ears.
Aye, you are the chap, aint ye, that heard the hum of theold Quakeresss knitting-needles fifty miles at sea fromNantucket; youre the chap.
Grin away; well see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco,there is somebody down in the after-hold that has not yetbeen seen on deck; and I suspect our old Mogul knowssomething of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask, one morningwatch, 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 afterthe squall that took place on the night succeeding thatwild ratification of his purpose with his crew, you wouldhave seen him go to a locker in the transom, and bringingout a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spreadthem before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating
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himself before it, you would have seen him intently studythe various lines and shadings which there met his eye;and with slow but steady pencil trace additional coursesover spaces that before were blank. At intervals, he wouldrefer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein were setdown the seasons and places in which, on various formervoyages of various ships, sperm whales had been capturedor seen.
While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended inchains over his head, continually rocked with the motionof the ship, and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadowsof lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed thatwhile he himself was marking out lines and courses onthe wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracinglines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of hisforehead.
But it was not this night in particular that, in thesolitude of his cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts.Almost every night they were brought out; almost everynight some pencil marks were effaced, and others weresubstituted. For with the charts of all four oceans beforehim, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies,with a view to the more certain accomplishment of thatmonomaniac thought of his soul.
Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of theleviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus
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to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceansof this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knewthe sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculatingthe driftings of the sperm whales food; and, also, callingto mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting himin particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises,almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliestday to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey.
So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning theperiodicalness of the sperm whales resorting to givenwaters, that many hunters believe that, could he be closelyobserved and studied throughout the world; were the logsfor one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated,then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found tocorrespond in invariability to those of the herring-shoalsor the flights of swallows. On this hint, attempts have beenmade to construct elaborate migratory charts of the spermwhale.*
*Since the above was written, the statement is happilyborne out by an official circular, issued by LieutenantMaury, of the National Observatory, Washington, April16th, 1851. By that circular, it appears that precisely sucha chart is in course of completion; and portions of it arepresented in the circular. This chart divides the oceaninto districts of five degrees of latitude by five degreesof longitude; perpendicularly through each of whichdistricts are twelve columns for the twelve months; and
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horizontally through each of which districts are three lines;one to show the number of days that have been spent ineach month in every district, and the two others to showthe number of days in which whales, sperm or right, havebeen seen.
Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the sperm whales, guided by someinfallible instinctsay, rather, secret intelligence fromthe Deitymostly swim in _veins_, as they are called;continuing their way along a given ocean-line with suchundeviating 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 onewhale be straight as a surveyors parallel, and though theline of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable,straight wake, yet the arbitrary _vein_ in which at thesetimes he is said to swim, generally embraces some fewmiles in width (more or less, as the vein is presumed toexpand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweepfrom the whale-ships mast-heads, when circumspectlygliding along this magic zone. The sum is, that at particularseasons within that breadth and along that path, migratingwhales may with great confidence be looked for.
And hence not only at substantiated times, upon wellknown separate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope toencounter his prey; but in crossing the widest expanses ofwater between those grounds he could, by his art, so place
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and time himself on his way, as even then not to be whollywithout prospect of a meeting.
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed toentangle his delirious but still methodical scheme. But notso in the reality, perhaps. Though the gregarious spermwhales have their regular seasons for particular grounds,yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds whichhaunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year,say, will turn out to be identically the same with those thatwere found there the preceding season; though there arepeculiar and unquestionable instances where the contraryof this has proved true. In general, the same remark,only within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries andhermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So thatthough Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, forexample, on what is called the Seychelle ground in theIndian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet itdid not follow, that were the Pequod to visit either of thosespots at any subsequent corresponding season, she wouldinfallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some otherfeeding grounds, where he had at times revealed himself.But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places andocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged abode.And where Ahabs chances of accomplishing his objecthave hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only beenmade to whatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospectswere his, ere a particular set time or place were attained,when all possibilities would become probabilities, and,
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as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next thingto a certainty. That particular set time and place wereconjoined in the one technical phrasethe Season-on-the-Line. For there and then, for several consecutive years,Moby Dick had been periodically descried, lingering inthose waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round,loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign of theZodiac. There it was, too, that most of the deadlyencounters with the white whale had taken place; therethe waves were storied with his deeds; there also was thattragic spot where the monomaniac old man had foundthe awful motive to his vengeance. But in the cautiouscomprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with whichAhab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt,he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon theone crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering itmight be to those hopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vowcould he so tranquillize his unquiet heart as to postponeall intervening quest.
Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at thevery beginning of the Season-on-the-Line. No possibleendeavor then could enable her commander to make thegreat passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and thenrunning down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in theequatorial Pacific in time to cruise there. Therefore, hemust wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the prematurehour of the Pequods sailing had, perhaps, been correctlyselected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion
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of things. Because, an interval of three hundred andsixty-five days and nights was before him; an intervalwhich, instead of impatiently enduring ashore, he wouldspend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance the WhiteWhale, spending his vacation in seas far remote from hisperiodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkledbrow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or ChinaSeas, or in any other waters haunted by his race. So thatMonsoons, Pampas, Nor-Westers, Harmattans, Trades;any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might blow MobyDick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequodscircumnavigating wake.
But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly,seems it not but a mad idea, this; that in the broadboundless ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered,should be thought capable of individual recognition fromhis hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the throngedthoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiarsnow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-whitehump, could not but be unmistakable. And have I nottallied the whale, Ahab would mutter to himself, as afterporing over his charts till long after midnight he wouldthrow himself back in reveriestallied him, and shall heescape? His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like alost sheeps ear! And here, his mad mind would run on in abreathless race; till a weariness and faintness of ponderingcame over him; and in the open air of the deck he wouldseek to recover his strength. Ah, God! what trances of
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torments does that man endure who is consumed with oneunachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenchedhands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms.
Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting andintolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuminghis own intense thoughts through the day, carried themon amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them roundand round and round in his blazing brain, till the verythrobbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish;and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritualthroes in him heaved his being up from its base, and achasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flamesand lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckonedhim to leap down among them; when this hell in himselfyawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard throughthe ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from hisstate room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire.Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressablesymptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at his ownresolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For,at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedlysteadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that hadgone to his hammock, was not the agent that so causedhim to burst from it in horror again. The latter was theeternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, beingfor the time dissociated from the characterizing mind,which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle oragent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching
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contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time,it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does notexist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must havebeen that, in Ahabs case, yielding up all his thoughts andfancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by itsown sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods anddevils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of itsown. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the commonvitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-strickenfrom the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, thetormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when whatseemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time buta vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a rayof 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 whoseintense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulturefeeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creaturehe 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 interestingand curious particulars in the habits of sperm whales, theforegoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as important a oneas will be found in this volume; but the leading matter ofit requires to be still further and more familiarly enlargedupon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover
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to take away any incredulity which a profound ignoranceof the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to thenatural 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 byseparate citations of items, practically or reliably knownto me as a whaleman; and from these citations, I take ittheconclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself.
First: I have personally known three instances where awhale, after receiving a harpoon, has effected a completeescape; and, after an interval (in one instance of threeyears), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain;when the two irons, both marked by the same privatecypher, have been taken from the body. In the instancewhere three years intervened between the flinging of thetwo harpoons; and I think it may have been somethingmore than that; the man who darted them happening, in theinterval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to Africa, wentashore there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated farinto the interior, where he travelled for a period of nearlytwo years, often endangered by serpents, savages, tigers,poisonous miasmas, with all the other common perilsincident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions.Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have beenon its travels; no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated theglobe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa;but to no purpose. This man and this whale again came
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together, and the one vanquished the other. I say I, myself,have known three instances similar to this; that is in twoof them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the secondattack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut inthem, afterwards taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance, it so fell out that I was in the boat bothtimes, first and last, and the last time distinctly recogniseda peculiar sort of huge mole under the whales eye, which Ihad observed there three years previous. I say three years,but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are threeinstances, then, which I personally know the truth of; butI have heard of many other instances from persons whoseveracity 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 therehave been several memorable historical instances where aparticular whale in the ocean has been at distant times andplaces popularly cognisable. Why such a whale becamethus marked was not altogether and originally owing to hisbodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales;for however peculiar in that respect any chance whale maybe, they soon put an end to his peculiarities by killinghim, and boiling him down into a peculiarly valuable oil.No: the reason was this: that from the fatal experiences ofthe fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousnessabout such a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini,insomuch that most fishermen were content to recognisehim by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would be
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discovered lounging by them on the sea, without seekingto cultivate a more intimate acquaintance. Like some poordevils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man,they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in thestreet, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, theymight receive a summary thump for their presumption.
But not only did each of these famous whales enjoygreat individual celebrityNay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he famous in life and nowis immortal in forecastle stories after death, but he wasadmitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions ofa name; had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Csar.Was it not so, O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarredlike an iceberg, who so long didst lurk in the Orientalstraits of that name, whose spout was oft seen from thepalmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New ZealandJack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes inthe vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan!King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times assumedthe semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky? Wasit not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked likean old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back!In plain prose, here are four whales as well known to thestudents of Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to theclassic scholar.
But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel,after at various times creating great havoc among the
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boats of different vessels, were finally gone in quest of,systematically hunted out, chased and killed by valiantwhaling captains, who heaved up their anchors with thatexpress object as much in view, as in setting out throughthe Narragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had itin his mind to capture that notorious murderous savageAnnawon, the headmost warrior of the Indian King Philip.
I do not know where I can find a better place than justhere, to make mention of one or two other things, which tome seem important, as in printed form establishing in allrespects the reasonableness of the whole story of the WhiteWhale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one ofthose disheartening instances where truth requires full asmuch bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmenof some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of theworld, that without some hints touching the plain facts,historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout atMoby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and moredetestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.
First: Though most men have some vague flitting ideasof the general perils of the grand fishery, yet they havenothing like a fixed, vivid conception of those perils, andthe frequency with which they recur. One reason perhapsis, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and deathsby casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record athome, however transient and immediately forgotten that
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record. Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, whothis moment perhaps caught by the whale-line off the coastof New Guinea, is being carried down to the bottom of thesea by the sounding leviathando you suppose that that poorfellows name will appear in the newspaper obituary youwill read to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because themails are very irregular between here and New Guinea. Infact, did you ever hear what might be called regular newsdirect or indirect from New Guinea? Yet I tell you thatupon one particular voyage which I made to the Pacific,among many others we spoke thirty different ships, everyone of which had had a death by a whale, some ofthem more than one, and three that had each lost a boatscrew. For Gods sake, be economical with your lamps andcandles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop ofmans blood was spilled for it.
Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite ideathat a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power;but I have ever found that when narrating to them somespecific example of this two-fold enormousness, they havesignificantly complimented me upon my facetiousness;when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of beingfacetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of theplagues of Egypt.
But fortunately the special point I here seek can beestablished upon testimony entirely independent of myown. That point is this: The Sperm Whale is in some
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cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciouslymalicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterlydestroy, and sink a large ship; and what is more, the SpermWhale _has_ done it.
First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, ofNantucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day shesaw spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoalof sperm whales. Ere long, several of the whales werewounded; when, suddenly, a very large whale escapingfrom the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directlydown upon the ship. Dashing his forehead against her hull,he so stove her in, that in less than ten minutes she settleddown and fell over. Not a surviving plank of her has beenseen since. After the severest exposure, part of the crewreached the land in their boats. Being returned home atlast, Captain Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific incommand of another ship, but the gods shipwrecked himagain upon unknown rocks and breakers; for the secondtime his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith forswearingthe sea, he has never tempted it since. At this day CaptainPollard is a resident of Nantucket. I have seen OwenChace, who was chief mate of the Essex at the time of thetragedy; I have read his plain and faithful narrative; I haveconversed with his son; and all this within a few miles ofthe scene of the catastrophe.*
*The following are extracts from Chaces narrative: Everyfact seemed to warrant me in concluding that it was
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anything but chance which directed his operations; hemade two several attacks upon the ship, at a short intervalbetween them, both of which, according to their direction,were calculated to do us the most injury, by being madeahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two objectsfor the shock; to effect which, the exact manuvres whichhe made were necessary. His aspect was most horrible, andsuch as indicated resentment and fury. He came directlyfrom the shoal which we had just before entered, and inwhich we had struck three of his companions, as if firedwith revenge for their sufferings. Again: At all events, thewhole circumstances taken together, all happening beforemy own eyes, and producing, at the time, impressionsin my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the partof the whale (many of which impressions I cannot nowrecall), induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in myopinion.
Here are his reflections some time after quitting theship, during a black night in an open boat, when almostdespairing of reaching any hospitable shore. The darkocean and swelling waters were nothing; the fears ofbeing swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashedupon hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjectsof fearful contemplation, seemed scarcely entitled to amoments thought; the dismal looking wreck, and _thehorrid aspect and revenge of the whale_, wholly engrossedmy reflections, until day again made its appearance.
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In another placep. 45,he speaks of _the mysterious andmortal attack of the animal_.
Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in theyear 1807 totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, butthe authentic particulars of this catastrophe I have neverchanced to encounter, though from the whale hunters Ihave now and then heard casual allusions to it.
Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago CommodoreJ, then commanding an American sloop-of-war of thefirst class, happened to be dining with a party of whalingcaptains, on board a Nantucket ship in the harbor of Oahu,Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales, theCommodore was pleased to be sceptical touching theamazing strength ascribed to them by the professionalgentlemen present. He peremptorily denied for example,that any whale could so smite his stout sloop-of-war as tocause her to leak so much as a thimbleful. Very good; butthere is more coming. Some weeks after, the Commodoreset sail in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he wasstopped on the way by a portly sperm whale, that beggeda few moments confidential business with him. Thatbusiness consisted in fetching the Commodores craft sucha thwack, that with all his pumps going he made straightfor the nearest port to heave down and repair. I am notsuperstitious, but I consider the Commodores interviewwith that whale as providential. Was not Saul of Tarsus
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converted from unbelief by a similar fright? I tell you, thesperm whale will stand no nonsense.
I will now refer you to Langsdorffs Voyages for a littlecircumstance in point, peculiarly interesting to the writerhereof. Langsdorff, you must know by the way, wasattached to the Russian Admiral Krusensterns famousDiscovery Expedition in the beginning of the presentcentury. Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenthchapter:
By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, andthe next day we were out in the open sea, on our wayto Ochotsh. The weather was very clear and fine, but sointolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on our furclothing. For some days we had very little wind; it wasnot till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwestsprang up. An uncommon large whale, the body of whichwas larger than the ship itself, lay almost at the surfaceof the water, but was not perceived by any one on boardtill the moment when the ship, which was in full sail, wasalmost upon him, so that it was impossible to prevent itsstriking against him. We were thus placed in the mostimminent danger, as this gigantic creature, setting up itsback, raised the ship three feet at least out of the water.The masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether, whilewe who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck,concluding that we had struck upon some rock; instead ofthis we saw the monster sailing off with the utmost gravity
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and solemnity. Captain DWolf applied immediately to thepumps to examine whether or not the vessel had receivedany damage from the shock, but we found that very happilyit had escaped entirely uninjured.
Now, the Captain DWolf here alluded to as commandingthe ship in question, is a New Englander, who, after along life of unusual adventures as a sea-captain, this dayresides in the village of Dorchester near Boston. I havethe honor of being a nephew of his. I have particularlyquestioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff. Hesubstantiates every word. The ship, however, was by nomeans a large one: a Russian craft built on the Siberiancoast, and purchased by my uncle after bartering away thevessel in which he sailed from home.
In that up and down manly book of old-fashionedadventure, so full, too, of honest wondersthe voyage ofLionel Wafer, one of ancient Dampiers old chumsI founda little matter set down so like that just quoted fromLangsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for acorroborative example, if such be needed.
Lionel, it seems, was on his way to John Ferdinando, ashe calls the modern Juan Fernandes. In our way thither,he says, about four oclock in the morning, when we wereabout one hundred and fifty leagues from the Main ofAmerica, our ship felt a terrible shock, which put our menin such consternation that they could hardly tell where they
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were or what to think; but every one began to prepare fordeath. And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent,that we took it for granted the ship had struck against arock; but when the amazement was a little over, we castthe lead, and sounded, but found no ground. * * * * *The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in theircarriages, and several of the men were shaken out of theirhammocks. Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun,was thrown out of his cabin! Lionel then goes on to imputethe shock to an earthquake, and seems to substantiate theimputation by stating that a great earthquake, somewhereabout that time, did actually do great mischief along theSpanish land. But I should not much wonder if, in thedarkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock wasafter all caused by an unseen whale vertically bumping thehull from beneath.
I might proceed with several more examples, one way oranother known to me, of the great power and malice attimes of the sperm whale. In more than one instance, he hasbeen known, not only to chase the assailing boats back totheir ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstandall the lances hurled at him from its decks. The Englishship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for hisstrength, let me say, that there have been examples wherethe lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm,been transferred to the ship, and secured there; the whaletowing her great hull through the water, as a horse walks
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off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if thesperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he thenacts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberatedesigns of destruction to his pursuers; nor is it withoutconveying some eloquent indication of his character, thatupon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth,and retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutiveminutes. But I must be content with only one more and aconcluding illustration; a remarkable and most significantone, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is themost marvellous event in this book corroborated by plainfacts of the present day, but that these marvels (like allmarvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for themillionth time we say amen with SolomonVerily there isnothing new under the sun.
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christianmagistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinianwas Emperor and Belisarius general. As many know, hewrote the history of his own times, a work every way ofuncommon value. By the best authorities, he has alwaysbeen considered a most trustworthy and unexaggeratinghistorian, except in some one or two particulars, not at allaffecting the matter presently to be mentioned.
Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, duringthe term of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in the neighboring Propontis, or Seaof Marmora, after having destroyed vessels at intervals
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in those waters for a period of more than fifty years. Afact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily begainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of whatprecise species this sea-monster was, is not mentioned.But as he destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, hemust have been a whale; and I am strongly inclined to thinka sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a long timeI fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknownin the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting withit. Even now I am certain that those seas are not, andperhaps never can be, in the present constitution of things,a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But furtherinvestigations have recently proved to me, that in moderntimes there have been isolated instances of the presenceof the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, ongood authority, that on the Barbary coast, a CommodoreDavis of the British navy found the skeleton of a spermwhale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes throughthe Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the sameroute, pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.
In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiarsubstance called _brit_ is to be found, the aliment of theright whale. But I have every reason to believe that the foodof the sperm whalesquid or cuttle-fishlurks at the bottomof that sea, because large creatures, but by no means thelargest of that sort, have been found at its surface. If, then,you properly put these statements together, and reasonupon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that, according
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to all human reasoning, Procopiuss sea-monster, that forhalf a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, mustin 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 viewthe ultimate capture of Moby Dick; though he seemedready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion;nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature andlong habituation far too wedded to a fiery whalemansways, altogether to abandon the collateral prosecutionof the voyage. Or at least if this were otherwise, therewere not wanting other motives much more influentialwith him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, evenconsidering his monomania, to hint that his vindictivenesstowards the White Whale might have possibly extendeditself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that themore monsters he slew by so much the more he multipliedthe chances that each subsequently encountered whalewould prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if suchan hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were stilladditional considerations which, though not so strictlyaccording with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet wereby no means incapable of swaying him.
To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of alltools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt
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to get out of order. He knew, for example, that howevermagnetic his ascendency in some respects was overStarbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the completespiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiorityinvolves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual,the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation.Starbucks body and Starbucks coerced will were Ahabs,so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbucks brain; stillhe knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul,abhorred his captains quest, and could he, would joyfullydisintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it. It mightbe that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whalewas seen. During that long interval Starbuck would everbe apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion againsthis captains leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential,circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon him.Not only that, but the subtle insanity of Ahab respectingMoby Dick was noways more significantly manifestedthan in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeingthat, for the present, the hunt should in some way bestripped of that strange imaginative impiousness whichnaturally invested it; that the full terror of the voyagemust be kept withdrawn into the obscure background (forfew mens courage is proof against protracted meditationunrelieved by action); that when they stood their longnight watches, his officers and men must have somenearer things to think of than Moby Dick. For howevereagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the
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announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sortsare more or less capricious and unreliablethey live in thevarying outer weather, and they inhale its ficklenessandwhen retained for any object remote and blank in thepursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end,it is above all things requisite that temporary interests andemployments should intervene and hold them healthilysuspended for the final dash.
Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times ofstrong emotion mankind disdain all base considerations;but such times are evanescent. The permanentconstitutional condition of the manufactured man, thoughtAhab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fullyincites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing roundtheir savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it they givechase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for theirmore common, daily appetites. For even the high liftedand chivalric Crusaders of old times were not contentto traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for theirholy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, pickingpockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way.Had they been strictly held to their one final and romanticobjectthat final and romantic object, too many would haveturned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thoughtAhab, of all hopes of cashaye, cash. They may scorncash now; but let some months go by, and no perspectivepromise of it to them, and then this same quiescent cash
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all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would sooncashier Ahab.
Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motivemore related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, itis probable, and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealedthe prime but private purpose of the Pequods voyage,Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he hadindirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable chargeof usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral andlegal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end competent,could refuse all further obedience to him, and evenviolently wrest from him the command. From even thebarely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possibleconsequences of such a suppressed impression gainingground, Ahab must of course have been most anxious toprotect himself. That protection could only consist in hisown predominating brain and heart and hand, backed bya heedful, closely calculating attention to every minuteatmospheric influence which it was possible for his crewto be subjected to.
For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analyticto be verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that hemust still in a good degree continue true to the natural,nominal purpose of the Pequods voyage; observe allcustomary usages; and not only that, but force himself toevince all his well known passionate interest in the generalpursuit of his profession.
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Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailingthe three mast-heads and admonishing them to keep abright 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 lazilylounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over intothe lead-coloured waters. Queequeg and I were mildlyemployed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for anadditional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued andyet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such anincantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silentsailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self.
I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy atthe mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling orwoof 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 oakensword between the threads, and idly looking off uponthe water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home everyyarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reignall over the ship and all over the sea, only broken bythe intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemedas if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were ashuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at theFates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to
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but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, andthat vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswiseinterblending of other threads with its own. This warpseemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my ownhand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destinyinto these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequegsimpulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woofslantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the casemight be; and by this difference in the concluding blowproducing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect ofthe completed fabric; this savages sword, thought I, whichthus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; thiseasy, indifferent sword must be chanceaye, chance, freewill, and necessitynowise incompatibleall interweavinglyworking together. The straight warp of necessity, not tobe swerved from its ultimate courseits every alternatingvibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free toply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, thoughrestrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, andsideways in its motions directed by free will, though thusprescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and hasthe last featuring blow at events.
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I startedat a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild andunearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my hand,and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voicedropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees wasthat mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching
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eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, andat brief sudden intervals he continued his cries. To besure the same sound was that very moment perhaps beingheard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemens look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of thoselungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such amarvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indians.
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, sowildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you wouldhave thought him some prophet or seer beholding theshadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing theircoming.
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 thesame undeviating and reliable uniformity. And therebywhalemen distinguish this fish from other tribes of hisgenus.
There go flukes! was now the cry from Tashtego; and thewhales disappeared.
Quick, steward! cried Ahab. Time! time!
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Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, andreported the exact minute to Ahab.
The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she wentgently rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whaleshad gone down heading to leeward, we confidently lookedto see them again directly in advance of our bows. For thatsingular 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, andswiftly swims off in the opposite quarterthis deceitfulnessof his could not now be in action; for there was no reason tosuppose that the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any wayalarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of themen selected for shipkeepersthat is, those not appointedto the boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors at the fore and mizzen had comedown; the line tubs were fixed in their places; the craneswere thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the threeboats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets overhigh cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews withone hand clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantlypoised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-wars men about to throw themselves on board an enemysship.
But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heardthat took every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at
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dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five dusky phantomsthat seemed fresh formed out of air.
CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.
The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting onthe other side of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity,were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat whichswung there. This boat had always been deemed one ofthe spare boats, though technically called the captains,on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. Thefigure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, withone white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. Arumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally investedhim, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. Butstrangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening whiteplaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round andround upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the companionsof this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexionpeculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas;arace notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty, andby some honest white mariners supposed to be the paidspies and secret confidential agents on the water of thedevil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose to beelsewhere.
While yet the wondering ships company were gazing uponthese strangers, Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned oldman at their head, All ready there, Fedallah?
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Ready, was the half-hissed reply.
Lower away then; dye hear? shouting across the deck.Lower away there, I say.
Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of theiramazement the men sprang over the rail; the sheaveswhirled round in the blocks; with a wallow, the three boatsdropped into the sea; while, with a dexterous, off-handeddaring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors, goat-like, leaped down the rolling ships side into the tossedboats below.
Hardly had they pulled out from under the ships lee, whena fourth keel, coming from the windward side, pulledround under the stern, and showed the five strangersrowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern, loudlyhailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselveswidely, so as to cover a large expanse of water. But withall their eyes again riveted upon the swart Fedallah andhis crew, the inmates of the other boats obeyed not thecommand.
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, sweepinground his great steering oar. Lay back! addressing his crew.
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There!there!there again! There she blows right ahead,boys!lay back!
Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy.
Oh, I dont mind em, sir, said Archy; I knew it all beforenow. Didnt I hear em in the hold? And didnt I tell Cabacohere 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 tohis crew, some of whom still showed signs of uneasiness.Why dont you break your backbones, my boys? What isit you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! Theyare only five more hands come to help usnever mind fromwherethe more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mindthe brimstonedevils are good fellows enough. So, so; thereyou are now; thats the stroke for a thousand pounds; thatsthe stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the gold cup ofsperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, menall hearts alive!Easy, easy; dont be in a hurrydont be in a hurry. Whydont you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, youdogs! So, so, so, then:softly, softly! Thats itthats it! longand 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, cant ye? pull, wontye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes dontye pull?pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes
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out! Here! whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle;every mothers son of ye draw his knife, and pull withthe blade between his teeth. Thats itthats it. Now ye dosomething; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start herstarther, my silver-spoons! Start her, marling-spikes!
Stubbs exordium to his crew is given here at large,because he had rather a peculiar way of talking to themin general, and especially in inculcating the religion ofrowing. But you must not suppose from this specimen ofhis sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passionswith his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted hischief peculiarity. He would say the most terrific things tohis crew, in a tone so strangely compounded of fun andfury, and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a spice tothe fun, that no oarsman could hear such queer invocationswithout pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for the merejoke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easyand indolent himself, so loungingly managed his steering-oar, and so broadly gapedopen-mouthed at timesthat themere sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer forceof contrast, acted like a charm upon the crew. Then again,Stubb was one of those odd sort of humorists, whose jollityis sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all inferiorson their guard in the matter of obeying them.
In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was nowpulling obliquely across Stubbs bow; and when for a
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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 inchas he spoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging hiscrew; his face set like a flint from Stubbs.
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, thenspeaking 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, comewhat will. (Spring, my men, spring!) Theres hogsheads ofsperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and thats what ye came for. (Pull,my boys!) Sperm, sperms the play! This at least is duty;duty and profit hand in hand.
Aye, aye, I thought as much, soliloquized Stubb, when theboats diverged, as soon as I clapt eye on em, I thoughtso. Aye, and thats what he went into the after hold for, sooften, as Dough-Boy long suspected. They were hiddendown there. The White Whales at the bottom of it. Well,well, so be it! Cant be helped! All right! Give way, men!It aint the White Whale to-day! Give way!
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Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such acritical instant as the lowering of the boats from the deck,this had not unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitiousamazement in some of the ships company; but Archysfancied discovery having some time previous got abroadamong them, though indeed not credited then, this had insome small measure prepared them for the event. It tookoff the extreme edge of their wonder; and so what withall this and Stubbs confident way of accounting for theirappearance, they were for the time freed from superstitioussurmisings; though the affair still left abundant room forall manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahabs preciseagency in the matter from the beginning. For me, I silentlyrecalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping onboard the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as wellas the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.
Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, havingsided the furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead ofthe other boats; a circumstance bespeaking how potent acrew was pulling him. Those tiger yellow creatures of hisseemed all steel and whalebone; like five trip-hammersthey rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, whichperiodically started the boat along the water like ahorizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. Asfor Fedallah, who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar,he had thrown aside his black jacket, and displayed hisnaked chest with the whole part of his body above the
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gunwale, clearly cut against the alternating depressions ofthe watery horizon; while at the other end of the boat Ahab,with one arm, like a fencers, thrown half backward into theair, as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip; Ahab wasseen steadily managing his steering oar as in a thousandboat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him. Allat once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion andthen remained fixed, while the boats five oars were seensimultaneously peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless onthe sea. Instantly the three spread boats in the rear pausedon their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodilydown into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernibletoken of the movement, though from his closer vicinityAhab 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 thebow, the savage stood erect there, and with intensely eagereyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had lastbeen descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boatwhere it was also triangularly platformed level with thegunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitlybalancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of acraft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.
Not very far distant Flasks boat was also lying breathlesslystill; its commander recklessly standing upon the top of
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the loggerhead, a stout sort of post rooted in the keel, andrising some two feet above the level of the stern platform.It is used for catching turns with the whale line. Its topis not more spacious than the palm of a mans hand, andstanding upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perchedat the mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all buther trucks. But little King-Post was small and short, and atthe same time little King-Post was full of a large and tallambition, so that this loggerhead stand-point of his did byno means satisfy King-Post.
I cant see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let meon to that.
Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale tosteady his way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himselfvolunteered 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; onlyI wish you fifty feet taller.
Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two oppositeplanks of the boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little,presented his flat palm to Flasks foot, and then puttingFlasks hand on his hearse-plumed head and bidding himspring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous flinglanded the little man high and dry on his shoulders. Andhere was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted
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arm furnishing him with a breastband to lean against andsteady himself by.
At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with whatwondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman willmaintain an erect posture in his boat, even when pitchedabout by the most riotously perverse and cross-runningseas. Still more strange to see him giddily perched uponthe loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But thesight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo wasyet more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool,indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noblenegro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled hisfine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemeda snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider.Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious littleFlask would now and then stamp with impatience; but notone added heave did he thereby give to the negros lordlychest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping theliving magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter hertides and her seasons for that.
Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes. The whales might have made one oftheir regular soundings, not a temporary dive from merefright; and if that were the case, Stubb, as his wont in suchcases, it seems, was resolved to solace the languishinginterval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband,where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded
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it, and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; buthardly had he ignited his match across the rough sandpaperof his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose eyeshad been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenlydropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat, cryingout in a quick phrensy of hurry, Down, down all, and giveway!there they are!
To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, wouldhave been visible at that moment; nothing but a troubledbit of greenish white water, and thin scattered puffs ofvapor hovering over it, and suffusingly blowing off toleeward, 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. Beneaththis atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneatha thin layer of water, also, the whales were swimming.Seen in advance of all the other indications, the puffs ofvapor they spouted, seemed their forerunning couriers anddetached flying outriders.
All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot oftroubled water and air. But it bade fair to outstrip them; itflew on and on, as a mass of interblending bubbles bornedown a rapid stream from the hills.
Pull, pull, my good boys, said Starbuck, in the lowestpossible but intensest concentrated whisper to his men;while the sharp fixed glance from his eyes darted straight
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ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two visible needlesin two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say muchto his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to him.Only the silence of the boat was at intervals startlinglypierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh withcommand, now soft with entreaty.
How different the loud little King-Post. Sing out and saysomething, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts!Beach me, beach me on their black backs, boys; only dothat for me, and Ill sign over to you my Marthas Vineyardplantation, boys; including wife and children, boys. Layme onlay me on! O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staringmad! See! see that white water! And so shouting, he pulledhis hat from his head, and stamped up and down on it; thenpicking it up, flirted it far off upon the sea; and finally fellto rearing and plunging in the boats stern like a crazed coltfrom the prairie.
Look at that chap now, philosophically drawled Stubb,who, with his unlighted short pipe, mechanically retainedbetween his teeth, at a short distance, followed afterHesgot fits, that Flask has. Fits? yes, give him fitsthats thevery wordpitch fits into em. Merrily, merrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know;merrys the word.Pull, babespull, sucklingspull, all. But what the devil areyou hurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men.Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing more. Crack all yourbackbones, and bite your knives in twothats all. Take it
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easywhy dont ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your liversand lungs!
But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of histhese were words best omitted here; foryou live under the blessed light of the evangelical land.Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give earto such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of redmurder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.
Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specificallusions of Flask to that whale, as he called the fictitiousmonster which he declared to be incessantly tantalizing hisboats bow with its tailthese allusions of his were at timesso vivid and life-like, that they would cause some one ortwo of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder.But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must put outtheir eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usagepronouncing that they must have no organs but ears, andno limbs but arms, in these critical moments.
It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swellsof the omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made,as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowlsin a boundless bowling-green; the brief suspended agonyof the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-likeedge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threateningto cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the wateryglens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain
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the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slidedown its other side;all these, with the cries of the headsmenand harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen,with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing downupon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen afterher screaming brood;all this was thrilling.
Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of hiswife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the deadmans ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in theother world;neither of these can feel stranger and strongeremotions than that man does, who for the first time findshimself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of thehunted sperm whale.
The dancing white water made by the chase was nowbecoming more and more visible, owing to the increasingdarkness of the dun cloud-shadows flung upon the sea. Thejets of vapor no longer blended, but tilted everywhere toright and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes.The boats were pulled more apart; Starbuck giving chaseto three whales running dead to leeward. Our sail was nowset, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along; theboat going with such madness through the water, that thelee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escapebeing torn from the row-locks.
Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil ofmist; neither ship nor boat to be seen.
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Give way, men, whispered Starbuck, drawing still furtheraft the sheet of his sail; there is time to kill a fish yetbefore the squall comes. Theres white water again!closeto! Spring!
Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side ofus denoted that the other boats had got fast; but hardlywere they overheard, when with a lightning-like hurtlingwhisper Starbuck said: Stand up! and Queequeg, harpoonin hand, sprang to his feet.
Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the lifeand death peril so close to them ahead, yet with theireyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the sternof the boat, they knew that the imminent instant hadcome; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound asof fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile theboat was still booming through the mist, the waves curlingand hissing around us like the erected crests of enragedserpents.
Thats his hump. _There_, _there_, give it to him!whispered Starbuck.
A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it wasthe darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one weldedcommotion came an invisible push from astern, whileforward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sailcollapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up
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near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquakebeneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as theywere tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling creamof the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blendedtogether; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron,escaped.
Though completely swamped, the boat was nearlyunharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floatingoars, and lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled backto our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea,the water covering every rib and plank, so that to ourdownward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coralboat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean.
The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed theirbucklers together; the whole squall roared, forked, andcrackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie, inwhich, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal in thesejaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as wellroar to the live coals down the chimney of a flamingfurnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile thedriving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadowsof night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The risingsea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oarswere useless as propellers, performing now the office oflife-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the waterproofmatch keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignitethe lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole,
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handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of thisforlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecilecandle 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 ofship or boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on.The mist still spread over the sea, the empty lantern laycrushed in the bottom of the boat. Suddenly Queequegstarted to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We allheard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hithertomuffled 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 lastloomed into view, bearing right down upon us within adistance of not much more than its length.
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as forone instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ships bows likea chip at the base of a cataract; and then the vast hull rolledover it, and it was seen no more till it came up welteringastern. Again we swam for it, were dashed against it bythe seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed onboard. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cutloose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time.The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply itmight light upon some token of our perishing,an oar or alance pole.
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CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strangemixed affair we call life when a man takes this wholeuniverse for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereofhe but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that thejoke is at nobodys expense but his own. However, nothingdispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. Hebolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, andpersuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, nevermind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestiongobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for smalldifficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster,peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem tohim only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in theside bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comesover a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; itcomes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what justbefore might have seemed to him a thing most momentous,now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothinglike the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort ofgenial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regardedthis whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great WhiteWhale its object.
Queequeg, said I, when they had dragged me, the last man,to the deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacketto fling off the water; Queequeg, my fine friend, does this
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sort of thing often happen? Without much emotion, thoughsoaked through just like me, he gave me to understand thatsuch things did often happen.
Mr. Stubb, said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttonedup in his oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe inthe rain; Mr. Stubb, I think I have heard you say that of allwhalemen you ever met, our chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, isby far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then, thatgoing plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggysquall is the height of a whalemans discretion?
Certain. Ive lowered for whales from a leaking ship in agale off Cape Horn.
Mr. Flask, said I, turning to little King-Post, who wasstanding close by; you are experienced in these things, andI am not. Will you tell me whether it is an unalterable lawin this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his ownback pulling himself back-foremost into deaths jaws?
Cant you twist that smaller? said Flask. Yes, thats the law. Ishould like to see a boats crew backing water up to a whaleface foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squintfor squint, mind that!
Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had adeliberate statement of the entire case. Considering,therefore, that squalls and capsizings in the water andconsequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of
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common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that atthe superlatively critical instant of going on to the whaleI must resign my life into the hands of him who steeredthe boatoftentimes a fellow who at that very momentis in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling thecraft with his own frantic stampings; considering thatthe particular disaster to our own particular boat waschiefly to be imputed to Starbucks driving on to hiswhale almost in the teeth of a squall, and consideringthat Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his greatheedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belongedto this uncommonly prudent Starbucks boat; and finallyconsidering in what a devils 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 draftof my will. Queequeg, said I, come along, you shall be mylawyer, executor, and legatee.
It may seem strange that of all men sailors should betinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there areno people in the world more fond of that diversion. Thiswas the fourth time in my nautical life that I had done thesame thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon thepresent occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolledaway from my heart. Besides, all the days I should nowlive would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived afterhis resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so manymonths or weeks as the case might be. I survived myself;
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my death and burial were locked up in my chest. I lookedround me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghostwith a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snugfamily vault.
Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleevesof my frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at deathand destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost.
CHAPTER 50. Ahabs Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
Who would have thought it, Flask! cried Stubb; if I had butone leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe tostop the plug-hole with my timber toe. Oh! hes a wonderfulold man!
I dont think it so strange, after all, on that account, saidFlask. If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be adifferent thing. That would disable him; but he has oneknee, and good part of the other left, you know.
I dont know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.
Among whale-wise people it has often been arguedwhether, considering the paramount importance of his lifeto the success of the voyage, it is right for a whaling captainto jeopardize that life in the active perils of the chase. SoTamerlanes soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes,whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried intothe thickest of the fight.
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But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect.Considering that with two legs man is but a hobblingwight in all times of danger; considering that thepursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinarydifficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, thencomprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise forany maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As ageneral thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must haveplainly thought not.
Ahab well knew that although his friends at home wouldthink little of his entering a boat in certain comparativelyharmless vicissitudes of the chase, for the sake of beingnear the scene of action and giving his orders in person,yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned tohim as a regular headsman in the huntabove all for CaptainAhab to be supplied with five extra men, as that sameboats crew, he well knew that such generous conceits neverentered the heads of the owners of the Pequod. Thereforehe had not solicited a boats crew from them, nor had hein any way hinted his desires on that head. Neverthelesshe had taken private measures of his own touching all thatmatter. Until Cabacos published discovery, the sailors hadlittle foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a littlewhile out of port, all hands had concluded the customarybusiness of fitting the whaleboats for service; when sometime after this Ahab was now and then found bestirringhimself in the matter of making thole-pins with his ownhands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats,
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and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers,which when the line is running out are pinned over thegroove in the bow: when all this was observed in him,and particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat ofsheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it betterwithstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and alsothe anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board,or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called, the horizontalpiece in the boats bow for bracing the knee against indarting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed howoften he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixedin the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with thecarpenters chisel gouged out a little here and straightenedit a little there; all these things, I say, had awakened muchinterest and curiosity at the time. But almost everybodysupposed that this particular preparative heedfulness inAhab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase ofMoby Dick; for he had already revealed his intention tohunt that mortal monster in person. But such a suppositiondid by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to anyboats crew being assigned to that boat.
Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonderremained soon waned away; for in a whaler wonders soonwane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds andends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooksand ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlawsof whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up suchqueer castaway creatures found tossing about the open
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sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes,blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that Beelzebubhimself might climb up the side and step down into thecabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create anyunsubduable excitement in the forecastle.
But be all this as it may, certain it is that while thesubordinate phantoms soon found their place among thecrew, though still as it were somehow distinct fromthem, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffledmystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly worldlike this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evincedhimself to be linked with Ahabs peculiar fortunes; nay,so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted influence;Heaven knows, but it might have been even authorityover him; all this none knew. But one cannot sustainan indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such acreature as civilized, domestic people in the temperatezone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but thelike of whom now and then glide among the unchangingAsiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles tothe east of the continentthose insulated, immemorial,unalterable countries, which even in these modern daysstill preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earthsprimal generations, when the memory of the first manwas a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants,unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as realphantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why theywere created and to what end; when though, according to
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Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughtersof 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 Pequodhad 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; andthe Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerlyfrom St. Helena.
It was while gliding through these latter waters that oneserene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled bylike scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings,made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; onsuch a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advanceof the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, itlooked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering goduprising from the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. Forof these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount tothe main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with thesame precision as if it had been day. And yet, thoughherds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman ina hundred would venture a lowering for them. You maythink with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this oldOriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turbanand the moon, companions in one sky. But when, after
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spending his uniform interval there for several successivenights without uttering a single sound; when, after all thissilence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing thatsilvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner started to hisfeet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, andhailed the mortal crew. There she blows! Had the trump ofjudgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yetstill they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it wasa most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, andso deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on boardinstinctively desired a lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahabcommanded the tgallant sails and royals to be set, andevery stunsail spread. The best man in the ship musttake the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, thepiled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange,upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling thehollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deckto feel like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along,as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in heroneto mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawingly tosome horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahabs facethat night, you would have thought that in him also twodifferent things were warring. While his one live leg madelively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limbsounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old manwalked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and thoughfrom every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the
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silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor sworehe 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 wasagain announced: again it was descried by all; but uponmaking sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as ifit had never been. And so it served us night after night, tillno one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jettedinto the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case mightbe; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, orthree; and somehow seeming at every distinct repetitionto be advancing still further and further in our van, thissolitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.
Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, andin accordance with the preternaturalness, as it seemed,which in many things invested the Pequod, were therewanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever andwherever descried; at however remote times, or in howeverfar apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spoutwas cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, MobyDick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiardread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherouslybeckoning us on and on, in order that the monster mightturn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest andmost savage seas.
These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful,
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derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenityof the weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness,some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for daysand days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily,lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to ourvengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before oururn-like prow.
But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape windsbegan howling around us, and we rose and fell upon thelong, troubled seas that are there; when the ivory-tuskedPequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the darkwaves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, thefoam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolatevacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights moredismal than before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hitherand thither before us; while thick in our rear flew theinscrutable sea-ravens. And every morning, perched onour stays, rows of these birds were seen; and spite of ourhootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, asthough they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabitedcraft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fitroosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved andheaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vasttides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul werein anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it hadbred.
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Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather CapeTormentoso, as called of yore; for long allured by theperfidious silences that before had attended us, we foundourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guiltybeings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemedcondemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven instore, or beat that black air without any horizon. But calm,snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain offeathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before, thesolitary jet would at times be descried.
During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, thoughassuming for the time the almost continual commandof the drenched and dangerous deck, manifested thegloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever addressedhis mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everythingabove and aloft has been secured, nothing more can bedone but passively to await the issue of the gale. ThenCaptain and crew become practical fatalists. So, withhis ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and withone hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours andhours would stand gazing dead to windward, while anoccasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congealhis very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew drivenfrom the forward part of the ship by the perilous seas thatburstingly broke over its bows, stood in a line along thebulwarks in the waist; and the better to guard against theleaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a sortof bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a
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loosened belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silentship, as if manned by painted sailors in wax, day afterday tore on through all the swift madness and gladnessof the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness ofhumanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; stillin silence the men swung in the bowlines; still wordlessAhab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied natureseemed demanding repose he would not seek that reposein his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old mansaspect, when one night going down into the cabin to markhow the barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyessitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some timebefore emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremovedhat and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one ofthose charts of tides and currents which have previouslybeen spoken of. His lantern swung from his tightlyclenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head wasthrown back so that the closed eyes were pointed towardsthe needle of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in theceiling.*
*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, becausewithout 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 thypurpose.
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CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.
South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, agood cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomedahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she slowly drewnigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head, I had agood view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the farocean fisheriesa whaler at sea, and long absent from home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleachedlike the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides,this spectral appearance was traced with long channels ofreddened rust, while all her spars and her rigging werelike the thick branches of trees furred over with hoar-frost.Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see herlong-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. Theyseemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatchedthe raiment that had survived nearly four years of cruising.Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayedand swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when theship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in theair came so nigh to each other that we might almost haveleaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those of theother; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeingus 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?
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But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallidbulwarks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to hismouth, it somehow fell from his hand into the sea; and thewind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make himselfheard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasingthe distance between. While in various silent ways theseamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance ofthis ominous incident at the first mere mention of theWhite Whales name to another ship, Ahab for a momentpaused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowereda boat to board the stranger, had not the threatening windforbade. But taking advantage of his windward position,he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect thatthe stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly boundhome, he loudly hailedAhoy there! This is the Pequod,bound round the world! Tell them to address all futureletters to the Pacific ocean! and this time three years, if Iam not at home, tell them to address them to
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, andinstantly, then, in accordance with their singular ways,shoals of small harmless fish, that for some days beforehad been placidly swimming by our side, darted away withwhat seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves foreand aft with the strangers flanks. Though in the courseof his continual voyagings Ahab must often before havenoticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, theveriest trifles capriciously carry meanings.
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Swim away from me, do ye? murmured Ahab, gazing overinto the water. There seemed but little in the words, butthe tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than theinsane old man had ever before evinced. But turning to thesteersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in thewind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lionvoice,Up helm! Keep her off round the world!
Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspireproud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigationconduct? Only through numberless perils to the very pointwhence we started, where those that we left behind secure,were all the time before us.
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastwardwe could for ever reach new distances, and discover sightsmore sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands ofKing Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage.But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or intormented chase of that demon phantom that, some timeor other, swims before all human hearts; while chasingsuch over this round globe, they either lead us on in barrenmazes or midway leave us whelmed.
CHAPTER 53. The Gam.
The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board ofthe whaler we had spoken was this: the wind and seabetokened storms. But even had this not been the case, he
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would not after all, perhaps, have boarded herjudging byhis subsequent conduct on similar occasionsif so it hadbeen that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained anegative answer to the question he put. For, as it eventuallyturned out, he cared not to consort, even for five minutes,with any stranger captain, except he could contribute someof that information he so absorbingly sought. But all thismight remain inadequately estimated, were not somethingsaid here of the peculiar usages of whaling-vessels whenmeeting each other in foreign seas, and especially on acommon cruising-ground.
If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New YorkState, or the equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England;if casually encountering each other in such inhospitablewilds, these twain, for the life of them, cannot wellavoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment tointerchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for awhile and resting in concert: then, how much more naturalthat upon the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plainsof the sea, two whaling vessels descrying each other at theends of the earthoff lone Fannings Island, or the far awayKings Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under suchcircumstances these ships should not only interchangehails, but come into still closer, more friendly and sociablecontact. And especially would this seem to be a matter ofcourse, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, andwhose captains, officers, and not a few of the men are
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personally known to each other; and consequently, haveall 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 lether have some papers of a date a year or two later thanthe last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files. And inreturn for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship wouldreceive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmostimportance to her. And in degree, all this will hold trueconcerning whaling vessels crossing each others track onthe cruising-ground itself, even though they are equallylong absent from home. For one of them may have receiveda transfer of letters from some third, and now far remotevessel; and some of those letters may be for the people ofthe ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange thewhaling news, and have an agreeable chat. For not onlywould they meet with all the sympathies of sailors, butlikewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from acommon pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils.
Nor would difference of country make any very essentialdifference; that is, so long as both parties speak onelanguage, as is the case with Americans and English.Though, to be sure, from the small number of Englishwhalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and whenthey do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shynessbetween them; for your Englishman is rather reserved,
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and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thingin anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalerssometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiorityover the American whalers; regarding the long, leanNantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sortof sea-peasant. But where this superiority in the Englishwhalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say,seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill morewhales 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 toheart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibleshimself.
So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea,the whalers have most reason to be sociableand they areso. Whereas, some merchant ships crossing each otherswake in the mid-Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on withoutso much as a single word of recognition, mutually cuttingeach other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies inBroadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finicalcriticism upon each others rig. As for Men-of-War, whenthey chance to meet at sea, they first go through sucha string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a duckingof 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 sucha prodigious hurry, they run away from each other assoon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to
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cross each others cross-bones, the first hail isHow manyskulls?the same way that whalers hailHow many barrels?And that question once answered, pirates straightway steerapart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and dontlike to see overmuch of each others villanous likenesses.
But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable,sociable, free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler dowhen she meets another whaler in any sort of decentweather? She has a _Gam_, a thing so utterly unknownto all other ships that they never heard of the name even;and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin atit, and repeat gamesome stuff about spouters and blubber-boilers, and such like pretty exclamations. Why it is thatall Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-Wars men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornfulfeeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it wouldbe hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say,I should like to know whether that profession of theirshas any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends inuncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. Andbesides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, hehas no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence,I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted abovea whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basisto stand on.
But what is a _Gam?_ You might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries,
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and never find the word. Dr. Johnson never attainedto that erudition; Noah Websters ark does not hold it.Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for manyyears been in constant use among some fifteen thousandtrue born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, andshould 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, afterexchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats crews: thetwo 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 mustnot be forgotten here. All professions have their ownlittle peculiarities of detail; so has the whale fishery. Ina pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when the captain isrowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the sternsheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there,and often steers himself with a pretty little milliners tillerdecorated with gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, andno tiller at all. High times indeed, if whaling captainswere wheeled about the water on castors like gouty oldaldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy; and therefore asin gamming a complete boats crew must leave the ship, andhence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number,
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that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, andthe captain, having no place to sit in, is pulled off to hisvisit all standing like a pine tree. And often you will noticethat being conscious of the eyes of the whole visible worldresting on him from the sides of the two ships, this standingcaptain is all alive to the importance of sustaining hisdignity by maintaining his legs. Nor is this any very easymatter; for in his rear is the immense projecting steeringoar 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 canonly expand himself sideways by settling down on hisstretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat willoften go far to topple him, because length of foundationis nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make aspread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up.Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of the worldsriveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this straddlingcaptain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particleby catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, astoken of his entire, buoyant self-command, he generallycarries his hands in his trowsers pockets; but perhaps beinggenerally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there forballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances, wellauthenticated ones too, where the captain has been knownfor an uncommonly critical moment or two, in a suddensquall sayto seize hold of the nearest oarsmans hair, andhold on there like grim death.
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CHAPTER 54. The Town-Hos Story.
(_As told at the Golden Inn._)
The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region roundabout there, is much like some noted four corners of a greathighway, where you meet more travellers than in any otherpart.
It was not very long after speaking the Goney thatanother homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,*was encountered. She was manned almost wholly byPolynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave usstrong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interestin the White Whale was now wildly heightened bya circumstance of the Town-Hos story, which seemedobscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous,inverted visitation of one of those so called judgmentsof God which at times are said to overtake somemen. This latter circumstance, with its own particularaccompaniments, forming what may be called the secretpart of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached theears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret partof the story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Hohimself. It was the private property of three confederatewhite seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems,communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions ofsecrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in hissleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when
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he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest.Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing haveon those seamen in the Pequod who came to the fullknowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call itso, were they governed in this matter, that they kept thesecret among themselves so that it never transpired abaftthe Pequods main-mast. Interweaving in its proper placethis darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on theship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to puton lasting record.
*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale fromthe mast-head, still used by whalemen in hunting thefamous Gallipagos terrapin.
For my humors sake, I shall preserve the style in which Ionce narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanishfriends, one saints eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiledpiazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the youngDons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer terms withme; and hence the interluding questions they occasionallyput, and which are duly answered at the time.
Some two years prior to my first learning the eventswhich I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in yourPacific here, not very many days sail eastward from theeaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere tothe northward of the Line. One morning upon handling
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the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed thatshe made more water in her hold than common. Theysupposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But thecaptain, having some unusual reason for believing that raregood luck awaited him in those latitudes; and thereforebeing very averse to quit them, and the leak not being thenconsidered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they couldnot find it after searching the hold as low down as waspossible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continuedher cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wideand easy intervals; but no good luck came; more dayswent by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, butit sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking somealarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for thenearest harbor among the islands, there to have his hullhove out and repaired.
Though no small passage was before her, yet, if thecommonest chance favoured, he did not at all fear thathis ship would founder by the way, because his pumpswere of the best, and being periodically relieved at them,those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the shipfree; never mind if the leak should double on her. Intruth, well nigh the whole of this passage being attendedby very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all butcertainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without theoccurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutaloverbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the
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bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman anddesperado from Buffalo.
Lakeman!Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where isBuffalo? said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat ofgrass.
On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; butI crave yourcourtesymay be, you shall soon hear further of all that.Now, gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-mastedships, well-nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailedout of your old Callao to far Manilla; this Lakeman, in theland-locked heart of our America, had yet been nurturedby all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularlyconnected with the open ocean. For in their interflowingaggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours,Erie, andOntario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,possessan ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the oceansnoblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties ofraces and of climes. They contain round archipelagoesof romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; inlarge part, are shored by two great contrasting nations,as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approachesto our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dottedall round their banks; here and there are frowned uponby batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of loftyMackinaw; they have heard the fleet thunderings of navalvictories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wildbarbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their
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peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flankedby ancient and unentered forests, where the gaunt pinesstand 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 toTartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffaloand Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they floatalike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser ofthe State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they areswept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as anythat lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecksare, for out of sight of land, however inland, they havedrowned full many a midnight ship with all its shriekingcrew. Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt waswild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much ofan audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, thoughin his infancy he may have laid him down on the loneNantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though inafter life he had long followed our austere Atlantic andyour contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengefuland full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, freshfrom the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives. Yetwas this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits;and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devilindeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered bythat common decency of human recognition which is themeanest slaves right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had longbeen retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had
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proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad,and Steelkiltbut, gentlemen, you shall hear.
It was not more than a day or two at the furthest afterpointing her prow for her island haven, that the Town-Hosleak seemed again increasing, but only so as to requirean hour or more at the pumps every day. You must knowthat in a settled and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, forexample, some skippers think little of pumping their wholeway across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should theofficer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect,the probability would be that he and his shipmates wouldnever again remember it, on account of all hands gentlysubsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seasfar from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogetherunusual for ships to keep clanging at their pump-handles infull chorus even for a voyage of considerable length; thatis, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any otherreasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leakyvessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters,some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feela little anxious.
Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when herleak was found gaining once more, there was in truth somesmall concern manifested by several of her company;especially by Radney the mate. He commanded the uppersails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every wayexpanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was
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as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort ofnervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as anyfearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that youcan conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when hebetrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, someof the seamen declared that it was only on account of hisbeing a part owner in her. So when they were workingthat evening at the pumps, there was on this head nosmall gamesomeness slily going on among them, as theystood with their feet continually overflowed by the ripplingclear water; clear as any mountain spring, gentlementhatbubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, and poureditself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes.
Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case inthis conventional world of ourswatery or otherwise; thatwhen a person placed in command over his fellow-menfinds one of them to be very significantly his superior ingeneral pride of manhood, straightway against that manhe conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; andif he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize thatsubalterns tower, and make a little heap of dust of it. Be thisconceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkiltwas a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, anda flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of yourlast viceroys snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart,and a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made SteelkiltCharlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagnesfather. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as
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hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt,and Steelkilt knew it.
Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at thepump with the rest, the Lakeman affected not to noticehim, but unawed, went on with his gay banterings.
Aye, aye, my merry lads, its a lively leak this; hold acannikin, one of ye, and lets have a taste. By the Lord, itsworth bottling! I tell ye what, men, old Rads investmentmust go for it! he had best cut away his part of the hulland tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish onlybegan the job; hes come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and thewhole posse of em are now hard at work cutting andslashing at the bottom; making improvements, I suppose.If old Rad were here now, Id tell him to jump overboardand scatter em. Theyre playing the devil with his estate, Ican tell him. But hes a simple old soul,Rad, and a beautytoo. Boys, they say the rest of his property is invested inlooking-glasses. I wonder if hed give a poor devil like methe model of his nose.
Damn your eyes! whats that pump stopping for? roaredRadney, 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
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fifty fire-engines; the men tossed their hats off to it, and erelong that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard whichdenotes the fullest tension of lifes utmost energies.
Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, theLakeman went forward all panting, and sat himself downon the windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot,and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now whatcozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radneyto meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperatedstate, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably stridingalong the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broomand sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and removesome offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig torun at large.
Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ships deck at sea is a pieceof household work which in all times but raging gales isregularly attended to every evening; it has been knownto be done in the case of ships actually foundering at thetime. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usagesand the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some ofwhom would not willingly drown without first washingtheir faces. But in all vessels this broom business is theprescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard.Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho thathad been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps;and being the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilthad been regularly assigned captain of one of the gangs;
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consequently he should have been freed from any trivialbusiness not connected with truly nautical duties, suchbeing the case with his comrades. I mention all theseparticulars so that you may understand exactly how thisaffair stood between the two men.
But there was more than this: the order about the shovelwas almost as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, asthough Radney had spat in his face. Any man who has gonesailor in a whale-ship will understand this; and all this anddoubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehendedwhen the mate uttered his command. But as he sat stillfor a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the matesmalignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casksheaped up in him and the slow-match silently burningalong towards them; as he instinctively saw all this, thatstrange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeperpassionateness in any already ireful beinga repugnancemost felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even whenaggrievedthis nameless phantom feeling, gentlemen, stoleover Steelkilt.
Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken bythe bodily exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answeredhim saying that sweeping the deck was not his business,and he would not do it. And then, without at all alludingto the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the customarysweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had donelittle or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with
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an oath, in a most domineering and outrageous mannerunconditionally reiterating his command; meanwhileadvancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an upliftedcoopers club hammer which he had snatched from a casknear by.
Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil atthe pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearancethe sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing inthe mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagrationwithin him, without speaking he remained doggedlyrooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shookthe hammer within a few inches of his face, furiouslycommanding 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 twistedhand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but itwas to no purpose. And in this way the two went onceslowly round the windlass; when, resolved at last no longerto retreat, bethinking him that he had now forborne asmuch as comported with his humor, the Lakeman pausedon 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
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closer to him, where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shookthe heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth; meanwhilerepeating a string of insufferable maledictions. Retreatingnot the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing him in theeye with the unflinching poniard of his glance, Steelkilt,clenching his right hand behind him and creepinglydrawing it back, told his persecutor that if the hammer butgrazed his cheek he (Steelkilt) would murder him. But,gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter bythe gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; thenext 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 thebackstays leading far aloft to where two of his comradeswere 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 grandErie Canal. You must have heard of it.
Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, andhereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North.
Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chichas very fine;and ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers
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are; for such information may throw side-light upon mystory.
For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, throughthe entire breadth of the state of New York; throughnumerous populous cities and most thriving villages;through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent,cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-roomand bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests;on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun andshade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the widecontrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; andespecially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spiresstand almost like milestones, flows one continual streamof Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. Theres yourtrue Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your pagans; whereyou 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 yourmetropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp aroundthe halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound inholiest vicinities.
Is that a friar passing? said Don Pedro, looking downwardsinto the crowded plazza, with humorous concern.
Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabellas Inquisitionwanes in Lima, laughed Don Sebastian. Proceed, Senor.
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A moment! Pardon! cried another of the company. In thename of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sirsailor, that we have by no means overlooked your delicacyin not substituting present Lima for distant Venice in yourcorrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look surprised;you know the proverb all along this coastCorrupt as Lima.It but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentifulthan billiard-tables, and for ever openand Corrupt as Lima.So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of theblessed evangelist, St. Mark!St. Dominic, purge it! Yourcup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.
Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, theCanaller would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantlyand picturesquely wicked is he. Like Mark Antony, fordays and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, heindolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheekedCleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck.But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandishguise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouchedand gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terrorto the smiling innocence of the villages through whichhe floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are notunshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal,I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; Ithank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it isoften one of the prime redeeming qualities of your manof violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back apoor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In
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sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, isemphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fisherycontains so many of its most finished graduates, and thatscarce any race of mankind, except Sydney men, are somuch distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it atall diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to manythousands of our rural boys and young men born along itsline, the probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishesthe sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christiancorn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the mostbarbaric seas.
I see! I see! impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spillinghis chicha upon his silvery ruffles. No need to travel!The worlds one Lima. I had thought, now, that at yourtemperate North the generations were cold and holy as thehills.But the story.
I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook thebackstay. Hardly had he done so, when he was surroundedby the three junior mates and the four harpooneers, whoall crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropeslike baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into theuproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards theforecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them in thisattempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing outof harms way, the valiant captain danced up and down witha whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle thatatrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-
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deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolving borderof the confusion, and prying into the heart of it with hispike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment. ButSteelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for themall; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where,hastily slewing about three or four large casks in a line withthe windlass, these sea-Parisians entrenched themselvesbehind the barricade.
Come out of that, ye pirates! roared the captain, nowmenacing them with a pistol in each hand, just brought tohim by the steward. Come out of that, ye cut-throats!
Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and downthere, defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave thecaptain to understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilts) deathwould be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part ofall hands. Fearing in his heart lest this might prove but tootrue, the captain a little desisted, but still commanded theinsurgents instantly to return to their duty.
Will you promise not to touch us, if we do? demanded theirringleader.
Turn to! turn to!I make no promise;to your duty! Do youwant 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 manof us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn
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against us. What say ye, men? turning to his comrades. Afierce cheer was their response.
The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the whilekeeping his eye on the Captain, and jerking out suchsentences as these:Its not our fault; we didnt want it; Itold him to take his hammer away; it was boys business;he might have known me before this; I told him not toprick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger hereagainst his cursed jaw; aint those mincing knives down inthe forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, myhearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word;dont be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treatus decently, and were your men; but we wont be flogged.
Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!
Look ye, now, cried the Lakeman, flinging out his armtowards him, there are a few of us here (and I am one ofthem) who have shipped for the cruise, dye see; now asyou well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soonas the anchor is down; so we dont want a row; its not ourinterest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work,but we wont be flogged.
Turn to! roared the Captain.
Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:I tellyou what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and behung for such a shabby rascal, we wont lift a hand against
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ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word about notflogging us, we dont do a hands turn.
Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, Ill keep yethere till yere sick of it. Down ye go.
Shall we? cried the ringleader to his men. Most of themwere against it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt,they preceded him down into their dark den, growlinglydisappearing, like bears into a cave.
As the Lakemans bare head was just level with the planks,the Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidlydrawing over the slide of the scuttle, planted their groupof hands upon it, and loudly called for the steward to bringthe heavy brass padlock belonging to the companionway.Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whisperedsomething down the crack, closed it, and turned the keyupon themten in numberleaving on deck some twenty ormore, 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 scuttleand fore hatchway; at which last place it was fearedthe insurgents might emerge, after breaking through thebulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace;the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at thepumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals throughthe dreary night dismally resounded through the ship.
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At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on thedeck, summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yellthey refused. Water was then lowered down to them, anda couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it; whenagain turning the key upon them and pocketing it, theCaptain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day forthree days this was repeated; but on the fourth morninga confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, asthe customary summons was delivered; and suddenly fourmen burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready toturn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet,united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, hadconstrained them to surrender at discretion. Emboldenedby this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest,but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stophis babbling and betake himself where he belonged. Onthe fifth morning three others of the mutineers bolted upinto the air from the desperate arms below that sought torestrain 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 thedefection of seven of his former associates, and stung bythe mocking voice that had last hailed him, and maddened
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by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowelsof despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the twoCanallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, toburst out of their hole at the next summoning of thegarrison; 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 anydevilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. Forhimself, he would do this, he said, whether they joinedhim or not. That was the last night he should spend in thatden. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part ofthe other two; they swore they were ready for that, or forany other mad thing, for anything in short but a surrender.And what was more, they each insisted upon being the firstman on deck, when the time to make the rush should come.But to this their leader as fiercely objected, reservingthat priority for himself; particularly as his two comradeswould not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and bothof them could not be first, for the ladder would but admitone man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play ofthese miscreants must come out.
Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, eachin his own separate soul had suddenly lighted, it wouldseem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely: to beforemost in breaking out, in order to be the first ofthe three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; andthereby secure whatever small chance of pardon suchconduct might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his
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determination still to lead them to the last, they in someway, by some subtle chemistry of villany, mixed theirbefore secret treacheries together; and when their leaderfell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each otherin three sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords, andgagged him with cords; and shrieked out for the Captainat midnight.
Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for theblood, he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushedfor the forecastle. In a few minutes the scuttle was opened,and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling ringleaderwas shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who atonce claimed the honor of securing a man who had beenfully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, anddragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side,were seized up into the mizzen rigging, like three quartersof meat, and there they hung till morning. Damn ye, criedthe Captain, pacing to and fro before them, the vultureswould not touch ye, ye villains!
At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating thosewho had rebelled from those who had taken no part inthe mutiny, he told the former that he had a good mindto flog them all roundthought, upon the whole, he woulddo sohe ought tojustice demanded it; but for the present,considering their timely surrender, he would let them gowith a reprimand, which he accordingly administered inthe vernacular.
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But as for you, ye carrion rogues, turning to the three menin the riggingfor you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots; and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might tothe backs of the two traitors, till they yelled no more, butlifelessly hung their heads sideways, as the two crucifiedthieves are drawn.
My wrist is sprained with ye! he cried, at last; but there isstill rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldntgive up. Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear whathe can say for himself.
For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulousmotion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twistinground his head, said in a sort of hiss, What I say is thisandmind it wellif you flog me, I murder you!
Say ye so? then see how ye frighten meand the Captaindrew off with the rope to strike.
Best not, hissed the Lakeman.
But I must,and the rope was once more drawn back for thestroke.
Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all butthe Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, startedback, paced the deck rapidly two or three times, and thensuddenly throwing down his rope, said, I wont do itlet himgocut him down: dye hear?
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But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order,a pale man, with a bandaged head, arrested themRadneythe chief mate. Ever since the blow, he had lain in his berth;but that morning, hearing the tumult on the deck, he hadcrept out, and thus far had watched the whole scene. Suchwas the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak; butmumbling something about _his_ being willing and ableto do what the captain dared not attempt, he snatched therope 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 ofstriking, when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. Hepaused: and then pausing no more, made good his word,spite of Steelkilts threat, whatever that might have been.The three men were then cut down, all hands were turnedto, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the ironpumps clanged as before.
Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below,a clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two tremblingtraitors running up, besieged the cabin door, saying theydurst not consort with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kickscould not drive them back, so at their own instance theywere put down in the ships run for salvation. Still, no signof mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary,it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilts instigation, they hadresolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all
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orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port, deserther in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end tothe voyage, they all agreed to another thingnamely, not tosing 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 wasjust as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on theday his craft first struck the cruising ground; and Radneythe mate was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat,and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vitaljaw of the whale.
But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adoptthis sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his owncounsel (at least till all was over) concerning his ownproper and private revenge upon the man who had stunghim in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney thechief mates watch; and as if the infatuated man sought torun more than half way to meet his doom, after the sceneat the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel ofthe captain, upon resuming the head of his watch at night.Upon this, and one or two other circumstances, Steelkiltsystematically built the plan of his revenge.
During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way ofsitting on the bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaninghis arm upon the gunwale of the boat which was hoistedup there, a little above the ships side. In this attitude,it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a
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considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, anddown between this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated histime, and found that his next trick at the helm would comeround at two oclock, in the morning of the third day fromthat in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, heemployed the interval in braiding something very carefullyin 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 its an odd one, seems tome.
Yes, rather oddish, said the Lakeman, holding it at armslength before him; but I think it will answer. Shipmate, Ihavent 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 dont mean to go a begging to _him!_ said a sailor.
Why not? Do you think he wont do me a turn, when itsto help himself in the end, shipmate? and going to themate, he looked at him quietly, and asked him for sometwine to mend his hammock. It was given himneither twinenor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron
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ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of theLakemans monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat intohis hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, histrick at the silent helmnigh to the man who was apt to dozeover the grave always ready dug to the seamans handthatfatal hour was then to come; and in the fore-ordaining soulof Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and stretched as acorpse, with his forehead crushed in.
But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer fromthe bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge hehad, and without being the avenger. For by a mysteriousfatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of hishands into its own the damning thing he would have done.
It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning ofthe 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 sherolls! 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 MobyDick?
A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortalmonster, Don;but that would be too long a story.
How? how? cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.
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Nay, Dons, Donsnay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Letme get more into the air, Sirs.
The chicha! the chicha! cried Don Pedro; our vigorousfriend looks faint;fill up his empty glass!
No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.Now,gentlemen, so suddenly perceiving the snowy whalewithin fifty yards of the shipforgetful of the compactamong the crewin the excitement of the moment, theTeneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted hisvoice for the monster, though for some little time pastit had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy. The White Whalethe WhiteWhale! was the cry from captain, mates, and harpooneers,who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious tocapture so famous and precious a fish; while the doggedcrew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beautyof the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spanglingsun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the bluemorning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades thewhole career of these events, as if verily mapped outbefore the world itself was charted. The mutineer was thebowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was hisduty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lancein the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word ofcommand. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered,the mates got the start; and none howled more fiercelywith delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar.
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After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear inhand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furiousman, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was,to beach him on the whales topmost back. Nothing loath,his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blindingfoam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a suddenthe boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keelingover, spilled out the standing mate. That instant, as he fellon the whales slippery back, the boat righted, and wasdashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed overinto the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struckout through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seenthrough that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself fromthe eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in asudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws;and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, andwent down.
Meantime, at the first tap of the boats bottom, theLakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern fromthe whirlpool; calmly looking on, he thought his ownthoughts. But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking of theboat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; andthe whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dickrose again, with some tatters of Radneys red woollen shirt,caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boatsgave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and finallywholly disappeared.
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In good time, the Town-Ho reached her porta savage,solitary placewhere no civilized creature resided. There,headed by the Lakeman, all but five or six of theforemastmen deliberately deserted among the palms;eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some otherharbor.
The ships company being reduced to but a handful, thecaptain called upon the Islanders to assist him in thelaborious business of heaving down the ship to stop theleak. But to such unresting vigilance over their dangerousallies was this small band of whites necessitated, bothby night and by day, and so extreme was the hard workthey underwent, that upon the vessel being ready againfor sea, they were in such a weakened condition that thecaptain durst not put off with them in so heavy a vessel.After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the shipas far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his twocannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop;and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at theirperil, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his bestwhale-boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, fivehundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to hiscrew.
On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried,which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. Hesteered away from it; but the savage craft bore down on
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him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to,or he would run him under water. The captain presenteda pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring himthat if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he wouldbury 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 momentI come in peace.With that he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; andclimbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the captain.
Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeatafter me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beachthis boat on yonder island, and remain there six days. If Ido not, may lightnings strike me!
A pretty scholar, laughed the Lakeman. Adios, Senor! andleaping into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.
Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawnup to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sailagain, and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his own place ofdestination. There, luck befriended him; two ships were
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about to sail for France, and were providentially in wantof precisely that number of men which the sailor headed.They embarked; and so for ever got the start of their formercaptain, had he been at all minded to work them legalretribution.
Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some ofthe more civilized Tahitians, who had been somewhat usedto the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he returnedwith them to his vessel; and finding all right there, againresumed his cruisings.
Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but uponthe island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turnsto the sea which refuses to give up its dead; still in dreamssees 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 ownconvictions, this your story is in substance really true?It is so passing wonderful! Did you get it from anunquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.
Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join inDon Sebastians suit, cried the company, with exceedinginterest.
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Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn,gentlemen?
Nay, said Don Sebastian; but I know a worthy priest nearby, who will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; butare 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-Fs in Lima now, said one ofthe company to another; I fear our sailor friend runs riskof the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of themoonlight. I see no need of this.
Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may Ialso beg that you will be particular in procuring the largestsized Evangelists you can.
* * * * * *
This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists, said DonSebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.
Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further intothe light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I maytouch it.
So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have toldye, gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. Iknow it to be true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; Iknew the crew; I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since
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the death of Radney.
CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can withoutcanvas, something like the true form of the whale as heactually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in hisown absolute body the whale is moored alongside thewhale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there.It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert tothose curious imaginary portraits of him which even downto the present day confidently challenge the faith of thelandsman. It is time to set the world right in this matter, byproving such pictures of the whale all wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorialdelusions will be found among the oldest Hindoo,Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For ever since thoseinventive but unscrupulous times when on the marblepanellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and onshields, medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin wasdrawn in scales of chain-armor like Saladins, and ahelmeted head like St. Georges; ever since then hassomething of the same sort of license prevailed, not only inmost popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientificpresentations of him.
Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anywayspurporting to be the whales, is to be found in the famous
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cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahminsmaintain that in the almost endless sculptures of thatimmemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, everyconceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages beforeany of them actually came into being. No wonder then, thatin some sort our noble profession of whaling should havebeen there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to,occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting theincarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedlyknown as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture ishalf man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of thelatter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looksmore like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broadpalms of the true whales majestic flukes.
But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a greatChristian painters portrait of this fish; for he succeeds nobetter than the antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guidos pictureof Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea-monster orwhale. Where did Guido get the model of such a strangecreature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the samescene in his own Perseus Descending, make out one whitbetter. The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monsterundulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one inch ofwater. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distendedtusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, mightbe taken for the Traitors Gate leading from the Thamesby water into the Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus
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whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonahs whale, asdepicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of oldprimers. What shall be said of these? As for the book-binders whale winding like a vine-stalk round the stock ofa descending anchoras stamped and gilded on the backsand title-pages of many books both old and newthat is avery picturesque but purely fabulous creature, imitated,I take it, from the like figures on antique vases. Thoughuniversally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call thisbook-binders fish an attempt at a whale; because it wasso intended when the device was first introduced. It wasintroduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere aboutthe 15th century, during the Revival of Learning; and inthose days, and even down to a comparatively late period,dolphins were popularly supposed to be a species of theLeviathan.
In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancientbooks you will at times meet with very curious touchesat the whale, where all manner of spouts, jets deau,hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, comebubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the title-pageof the original edition of the Advancement of Learning youwill find some curious whales.
But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let usglance at those pictures of leviathan purporting to besober, scientific delineations, by those who know. In oldHarriss collection of voyages there are some plates of
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whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D.1671, entitled A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in theship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland,master. In one of those plates the whales, like great raftsof logs, are represented lying among ice-isles, with whitebears running over their living backs. In another plate, theprodigious blunder is made of representing the whale withperpendicular flukes.
Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by oneCaptain Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy,entitled A Voyage round Cape Horn into the SouthSeas, for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti WhaleFisheries. In this book is an outline purporting to be aPicture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scalefrom one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, andhoisted on deck. I doubt not the captain had this veraciouspicture taken for the benefit of his marines. To mentionbut one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye whichapplied, according to the accompanying scale, to a fullgrown sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale abow-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 NaturalHistory for the benefit of the young and tender, free fromthe same heinousness of mistake. Look at that popularwork Goldsmiths Animated Nature. In the abridgedLondon edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged
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whale and a narwhale. I do not wish to seem inelegant, butthis unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow;and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough toamaze one, that in this nineteenth century such a hippogriffcould be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent publicof schoolboys.
Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacpde,a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whalebook, wherein are several pictures of the different speciesof the Leviathan. All these are not only incorrect, but thepicture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale (that is tosay, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long experiencedman as touching that species, declares not to have itscounterpart in nature.
But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blunderingbusiness was reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier,brother to the famous Baron. In 1836, he published aNatural History of Whales, in which he gives what hecalls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing thatpicture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for yoursummary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, FrederickCuviers 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 thatpicture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientificpredecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of hisauthentic abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing. And
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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 hangingover the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them?They are generally Richard III. whales, with dromedaryhumps, and very savage; breakfasting on three or foursailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: theirdeformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.
But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale arenot so very surprising after all. Consider! Most of thescientific drawings have been taken from the stranded fish;and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wreckedship, with broken back, would correctly represent thenoble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull andspars. Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths,the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himselffor his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty andsignificance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomablewaters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight,like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that elementit is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man tohoist him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all hismighty swells and undulations. And, not to speak of thehighly presumable difference of contour between a youngsucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet,even in the case of one of those young sucking whaleshoisted to a ships deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-
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like, limbered, varying shape of him, that his preciseexpression the devil himself could not catch.
But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of thestranded whale, accurate hints may be derived touchinghis true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more curiousthings about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives verylittle idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy Benthamsskeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of oneof his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremys otherleading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kindcould be inferred from any leviathans articulated bones.In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton ofthe whale bears the same relation to the fully investedand padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis thatso roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikinglyevinced in the head, as in some part of this book will beincidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed inthe side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer tothe bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. Thisfin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring,and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged intheir fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificialcovering. However recklessly the whale may sometimesserve us, said humorous Stubb one day, he can never betruly said to handle us without mittens.
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it,
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you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is thatone creature in the world which must remain unpainted tothe last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearerthan another, but none can hit it with any very considerabledegree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of findingout precisely what the whale really looks like. And theonly mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea ofhis living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but byso doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove andsunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best notbe 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, Iam strongly tempted here to enter upon those still moremonstrous stories of them which are to be found in certainbooks, both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny,Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass thatmatter by.
I know of only four published outlines of the greatSperm Whale; Colnetts, Hugginss, Frederick Cuviers, andBeales. In the previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier havebeen referred to. Hugginss is far better than theirs; but, bygreat odds, Beales is the best. All Beales drawings of thiswhale are good, excepting the middle figure in the pictureof three whales in various attitudes, capping his second
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chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales,though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticismof some parlor men, is admirably correct and life-like inits general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings inJ. Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they arewretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though.
Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are inScoresby; but they are drawn on too small a scale to conveya desirable impression. He has but one picture of whalingscenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because it is by suchpictures only, when at all well done, that you can deriveanything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen byhis living hunters.
But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in somedetails not the most correct, presentations of whales andwhaling scenes to be anywhere found, are two large Frenchengravings, well executed, and taken from paintings byone Garnery. Respectively, they represent attacks on theSperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a nobleSperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, justrisen beneath the boat from the profundities of the ocean,and bearing high in the air upon his back the terrific wreckof the stoven planks. The prow of the boat is partiallyunbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the monstersspine; and standing in that prow, for that one singleincomputable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, halfshrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the whale, and
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in the act of leaping, as if from a precipice. The action ofthe whole thing is wonderfully good and true. The half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened sea; the woodenpoles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; theheads of the swimming crew are scattered about the whalein contrasting expressions of affright; while in the blackstormy distance the ship is bearing down upon the scene.Serious fault might be found with the anatomical detailsof this whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, Icould not draw so good a one.
In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawingalongside the barnacled flank of a large running RightWhale, that rolls his black weedy bulk in the sea like somemossy rock-slide from the Patagonian cliffs. His jets areerect, full, and black like soot; so that from so aboundinga smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be abrave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowlsare pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other seacandies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimescarries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tonsof tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing theslight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh thepaddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foregroundis all raging commotion; but behind, in admirable artisticcontrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the droopingunstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert massof a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of
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capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted intohis spout-hole.
Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But mylife for it he was either practically conversant with hissubject, or else marvellously tutored by some experiencedwhaleman. The French are the lads for painting action. Goand gaze upon all the paintings of Europe, and where willyou find such a gallery of living and breathing commotionon canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where thebeholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutivegreat battles of France; where every sword seems a flash ofthe Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings andEmperors dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs? Notwholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these seabattle-pieces of Garnery.
The natural aptitude of the French for seizing thepicturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evincedin what paintings and engravings they have of theirwhaling scenes. With not one tenth of Englandsexperience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part ofthat of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnishedboth nations with the only finished sketches at all capableof conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt. For themost part, the English and American whale draughtsmenseem entirely content with presenting the mechanicaloutline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale;which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is
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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 andporpoises, treats us to a series of classical engravings ofboat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with themicroscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to theinspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes ofmagnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagementto the excellent voyager (I honor him for a veteran), butin so important a matter it was certainly an oversight notto have procured for every crystal a sworn affidavit takenbefore a Greenland Justice of the Peace.
In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, thereare two other French engravings worthy of note, by someone who subscribes himself H. Durand. One of them,though not precisely adapted to our present purpose,nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts. It is aquiet noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a Frenchwhaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily takingwater on board; the loosened sails of the ship, and thelong leaves of the palms in the background, both droopingtogether in the breezeless air. The effect is very fine,when considered with reference to its presenting the hardyfishermen under one of their few aspects of oriental repose.The other engraving is quite a different affair: the shiphove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of theLeviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel
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(in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if toa quay; and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from this sceneof activity, is about giving chase to whales in the distance.The harpoons and lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmenare just setting the mast in its hole; while from a suddenroll of the sea, the little craft stands half-erect out of thewater, like a rearing horse. From the ship, the smoke ofthe torments of the boiling whale is going up like thesmoke over a village of smithies; and to windward, a blackcloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, seems toquicken the activity of the excited seamen.
CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; inSheet-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_, asthe sailors say) holding a painted board before him,representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg. Thereare three whales and three boats; and one of the boats(presumed to contain the missing leg in all its originalintegrity) is being crunched by the jaws of the foremostwhale. Any time these ten years, they tell me, has thatman held up that picture, and exhibited that stump to anincredulous world. But the time of his justification hasnow come. His three whales are as good whales as wereever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump asunquestionable a stump as any you will find in the westernclearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump,
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never a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but,with downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating hisown amputation.
Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and NewBedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across livelysketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by thefishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladiesbusks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other likeskrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerouslittle ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out ofthe rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some ofthem have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements,specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But,in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, withthat almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn youout anything you please, in the way of a mariners fancy.
Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitablyrestores a man to that condition in which God placed him,_i.e._ what is called savagery. Your true whale-hunter isas much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage,owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; andready at any moment to rebel against him.
Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage inhis domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of industry.An ancient Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its fullmultiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy
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of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but abit of broken sea-shell or a sharks tooth, that miraculousintricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved; and it hascost steady years of steady application.
As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the same marvellous patience, and with thesame single sharks tooth, of his one poor jack-knife,he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quiteas workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness ofdesign, as the Greek savage, Achilless shield; and full ofbarbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fineold Dutch savage, Albert Durer.
Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the smalldark slabs of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequentlymet with in the forecastles of American whalers. Some ofthem are done with much accuracy.
At some old gable-roofed country houses you will seebrass whales hung by the tail for knockers to the road-sidedoor. When the porter is sleepy, the anvil-headed whalewould be best. But these knocking whales are seldomremarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placedthere for weather-cocks; but they are so elevated, andbesides that are to all intents and purposes so labelled with_Hands off!_ you cannot examine them closely enough todecide upon their merit.
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In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base ofhigh broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantasticgroupings upon the plain, you will often discover imagesas of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged ingrass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surfof green surges.
Then, again, in mountainous countries where the travelleris continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here andthere from some lucky point of view you will catch passingglimpses of the profiles of whales defined along theundulating ridges. But you must be a thorough whaleman,to see these sights; and not only that, but if you wish toreturn to such a sight again, you must be sure and takethe exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your firststand-point, else so chance-like are such observations ofthe hills, that your precise, previous stand-point wouldrequire a laborious re-discovery; like the Soloma Islands,which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffedMendanna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them.
Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you failto trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats inpursuit of them; as when long filled with thoughts of warthe Eastern nations saw armies locked in battle among theclouds. Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan roundand round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright pointsthat first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgentAntarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined
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the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmoststretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish.
With a frigates anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces ofharpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale andleap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavenswith all their countless tents really lie encamped beyondmy mortal sight!
CHAPTER 58. Brit.
Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in withvast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, uponwhich the Right Whale largely feeds. For leagues andleagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to besailing 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 thePequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam through the brit,which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrousVenetian blind in their mouths, was in that mannerseparated from the water that escaped at the lip.
As morning mowers, who side by side slowly andseethingly advance their scythes through the long wetgrass of marshy meads; even so these monsters swam,making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leavingbehind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*
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*That part of the sea known among whalemen as theBrazil Banks does not bear that name as the Banksof Newfoundland do, because of there being shallowsand soundings there, but because of this remarkablemeadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of britcontinually floating in those latitudes, where the RightWhale is often chased.
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the britwhich at all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they paused and were stationaryfor a while, their vast black forms looked more like lifelessmasses of rock than anything else. And as in the greathunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance willsometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants withoutknowing them to be such, taking them for bare, blackenedelevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who forthe first time beholds this species of the leviathans of thesea. And even when recognised at last, their immensemagnitude renders it very hard really to believe that suchbulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, inall parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog or ahorse.
Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard anycreatures of the deep with the same feelings that you dothose of the shore. For though some old naturalists havemaintained that all creatures of the land are of their kindin the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the
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thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties,where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish that indisposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog?The accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be saidto bear comparative analogy to him.
But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitantsof the seas have ever been regarded with emotionsunspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know thesea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbussailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover hisone superficial western one; though, by vast odds, themost terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially andindiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousandsof those who have gone upon the waters; though but amoments consideration will teach, that however baby manmay brag of his science and skill, and however much, ina flattering future, that science and skill may augment;yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the seawill insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest,stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continualrepetition of these very impressions, man has lost thatsense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginallybelongs to it.
The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, thatwith Portuguese vengeance had whelmed a whole worldwithout leaving so much as a widow. That same ocean rollsnow; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships of last
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year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noahs flood is not yet subsided;two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle uponone is not a miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrorsrested upon the Hebrews, when under the feet of Korahand his company the live ground opened and swallowedthem up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but inprecisely the same manner the live sea swallows up shipsand crews.
But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an aliento it, but it is also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse thanthe Persian host who murdered his own guests; sparingnot the creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savagetigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, sothe sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks,and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks ofships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Pantingand 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 dreadedcreatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part,and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints ofazure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beautyof many of its most remorseless tribes, as the daintyembellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider,once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose
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creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal warsince the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, andmost docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land;and do you not find a strange analogy to something inyourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdantland, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti,full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrorsof the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off fromthat isle, thou canst never return!
CHAPTER 59. Squid.
Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequodstill held on her way north-eastward towards the islandof Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in thesurrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildlywaved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on aplain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, thelonely, alluring jet would be seen.
But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almostpreternatural spread over the sea, however unattendedwith any stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid acrossthem, enjoining some secrecy; when the slippered waveswhispered together as they softly ran on; in this profoundhush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by
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Daggoo from the main-mast-head.
In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and risinghigher and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure,at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slide, newslid from the hills. Thus glistening for a moment, asslowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, andsilently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is thisMoby Dick? thought Daggoo. Again the phantom wentdown, but on re-appearing once more, with a stiletto-likecry that startled every man from his nod, the negro yelledoutThere! there again! there she breaches! right ahead!The White Whale, the White Whale!
Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as inswarming-time the bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headedin the sultry sun, Ahab stood on the bowsprit, and withone hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave his ordersto the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the directionindicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm ofDaggoo.
Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitaryjet had gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was nowprepared to connect the ideas of mildness and reposewith the first sight of the particular whale he pursued;however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayedhim; whichever way it might have been, no sooner didhe distinctly perceive the white mass, than with a quick
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intensity he instantly gave orders for lowering.
The four boats were soon on the water; Ahabs in advance,and all swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it wentdown, and while, with oars suspended, we were awaitingits reappearance, lo! in the same spot where it sank, oncemore it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the momentall thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the mostwondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hithertorevealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in lengthand breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating onthe water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre,and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as ifblindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. Noperceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable tokenof either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on thebillows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition oflife.
As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again,Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it hadsunk, with a wild voice exclaimedAlmost rather had I seenMoby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thouwhite ghost!
What was it, Sir? said Flask.
The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships everbeheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it.
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But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back tothe vessel; the rest as silently following.
Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in generalhave connected with the sight of this object, certainit is, that a glimpse of it being so very unusual, thatcircumstance has gone far to invest it with portentousness.So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of themdeclare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean,yet very few of them have any but the most vague ideasconcerning its true nature and form; notwithstanding, theybelieve it to furnish to the sperm whale his only food.For though other species of whales find their food abovewater, and may be seen by man in the act of feeding,the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food in unknownzones below the surface; and only by inference is it thatany one can tell of what, precisely, that food consists. Attimes, when closely pursued, he will disgorge what aresupposed to be the detached arms of the squid; some ofthem thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet inlength. They fancy that the monster to which these armsbelonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean;and that the sperm whale, unlike other species, is suppliedwith teeth in order to attack and tear it.
There seems some ground to imagine that the great Krakenof Bishop Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself intoSquid. The manner in which the Bishop describes it, as
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alternately rising and sinking, with some other particularshe narrates, in all this the two correspond. But muchabatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulkhe assigns it.
By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of themysterious creature, here spoken of, it is included amongthe class of cuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain externalrespects it would seem to belong, but only as the Anak ofthe tribe.
CHAPTER 60. The Line.
With reference to the whaling scene shortly to bedescribed, as well as for the better understanding of allsimilar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to speakof the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.
The line originally used in the fishery was of the besthemp, slightly vapored with tar, not impregnated with it,as in the case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarilyused, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, andalso renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailorfor common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinaryquantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the closecoiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamenare beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds tothe ropes durability or strength, however much it may giveit compactness and gloss.
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Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fisheryalmost 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 thereis an sthetics in all things), is much more handsome andbecoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, darkfellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-hairedCircassian 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 itreally is. By experiment its one and fifty yarns will eachsuspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; sothat the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to threetons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measuressomething over two hundred fathoms. Towards the sternof the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like theworm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round,cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded sheaves, or layersof concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but theheart, or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of thecheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, inrunning out, infallibly take somebodys arm, leg, or entirebody off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the linein its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entiremorning in this business, carrying the line high aloft andthen reeving it downwards through a block towards thetub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possiblewrinkles and twists.
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In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; thesame line being continuously coiled in both tubs. There issome advantage in this; because these twin-tubs being sosmall they fit more readily into the boat, and do not strainit so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly three feetin diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a ratherbulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is likecritical ice, which will bear up a considerable distributedweight, but not very much of a concentrated one. When thepainted canvas cover is clapped on the American line-tub,the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigiousgreat wedding-cake to present to the whales.
Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower endterminating in an eye-splice or loop coming up fromthe bottom against the side of the tub, and hangingover its edge completely disengaged from everything.This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on twoaccounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it ofan additional line from a neighboring boat, in case thestricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to carryoff the entire line originally attached to the harpoon. Inthese instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mugof ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; thoughthe first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort.Second: This arrangement is indispensable for commonsafetys sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way
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attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run theline out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as hesometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomedboat would infallibly be dragged down after him into theprofundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier wouldever find her again.
Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end ofthe line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round theloggerhead there, is again carried forward the entire lengthof the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle ofevery mans oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing;and also passing between the men, as they alternately sitat the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or groovesin the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a woodenpin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it fromslipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoonover the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again;and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) beingcoiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way tothe gunwale still a little further aft, and is then attachedto the short-warpthe rope which is immediately connectedwith the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious todetail.
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicatedcoils, twisting and writhing around it in almost everydirection. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous
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contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman,they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakessportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son ofmortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amidthose hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmostat the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant theharpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortionsbe put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thuscircumstanced without a shudder that makes the verymarrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yethabitstrange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?Gayersallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighterrepartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than youwill hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangmans nooses; and, like thesix burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six mencomposing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with ahalter around every neck, as you may say.
Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you toaccount for those repeated whaling disasterssome few ofwhich are casually chronicledof this man or that man beingtaken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the lineis darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like beingseated 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 sitmotionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is
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rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and theother, without the slightest warning; and only by a certainself-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volitionand action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of,and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself couldnever pierce you out.
Again: as the profound calm which only apparentlyprecedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps moreawful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but thewrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself,as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, andthe ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of theline, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen beforebeing brought into actual playthis is a thing which carriesmore of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerousaffair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it isonly when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, thatmortals 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 ofportents, to Queequeg it was quite a different object.
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When you see him quid, said the savage, honing hisharpoon in the bow of his hoisted boat, then you quick seehim parm whale.
The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and withnothing special to engage them, the Pequods crew couldhardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacantsea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through which wethen were voyaging is not what whalemen call a livelyground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises,dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of morestirring 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 myshoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, toand fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air.No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy moodlosing all consciousness, at last my soul went out ofmy body; though my body still continued to sway as apendulum will, long after the power which first moved itis withdrawn.
Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticedthat the seamen at the main and mizzen-mast-heads werealready drowsy. So that at last all three of us lifelesslyswung from the spars, and for every swing that wemade there was a nod from below from the slumberinghelmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests;
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and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west,and the sun over all.
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closedeyes; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds; someinvisible, gracious agency preserved me; with a shock Icame back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not fortyfathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in thewater like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossyback, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the suns rays likea mirror. But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea,and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet, thewhale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of awarm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last.As if struck by some enchanters wand, the sleepy ship andevery sleeper in it all at once started into wakefulness; andmore than a score of voices from all parts of the vessel,simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shoutedforth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly andregularly spouted the sparkling brine into the air.
Clear away the boats! Luff! cried Ahab. And obeying hisown order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsmancould handle the spokes.
The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmedthe whale; and ere the boats were down, majesticallyturning, he swam away to the leeward, but with such asteady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam,
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that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahabgave orders that not an oar should be used, and no manmust speak but in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indianson the gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silentlypaddled along; the calm not admitting of the noiselesssails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, themonster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into theair, and then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up.
There go flukes! was the cry, an announcementimmediately followed by Stubbs producing his match andigniting his pipe, for now a respite was granted. After thefull interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale roseagain, and being now in advance of the smokers boat, andmuch nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb countedupon the honor of the capture. It was obvious, now, thatthe whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. Allsilence 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 tothe assault.
Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive tohis jeopardy, he was going head out; that part obliquelyprojecting from the mad yeast which he brewed.*
*It will be seen in some other place of what a very lightsubstance the entire interior of the sperm whales enormoushead consists. Though apparently the most massive, it is
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by far the most buoyant part about him. So that withease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so whengoing at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadthof the upper part of the front of his head, and such thetapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that byobliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said totransform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot intoa sharppointed New York pilot-boat.
Start her, start her, my men! Dont hurry yourselves; takeplenty of timebut start her; start her like thunder-claps,thats all, cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as hespoke. Start her, now; give em the long and strong stroke,Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boystart her, all; but keepcool, keep coolcucumbers is the wordeasy, easyonly starther like grim death and grinning devils, and raise theburied dead perpendicular out of their graves, boysthatsall. Start her!
Woo-hoo! Wa-hee! screamed the Gay-Header in reply,raising some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsmanin the strained boat involuntarily bounced forward withthe one tremendous leading stroke which the eager Indiangave.
But his wild screams were answered by others quiteas wild. Kee-hee! Kee-hee! yelled Daggoo, strainingforwards and backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger inhis cage.
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Ka-la! Koo-loo! howled Queequeg, as if smacking hislips over a mouthful of Grenadiers steak. And thus withoars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubbretaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men tothe onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth.Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till thewelcome cry was heardStand up, Tashtego!give it to him!The harpoon was hurled. Stern all! The oarsmen backedwater; the same moment something went hot and hissingalong every one of their wrists. It was the magical line.An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additionalturns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of itsincreased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jettedup and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As theline passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, justbefore reaching that point, it blisteringly passed throughand through both of Stubbs hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn atthese times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holdingan enemys sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and thatenemy 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, dashedsea-water into it.* More turns were taken, so that the linebegan holding its place. The boat now flew through theboiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego herechanged placesstem for sterna staggering business truly inthat rocking commotion.
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*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it mayhere be stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop wasused to dash the running line with water; in many otherships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for thatpurpose. Your hat, however, is the most convenient.
From the vibrating line extending the entire length of theupper part of the boat, and from its now being more tightthan a harpstring, you would have thought the craft hadtwo keelsone cleaving the water, the other the airas the boatchurned on through both opposing elements at once. Acontinual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirlingeddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within,even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craftcanted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus theyrushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat,to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form ofTashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, inorder to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlanticsand Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their way, tillat length the whale somewhat slackened his flight.
Haul inhaul in! cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facinground towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boatup to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soonranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee inthe clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish;at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out
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of the way of the whales horrible wallow, and then rangingup for another fling.
The red tide now poured from all sides of the monsterlike brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled notin brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed forfurlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playingupon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflectioninto every face, so that they all glowed to each other likered men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smokewas agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, andvehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excitedheadsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crookedlance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened itagain and again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale,then again and again sent it into the whale.
Pull uppull up! he now cried to the bowsman, as thewaning whale relaxed in his wrath. Pull up!close to! andthe boat ranged along the fishs flank. When reaching farover the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lanceinto the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning andchurning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some goldwatch that the whale might have swallowed, and whichhe was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. Butthat gold watch he sought was the innermost life of thefish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his tranceinto that unspeakable thing called his flurry, the monsterhorribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in
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impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilledcraft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly tostruggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear airof the day.
And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolledout into view; surging from side to side; spasmodicallydilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp,cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gushof clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of redwine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, randripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His hearthad burst!
Hes dead, Mr. Stubb, said Daggoo.
Yes; both pipes smoked out! and withdrawing his ownfrom his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over thewater; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing thevast 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 orwhale-fastener pulling the foremost oar, the one known asthe harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to
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strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in what is calleda long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to thedistance of twenty or thirty feet. But however prolongedand exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is expected topull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed, he isexpected to set an example of superhuman activity to therest, not only by incredible rowing, but by repeated loudand intrepid exclamations; and what it is to keep shoutingat the top of ones compass, while all the other muscles arestrained and half startedwhat that is none know but thosewho have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartilyand work very recklessly at one and the same time. In thisstraining, bawling state, then, with his back to the fish,all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the excitingcryStand up, and give it to him! He now has to drop andsecure his oar, turn round on his centre half way, seize hisharpoon from the crotch, and with what little strength mayremain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale. Nowonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, thatout of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful;no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madlycursed and disrated; no wonder that some of them actuallyburst their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that somesperm whalemen are absent four years with four barrels;no wonder that to many ship owners, whaling is but alosing concern; for it is the harpooneer that makes thevoyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how canyou expect to find it there when most wanted!
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Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second criticalinstant, that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheaderand harpooneer likewise start to running fore and aft, tothe imminent jeopardy of themselves and every one else.It is then they change places; and the headsman, the chiefofficer of the little craft, takes his proper station in the bowsof the boat.
Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this isboth foolish and unnecessary. The headsman should stayin the bows from first to last; he should both dart theharpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever should beexpected of him, except under circumstances obvious toany fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involvea slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience invarious whalemen of more than one nation has convincedme that in the vast majority of failures in the fishery, it hasnot by any means been so much the speed of the whale asthe before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that hascaused them.
To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, theharpooneers of this world must start to their feet from outof 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.
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The crotch alluded to on a previous page deservesindependent mention. It is a notched stick of a peculiarform, some two feet in length, which is perpendicularlyinserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for thepurpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity ofthe harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopinglyprojects from the prow. Thereby the weapon is instantlyat hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from itsrest as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. Itis 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 bothconnected with the line; the object being this: to dart themboth, if possible, one instantly after the other into the samewhale; so that if, in the coming drag, one should drawout, the other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling ofthe chances. But it very often happens that owing to theinstantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whaleupon receiving the first iron, it becomes impossible forthe harpooneer, however lightning-like in his movements,to pitch the second iron into him. Nevertheless, as thesecond iron is already connected with the line, and theline is running, hence that weapon must, at all events,be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat, somehow andsomewhere; else the most terrible jeopardy would involveall hands. Tumbled into the water, it accordingly is in suchcases; the spare coils of box line (mentioned in a preceding
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chapter) making this feat, in most instances, prudentlypracticable. But this critical act is not always unattendedwith the saddest and most fatal casualties.
Furthermore: you must know that when the second ironis thrown overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling,sharp-edged terror, skittishly curvetting about both boatand whale, entangling the lines, or cutting them, andmaking a prodigious sensation in all directions. Nor, ingeneral, is it possible to secure it again until the whale isfairly captured and a corpse.
Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boatsall engaging one unusually strong, active, and knowingwhale; when owing to these qualities in him, as well as tothe thousand concurring accidents of such an audaciousenterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may besimultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, eachboat is supplied with several harpoons to bend on to theline should the first one be ineffectually darted withoutrecovery. All these particulars are faithfully narrated here,as they will not fail to elucidate several most important,however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to bepainted.
CHAPTER 64. Stubbs Supper.
Stubbs whale had been killed some distance from theship. It was a calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats,
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we commenced the slow business of towing the trophyto the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men with ourthirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs andfingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert,sluggish corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budgeat all, except at long intervals; good evidence was herebyfurnished 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 abulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but thisgrand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if ladenwith pig-lead in bulk.
Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in thePequods main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawingnearer we saw Ahab dropping one of several more lanternsover the bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale fora moment, he issued the usual orders for securing it for thenight, and then handing his lantern to a seaman, went hisway into the cabin, and did not come forward again untilmorning.
Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, CaptainAhab had evinced his customary activity, to call itso; yet now that the creature was dead, some vaguedissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed workingin him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him thatMoby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousandother whales were brought to his ship, all that would not
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one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object. Very soonyou would have thought from the sound on the Pequodsdecks, that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in thedeep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck,and thrust rattling out of the port-holes. But by thoseclanking links, the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is tobe moored. Tied by the head to the stern, and by the tailto the bows, the whale now lies with its black hull closeto the vessels and seen through the darkness of the night,which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the twoshipand 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 strongestand most reliable hold which the ship has upon the whalewhen moored alongside, is by the flukes or tail; and as fromits greater density that part is relatively heavier than anyother (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death,causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that with thehand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to put thechain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome:a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at itsouter end, and a weight in its middle, while the other endis secured to the ship. By adroit management the woodenfloat is made to rise on the other side of the mass, so thatnow having girdled the whale, the chain is readily madeto follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at lastlocked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the pointof junction with its broad flukes or lobes.
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If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far ascould be known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushedwith conquest, betrayed an unusual but still good-naturedexcitement. Such an unwonted bustle was he in that thestaid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned tohim for the time the sole management of affairs. Onesmall, helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb, wassoon made strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver;he was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as aflavorish thing to his palate.
A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard yougo, and cut me one from his small!
Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen donot, as a general thing, and according to the great militarymaxim, make the enemy defray the current expenses of thewar (at least before realizing the proceeds of the voyage),yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers whohave a genuine relish for that particular part of the SpermWhale designated by Stubb; comprising the taperingextremity of the body.
About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lightedby two lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to hisspermaceti supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstanwere a sideboard. Nor was Stubb the only banqueter onwhales flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings withhis own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks,
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swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feastedon its fatness. The few sleepers below in their bunks wereoften startled by the sharp slapping of their tails againstthe hull, within a few inches of the sleepers hearts. Peeringover the side you could just see them (as before you heardthem) wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and turningover on their backs as they scooped out huge globularpieces of the whale of the bigness of a human head. Thisparticular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous. Howat such an apparently unassailable surface, they contriveto gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a partof the universal problem of all things. The mark they thusleave on the whale, may best be likened to the hollow madeby a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of asea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to theships decks, like hungry dogs round a table where redmeat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killedman that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiantbutchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carvingeach others live meat with carving-knives all gilded andtasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths,are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the deadmeat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upsidedown, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that isto say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties;and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all
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slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trottingalongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carriedanywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; andthough one or two other like instances might be set down,touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharksdo most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast;yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you willfind them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or morejovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, mooredby night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seenthat sight, then suspend your decision about the proprietyof devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating thedevil.
But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of thebanquet that was going on so nigh him, no more than thesharks heeded the smacking of his own epicurean lips.
Cook, cook!wheres that old Fleece? he cried at length,widening his legs still further, as if to form a more securebase for his supper; and, at the same time darting his forkinto the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; cook, youcook!sail this way, cook!
The old black, not in any very high glee at having beenpreviously roused from his warm hammock at a mostunseasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley,for, like many old blacks, there was something the matterwith his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured
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like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him,came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step withhis tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made ofstraightened iron hoops; this old Ebony floundered along,and in obedience to the word of command, came to a deadstop on the opposite side of Stubbs sideboard; when, withboth hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back still further over, atthe same time sideways inclining his head, so as to bringhis best ear into play.
Cook, said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morselto his mouth, dont you think this steak is rather overdone?Youve been beating this steak too much, cook; its tootender. Dont I always say that to be good, a whale-steakmust be tough? There are those sharks now over the side,dont you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindythey are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to em; tell em theyare welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation,but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my ownvoice. Away, cook, and deliver my message. Here, takethis lantern, snatching one from his sideboard; now then,go and preach to em!
Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limpedacross the deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one handdropping his light low over the sea, so as to get a goodview of his congregation, with the other hand he solemnlyflourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a
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mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb,softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.
Fellow-critters: Ise ordered here to say dat you must stopdat dam noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin ob delip! Massa Stubb say dat you can fill your dam bellies upto de hatchings, but by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!
Cook, here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word witha sudden slap on the shoulder,Cook! why, damn your eyes,you mustnt swear that way when youre preaching. Thatsno way to convert sinners, cook!
Who dat? Den preach to him yourself, sullenly turning togo.
No, cook; go on, go on.
Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:
Right! exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, coax em to it; trythat, and Fleece continued.
Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet Izay to you, fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousnesstop datdam slappin ob de tail! How you tink to hear, spose youkeep up such a dam slappin and bitin dare?
Cook, cried Stubb, collaring him, I wont have thatswearing. Talk to em gentlemanly.
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Once more the sermon proceeded.
Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I dont blame ye somuch for; dat is natur, and cant be helped; but to goberndat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; butif you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; forall angel is noting more dan de shark well goberned. Now,look here, bredren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helpingyourselbs from dat whale. Dont be tearin de blubber outyour neighbours mout, I say. Is not one shark dood rightas toder to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has deright to dat whale; dat whale belong to some one else. Iknow some o you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders;but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; sodat de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid, but to bitoff de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat cant get intode scrouge to help demselves.
Well done, old Fleece! cried Stubb, thats Christianity; goon.
No use goin on; de dam willains will keep a scougin andslappin each oder, Massa Stubb; dey dont hear one word;no use a-preachin to such dam guttons as you call em, tilldare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless; and whendey do get em full, dey wont hear you den; for den deysink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and cant hearnoting at all, no more, for eber and eber.
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Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give thebenediction, Fleece, and Ill 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 everyou can; fill your dam bellies till dey bustand 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 histongs in the desired position.
Well, said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; I shallnow 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 hundredyears, cook, and dont know yet how to cook a whale-steak?rapidly bolting another mouthful at the last word, so thatmorsel seemed a continuation of the question. Where wereyou born, cook?
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Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin ober de Roanoke.
Born in a ferry-boat! Thats queer, too. But I want to knowwhat country you were born in, cook!
Didnt I say de Roanoke country? he cried sharply.
No, you didnt, cook; but Ill tell you what Im coming to,cook. You must go home and be born over again; you dontknow 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 thatbit of steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cookedas it should be? Take it, I sayholding the tongs towardshimtake 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 youbelong 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 inCape-Town, where you doubtless overheard a holy parsonaddressing his hearers as his beloved fellow-creatures,
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have you, cook! And yet you come here, and tell me sucha dreadful lie as you did just now, eh? said Stubb. Wheredo you expect to go to, cook?
Go to bed berry soon, he mumbled, half-turning as hespoke.
Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. Its an awfulquestion. Now whats your answer?
When dis old brack man dies, said the negro slowly,changing his whole air and demeanor, he hisself wont gonowhere; but some bressed angel will come and fetch him.
Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetchedElijah? And fetch him where?
Up dere, said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over hishead, 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 dont you know the higheryou climb, the colder it gets? Main-top, eh?
Didnt say dat tall, said Fleece, again in the sulks.
You said up there, didnt you? and now look yourself,and see where your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps youexpect to get into heaven by crawling through the lubbershole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you dont get there, exceptyou go the regular way, round by the rigging. Its a ticklish
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business, but must be done, or else its no go. But none ofus are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear myorders. Do ye hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and claptother atop of your heart, when Im giving my orders, cook.What! that your heart, there?thats your gizzard! Aloft!aloft!thats itnow you have it. Hold it there now, and payattention.
All dention, said the old black, with both hands placed asdesired, vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get bothears in front at one and the same time.
Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was sovery bad, that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible;you see that, dont you? Well, for the future, when you cookanother whale-steak for my private table here, the capstan,Ill 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 withthe other; that done, dish it; dye hear? And now to-morrow,cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure you standby to get the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle. Asfor the ends of the flukes, have them soused, cook. There,now ye may go.
But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he wasrecalled.
Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in themid-watch. Dye hear? away you sail, then.Halloa! stop!
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make a bow before you go.Avast heaving again! Whale-balls for breakfastdont forget.
Wish, by gor! whale eat him, stead of him eat whale. Imbressed if he aint more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself,muttered the old man, limping away; with which sageejaculation he went to his hammock.
CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish.
That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feedshis lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as youmay say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one mustneeds go a little into the history and philosophy of it.
It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of theRight Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, andcommanded large prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIthstime, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsomereward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten withbarbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a speciesof whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day consideredfine eating. The meat is made into balls about the size ofbilliard balls, and being well seasoned and spiced mightbe taken for turtle-balls or veal balls. The old monks ofDunfermline were very fond of them. They had a greatporpoise grant from the crown.
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whalewould by all hands be considered a noble dish, were
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there not so much of him; but when you come to sitdown before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long,it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudicedof men like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales;but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious. We all knowhow they live upon whales, and have rare old vintages ofprime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famousdoctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as beingexceedingly juicy and nourishing. And this reminds methat certain Englishmen, who long ago were accidentallyleft in Greenland by a whaling vesselthat these menactually lived for several months on the mouldy scrapsof whales which had been left ashore after trying outthe blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen these scrapsare called fritters; which, indeed, they greatly resemble,being brown and crisp, and smelling something like oldAmsterdam housewives dough-nuts or oly-cooks, whenfresh. 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 thesea, too fat to be delicately good. Look at his hump, whichwould be as fine eating as the buffalos (which is esteemeda rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of fat. Butthe spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; likethe transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut inthe third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a
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substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen havea method of absorbing it into some other substance, andthen partaking of it. In the long try watches of the night itis a common thing for the seamen to dip their ship-biscuitinto the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile. Manya good supper have I thus made.
In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains areaccounted a fine dish. The casket of the skull is brokeninto with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes beingwithdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings),they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a mostdelectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calveshead, which is quite a dish among some epicures; andevery one knows that some young bucks among theepicures, by continually dining upon calves brains, by andby get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be ableto tell a calfs head from their own heads; which, indeed,requires uncommon discrimination. And that is the reasonwhy a young buck with an intelligent looking calfs headbefore him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you cansee. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with anEt tu Brute! expression.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is soexcessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard theeating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, insome way, from the consideration before mentioned: _i.e._that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea,
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and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first manthat ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer;perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trialby oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainlydeserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market ofa Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staringup at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not thatsight take a tooth out of the cannibals jaw? Cannibals?who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerablefor the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in hiscellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerablefor that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, thanfor thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailestgeese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers inthy pat-de-foie-gras.
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? andthat is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmanddining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?whatbut the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating?And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring thatfat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with whatquill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppressionof Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars? It isonly within the last month or two that that society passeda resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.
CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.
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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 atonce to the business of cutting him in. For that business isan exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed;and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, thecommon usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm alee; andthen send every one below to his hammock till daylight,with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watchesshall be kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each couple,the crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see that allgoes well.
But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific,this plan will not answer at all; because such incalculablehosts of sharks gather round the moored carcase, that werehe left so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more thanthe skeleton would be visible by morning. In most otherparts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not solargely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at timesconsiderably diminished, by vigorously stirring them upwith sharp whaling-spades, a procedure notwithstanding,which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them intostill greater activity. But it was not thus in the presentcase with the Pequods sharks; though, to be sure, any manunaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her sidethat night, would have almost thought the whole round seawas one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.
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Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch afterhis supper was concluded; and when, accordingly,Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, nosmall excitement was created among the sharks; forimmediately suspending the cutting stages over the side,and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast longgleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners,darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessantmurdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deepinto their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But inthe foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts,the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and thisbrought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity ofthe foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each othersdisembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, andbit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed overand over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voidedby the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe tomeddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. Asort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk intheir very joints and bones, after what might be called theindividual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck forthe sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poorQueequegs hand off, when he tried to shut down the deadlid of his murderous jaw.
*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the verybest steel; is about the bigness of a mans spread hand; and
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in general shape, corresponds to the garden implementafter 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 whenbeing used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In itssocket, a stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, isinserted for a handle.
Queequeg no care what god made him shark, said thesavage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; wedderFejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made sharkmust be one dam Ingin.
CHAPTER 67. Cutting In.
It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath asfollowed! Ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking are allwhalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemeda shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have thoughtwe were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.
In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, amongother ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocksgenerally painted green, and which no single man canpossibly liftthis vast bunch of grapes was swayed up tothe main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head,the strongest point anywhere above a ships deck. The endof the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies,was then conducted to the windlass, and the huge lower
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block of the tackles was swung over the whale; to thisblock the great blubber hook, weighing some one hundredpounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages overthe side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with theirlong spades, began cutting a hole in the body for theinsertion of the hook just above the nearest of the twoside-fins. This done, a broad, semicircular line is cut roundthe hole, the hook is inserted, and the main body of thecrew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heavingin one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, theentire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her startslike the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; shetrembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to thesky. More and more she leans over to the whale, whileevery gasping heave of the windlass is answered by ahelping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startlingsnap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards andbackwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle risesinto sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircularend of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubberenvelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange,so is it stripped off from the body precisely as an orangeis sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For the strainconstantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps thewhale rolling over and over in the water, and as the blubberin one strip uniformly peels off along the line called thescarf, simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck andStubb, the mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off,
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and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the time beinghoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes themain-top; the men at the windlass then cease heaving, andfor a moment or two the prodigious blood-dripping masssways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and every onepresent 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 along, keen weapon called a boarding-sword, and watchinghis chance he dexterously slices out a considerable holein the lower part of the swaying mass. Into this hole, theend of the second alternating great tackle is then hookedso as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order toprepare for what follows. Whereupon, this accomplishedswordsman, warning all hands to stand off, once moremakes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a fewsidelong, desperate, lunging slicings, severs it completelyin twain; so that while the short lower part is still fast, thelong upper strip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, andis all ready for lowering. The heavers forward now resumetheir song, and while the one tackle is peeling and hoistinga second strip from the whale, the other is slowly slackenedaway, and down goes the first strip through the mainhatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor calledthe blubber-room. Into this twilight apartment sundrynimble hands keep coiling away the long blanket-piece asif it were a great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus
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the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and loweringsimultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, theheavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, themates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearingoccasionally, 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 itwith experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalistsashore. My original opinion remains unchanged; but it isonly an opinion.
The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale?Already you know what his blubber is. That blubber issomething of the consistence of firm, close-grained beef,but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges fromeight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.
Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talkof any creatures skin as being of that sort of consistenceand thickness, yet in point of fact these are no argumentsagainst such a presumption; because you cannot raise anyother dense enveloping layer from the whales body but thatsame blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of anyanimal, if reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin?True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you mayscrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent
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substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds ofisinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin;that is, previous to being dried, when it not only contractsand thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle. I haveseveral such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before; and being laidupon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myselfwith fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At anyrate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their ownspectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at here isthis. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which,I admit, invests the entire body of the whale, is not so muchto be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin ofthe skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say,that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner andmore tender than the skin of a new-born child. But no moreof 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, whenit is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil,in its expressed state, is only three fourths, and not theentire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be hadof the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere partof whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid asthat. Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tonsfor the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff of thewhales skin.
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In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is notthe least among the many marvels he presents. Almostinvariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossedwith numberless straight marks in thick array, somethinglike those in the finest Italian line engravings. But thesemarks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglasssubstance above mentioned, but seem to be seen throughit, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Noris this all. In some instances, to the quick, observanteye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, butafford the ground for far other delineations. These arehieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cypherson the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is theproper word to use in the present connexion. By myretentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one SpermWhale in particular, I was much struck with a platerepresenting the old Indian characters chiselled on thefamous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the UpperMississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable. This allusion tothe Indian rocks reminds me of another thing. Besidesall the other phenomena which the exterior of the SpermWhale presents, he not seldom displays the back, and moreespecially his flanks, effaced in great part of the regularlinear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches,altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say thatthose New England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassizimagines to bear the marks of violent scraping contact with
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vast floating icebergsI should say, that those rocks mustnot a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular.It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale areprobably made by hostile contact with other whales; for Ihave most remarked them in the large, full-grown bulls ofthe species.
A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin orblubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it isstript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Likemost sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. Forthe whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a realblanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian ponchoslipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is byreason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whaleis enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers,in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of aGreenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of theNorth, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fishare found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters;but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lunglessfish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, thatwarm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a travellerin winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, likeman, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze hisblood, and he dies. How wonderful is it thenexcept afterexplanationthat this great monster, to whom corporealwarmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful
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that he should be found at home, immersed to his lipsfor life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen falloverboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards,perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, asa fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it toknow, as has been proved by experiment, that the bloodof a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro insummer.
It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of astrong 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 worldwithout being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy bloodfluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peters, and likethe great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperatureof thine own.
But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things!Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peters! ofcreatures, 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 peeledwhite body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marblesepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly
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lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floatsmore and more away, the water round it torn and splashedby the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed withrapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are likeso many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast whiteheadless phantom floats further and further from the ship,and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods ofsharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderousdin. For hours and hours from the almost stationary shipthat hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mildazure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted bythe joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on andon, till lost in infinite perspectives.
Theres a most doleful and most mocking funeral! Thesea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks allpunctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of themwould have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure hehad needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral theymost 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 vengefulghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by sometimid man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel fromafar, 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; straightwaythe whales unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set
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down in the log_shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts:beware!_ And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shunthe place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over avacuum, because their leader originally leaped there whena stick was held. Theres your law of precedents; theresyour utility of traditions; theres the story of your obstinatesurvival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, andnow not even hovering in the air! Theres orthodoxy!
Thus, while in life the great whales body may have beena real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes apowerless panic to a world.
Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are otherghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men thanDoctor Johnson who believe in them.
CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.
It should not have been omitted that previous tocompletely stripping the body of the leviathan, he wasbeheaded. Now, the beheading of the Sperm Whale is ascientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whalesurgeons very much pride themselves: and not withoutreason.
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly becalled a neck; on the contrary, where his head and bodyseem to join, there, in that very place, is the thickest partof him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must operate
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from above, some eight or ten feet intervening betweenhim and his subject, and that subject almost hidden ina discoloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous andbursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under these untowardcircumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh; andin that subterraneous manner, without so much as gettingone single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made,he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdictedparts, and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hardby its insertion into the skull. Do you not marvel, then, atStubbs boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to beheada sperm whale?
When first severed, the head is dropped astern and heldthere by a cable till the body is stripped. That done, ifit belong to a small whale it is hoisted on deck to bedeliberately disposed of. But, with a full grown leviathanthis is impossible; for the sperm whales head embracesnearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely tosuspend such a burden as that, even by the immense tacklesof a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weighinga Dutch barn in jewellers scales.
The Pequods whale being decapitated and the bodystripped, the head was hoisted against the ships sideabouthalf way out of the sea, so that it might yet in great partbe buoyed up by its native element. And there with thestrained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of theenormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and
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every yard-arm on that side projecting like a crane overthe waves; there, that blood-dripping head hung to thePequods waist like the giant Holoferness from the girdleof Judith.
When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and theseamen went below to their dinner. Silence reigned overthe before tumultuous but now deserted deck. An intensecopper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more andmore unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon thesea.
A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness cameAhab alone from his cabin. Taking a few turns on thequarter-deck, he paused to gaze over the side, then slowlygetting into the main-chains he took Stubbs long spadestillremaining there after the whales decapitationand strikingit into the lower part of the half-suspended mass, placed itsother end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood leaningover with eyes attentively fixed on this head.
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there inthe midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynxs inthe desert. Speak, thou vast and venerable head, mutteredAhab, which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet hereand 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 theupper sun now gleams, has moved amid this worlds
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foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust,and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderoushold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millionsof the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there wasthy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell ordiver never went; hast slept by many a sailors side, wheresleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down.Thou sawst the locked lovers when leaping from theirflaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exultingwave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false tothem. Thou sawst the murdered mate when tossed bypirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into thedeeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderersstill sailed on unharmedwhile swift lightnings shiveredthe neighboring ship that would have borne a righteoushusband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hastseen enough to split the planets and make an infidel ofAbraham, and not one syllable is thine!
Sail ho! cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.
Aye? Well, now, thats cheering, cried Ahab, suddenlyerecting himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept asidefrom his brow. That lively cry upon this deadly calm mightalmost convert a better man.Where away?
Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing downher breeze to us!
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Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would comealong that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze!O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utteranceare your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs orlives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.
CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboams Story.
Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breezecame faster than the ship, and soon the Pequod began torock.
By and by, through the glass the strangers boats andmanned mast-heads proved her a whale-ship. But as shewas so far to windward, and shooting by, apparentlymaking a passage to some other ground, the Pequod couldnot hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see whatresponse would be made.
Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines,the ships of the American Whale Fleet have each a privatesignal; all which signals being collected in a book withthe names of the respective vessels attached, every captainis provided with it. Thereby, the whale commanders areenabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even atconsiderable distances and with no small facility.
The Pequods signal was at last responded to by thestrangers setting her own; which proved the ship to bethe Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring her yards, she bore
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down, ranged abeam under the Pequods lee, and lowereda boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder wasbeing rigged by Starbucks order to accommodate thevisiting captain, the stranger in question waved his handfrom his boats stern in token of that proceeding beingentirely unnecessary. It turned out that the Jeroboam hada malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, hercaptain, was fearful of infecting the Pequods company.For, though himself and boats crew remained untainted,and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off, and anincorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between; yetconscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of theland, he peremptorily refused to come into direct contactwith the Pequod.
But this did by no means prevent all communications.Preserving an interval of some few yards between itselfand the ship, the Jeroboams boat by the occasional use ofits oars contrived to keep parallel to the Pequod, as sheheavily forged through the sea (for by this time it blewvery fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though, indeed,at times by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, theboat would be pushed some way ahead; but would be soonskilfully brought to her proper bearings again. Subjectto this, and other the like interruptions now and then, aconversation was sustained between the two parties; butat intervals not without still another interruption of a verydifferent sort.
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Pulling an oar in the Jeroboams boat, was a man of asingular appearance, even in that wild whaling life whereindividual notabilities make up all totalities. He was asmall, short, youngish man, sprinkled all over his facewith freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tingeenveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which wererolled up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic deliriumwas in his eyes.
So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb hadexclaimedThats he! thats he!the long-togged scaramouchthe Town-Hos company told us of! Stubb here alluded toa strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a certain manamong her crew, some time previous when the Pequodspoke the Town-Ho. According to this account and whatwas subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouchin question had gained a wonderful ascendency overalmost everybody in the Jeroboam. His story was this:
He had been originally nurtured among the crazy societyof Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a greatprophet; in their cracked, secret meetings having severaltimes 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, insteadof containing gunpowder, was supposed to be chargedwith laudanum. A strange, apostolic whim having seized
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him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket, where, withthat cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady,common-sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the Jeroboams whaling voyage. Theyengaged him; but straightway upon the ships getting outof sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet.He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, andcommanded the captain to jump overboard. He publishedhis manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as thedeliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general ofall Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which hedeclared these things;the dark, daring play of his sleepless,excited imagination, and all the preternatural terrors ofreal delirium, united to invest this Gabriel in the minds ofthe majority of the ignorant crew, with an atmosphere ofsacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such aman, 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 individuals intention was to land himin the first convenient port, the archangel forthwith openedall his seals and vialsdevoting the ship and all hands tounconditional perdition, in case this intention was carriedout. So strongly did he work upon his disciples among thecrew, that at last in a body they went to the captain andtold him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man ofthem would remain. He was therefore forced to relinquishhis plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any way
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maltreated, say or do what he would; so that it came topass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship.The consequence of all this was, that the archangel caredlittle or nothing for the captain and mates; and since theepidemic had broken out, he carried a higher hand thanever; declaring that the plague, as he called it, was at hissole command; nor should it be stayed but according to hisgood pleasure. The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed,and some of them fawned before him; in obedience to hisinstructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage,as to a god. Such things may seem incredible; but, howeverwondrous, they are true. Nor is the history of fanatics halfso striking in respect to the measureless self-deception ofthe fanatic himself, as his measureless power of deceivingand bedevilling so many others. But it is time to return tothe Pequod.
I fear not thy epidemic, man, said Ahab from the bulwarks,to Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boats stern; come onboard.
But now Gabriel started to his feet.
Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware ofthe horrible plague!
Gabriel! Gabriel! cried Captain Mayhew; thou must eitherBut that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead,and its seethings drowned all speech.
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Hast thou seen the White Whale? demanded Ahab, whenthe boat drifted back.
Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Bewareof the horrible tail!
I tell thee again, Gabriel, that But again the boat toreahead as if dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for somemoments, while a succession of riotous waves rolled by,which by one of those occasional caprices of the seas weretumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted spermwhales head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel wasseen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than hisarchangel nature seemed to warrant.
When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began adark story concerning Moby Dick; not, however, withoutfrequent interruptions from Gabriel, whenever his namewas mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed leaguedwith him.
It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home,when upon speaking a whale-ship, her people werereliably apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and thehavoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence,Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attackingthe White Whale, in case the monster should be seen;in his gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whaleto be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated;
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the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some year ortwo afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from themast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardourto encounter him; and the captain himself being notunwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite allthe archangels denunciations and forewarnings, Maceysucceeded in persuading five men to man his boat. Withthem he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, andmany perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeededin getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending tothe main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in franticgestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doomto the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, whileMacey, the mate, was standing up in his boats bow, andwith all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting hiswild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to geta fair chance for his poised lance, lo! a broad whiteshadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion,temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of theoarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furiouslife, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arcin his descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fiftyyards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of anyoarsmans head; but the mate for ever sank.
It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents inthe Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost asfrequent as any. Sometimes, nothing is injured but the manwho is thus annihilated; oftener the boats bow is knocked
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off, or the thigh-board, in which the headsman stands,is torn from its place and accompanies the body. Butstrangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instancesthan one, when the body has been recovered, not a singlemark 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 piercingshriekThe vial! the vial! Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of the whale. Thisterrible event clothed the archangel with added influence;because his credulous disciples believed that he hadspecifically fore-announced it, instead of only making ageneral prophecy, which any one might have done, and sohave chanced to hit one of many marks in the wide marginallowed. He became a nameless terror to the ship.
Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab putsuch questions to him, that the stranger captain couldnot forbear inquiring whether he intended to hunt theWhite Whale, if opportunity should offer. To whichAhab answeredAye. Straightway, then, Gabriel oncemore started to his feet, glaring upon the old man,and vehemently exclaimed, with downward pointedfingerThink, think of the blasphemerdead, and downthere!beware of the blasphemers end!
Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, Captain,I have just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter
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for one of thy officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look overthe bag.
Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of lettersfor various ships, whose delivery to the persons to whomthey may be addressed, depends upon the mere chance ofencountering them in the four oceans. Thus, most lettersnever reach their mark; and many are only received afterattaining an age of two or three years or more.
Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It wassorely tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted,green mould, in consequence of being kept in a dark lockerof the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might wellhave been the post-boy.
Canst not read it? cried Ahab. Give it me, man. Aye, aye,its but a dim scrawl;whats this? As he was studying it out,Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knifeslightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in thatway, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer tothe ship.
Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, Mr. Haryes,Mr. Harry(a womans pinny hand,the mans wife, Illwager)AyeMr. Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam;why itsMacey, and hes dead!
Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife, sighedMayhew; but let me have it.
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Nay, keep it thyself, cried Gabriel to Ahab; thou art soongoing that way.
Curses throttle thee! yelled Ahab. Captain Mayhew, standby now to receive it; and taking the fatal missive fromStarbucks 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 boatdrifted a little towards the ships stern; so that, as if bymagic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabrielseager hand. He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the letter on it, sent it thus loaded backinto the ship. It fell at Ahabs feet. Then Gabriel shriekedout to his comrades to give way with their oars, and inthat manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from thePequod.
As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their workupon the jacket of the whale, many strange things werehinted in reference to this wild affair.
CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.
In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending toa whale, there is much running backwards and forwardsamong the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and thenagain hands are wanted there. There is no staying in anyone place; for at one and the same time everything hasto be done everywhere. It is much the same with him
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who endeavors the description of the scene. We must nowretrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon firstbreaking ground in the whales back, the blubber-hook wasinserted into the original hole there cut by the spades ofthe mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a massas that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was insertedthere by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty itwas, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monsters back forthe special purpose referred to. But in very many cases,circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain onthe whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation isconcluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirelysubmerged, 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 andhalf in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequegfigured in the Highland costumea shirt and socksin whichto my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage;and no one had a better chance to observe him, as willpresently be seen.
Being the savages bowsman, that is, the person who pulledthe bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), itwas my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking thathard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whales back. Youhave seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by along cord. Just so, from the ships steep side, did I hold
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Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technicallycalled in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strongstrip 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 Queequegs broad canvasbelt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better orfor worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and shouldpoor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage andhonor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it shoulddrag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siameseligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparabletwin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerousliabilities which the hempen bond entailed.
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of mysituation then, that while earnestly watching his motions,I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individualitywas now merged in a joint stock company of two; that myfree will had received a mortal wound; and that anothersmistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me intounmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that herewas a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. Andyet still further ponderingwhile I jerked him now and thenfrom between the whale and ship, which would threatento jam himstill further pondering, I say, I saw that thissituation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal
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that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, hasthis Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals.If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary bymistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, youmay say that, by exceeding caution, you may possiblyescape these and the multitudinous other evil chances oflife. But handle Queequegs monkey-rope heedfully as Iwould, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very nearsliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, dowhat I would, I only had the management of one end ofit.*
*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was onlyin the Pequod that the monkey and his holder were evertied together. This improvement upon the original usagewas introduced by no less a man than Stubb, in orderto afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possibleguarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder.
I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequegfrom between the whale and the shipwhere he wouldoccasionally fall, from the incessant rolling and swayingof both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy he wasexposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon themduring the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenlyallured by the before pent blood which began to flow fromthe carcassthe rabid creatures swarmed round it like beesin a beehive.
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And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; whooften pushed them aside with his floundering feet. Athing altogether incredible were it not that attracted bysuch prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneouslycarnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.
Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they havesuch a ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wiseto look sharp to them. Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then jerked the poor fellowfrom too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemeda peculiarly ferocious sharkhe was provided with stillanother protection. Suspended over the side in one of thestages, Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished overhis head a couple of keen whale-spades, wherewith theyslaughtered as many sharks as they could reach. Thisprocedure of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterestedand benevolent of them. They meant Queequegs besthappiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him,and from the circumstance that both he and the sharks wereat times half hidden by the blood-muddled water, thoseindiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputatinga leg than a tail. But poor Queequeg, I suppose, strainingand gasping there with that great iron hookpoor Queequeg,I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life intothe 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
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the seawhat matters it, after all? Are you not the preciousimage 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 betweensharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poorlad.
But courage! there is good cheer in store for you,Queequeg. For now, as with blue lips and blood-shoteyes the exhausted savage at last climbs up the chainsand stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling overthe side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent,consolatory glance hands himwhat? Some hot Cognac?No! hands him, ye gods! hands him a cup of tepid gingerand water!
Ginger? Do I smell ginger? suspiciously asked Stubb,coming near. Yes, this must be ginger, peering into theas yet untasted cup. Then standing as if incredulousfor a while, he calmly walked towards the astonishedsteward slowly saying, Ginger? ginger? and will youhave the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, wherelies the virtue of ginger? Ginger! is ginger the sortof fuel you use, Dough-boy, to kindle a fire in thisshivering cannibal? Ginger!what the devil is ginger? Sea-coal? firewood?lucifer matches?tinder?gunpowder?whatthe devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poorQueequeg here.
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There is some sneaking Temperance Society movementabout this business, he suddenly added, now approachingStarbuck, who had just come from forward. Will youlook at that kannakin, sir: smell of it, if you please. Thenwatching the mates countenance, he added, The steward,Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap toQueequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the stewardan apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort ofbitters by which he blows back the life into a half-drownedman?
I trust not, said Starbuck, it is poor stuff enough.
Aye, aye, steward, cried Stubb, well teach you to drug aharpooneer; none of your apothecarys medicine here; youwant to poison us, do ye? You have got out insuranceson our lives and want to murder us all, and pocket theproceeds, do ye?
It was not me, cried Dough-Boy, it was Aunt Charity thatbrought the ginger on board; and bade me never give theharpooneers any spirits, but only this ginger-jubso shecalled it.
Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run alongwith ye to the lockers, and get something better. I hope Ido no wrong, Mr. Starbuck. It is the captains ordersgrogfor the harpooneer on a whale.
Enough, replied Starbuck, only dont hit him again, but
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Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale orsomething of that sort; and this fellows a weazel. Whatwere you about saying, sir?
Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantestthyself.
When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask inone hand, and a sort of tea-caddy in the other. The firstcontained strong spirits, and was handed to Queequeg; thesecond was Aunt Charitys gift, and that was freely givento the waves.
CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; andThen Have a Talk over Him.
It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a SpermWhales prodigious head hanging to the Pequods side. Butwe must let it continue hanging there a while till we canget a chance to attend to it. For the present other matterspress, and the best we can do now for the head, is to prayheaven the tackles may hold.
Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequodhad gradually drifted into a sea, which, by its occasionalpatches of yellow brit, gave unusual tokens of the vicinityof Right Whales, a species of the Leviathan that but fewsupposed to be at this particular time lurking anywherenear. And though all hands commonly disdained the
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capture of those inferior creatures; and though the Pequodwas not commissioned to cruise for them at all, and thoughshe had passed numbers of them near the Crozetts withoutlowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale had beenbrought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, theannouncement was made that a Right Whale should becaptured that day, if opportunity offered.
Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen toleeward; and two boats, Stubbs and Flasks, were detachedin pursuit. Pulling further and further away, they at lastbecame almost invisible to the men at the mast-head.But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap oftumultuous white water, and soon after news came fromaloft that one or both the boats must be fast. An intervalpassed and the boats were in plain sight, in the act ofbeing dragged right towards the ship by the towing whale.So close did the monster come to the hull, that at first itseemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly going downin a maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he whollydisappeared from view, as if diving under the keel. Cut,cut! was the cry from the ship to the boats, which, for oneinstant, seemed on the point of being brought with a deadlydash against the vessels side. But having plenty of line yetin the tubs, and the whale not sounding very rapidly, theypaid out abundance of rope, and at the same time pulledwith all their might so as to get ahead of the ship. For afew minutes the struggle was intensely critical; for while
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they still slacked out the tightened line in one direction,and still plied their oars in another, the contending strainthreatened to take them under. But it was only a few feetadvance they sought to gain. And they stuck to it till theydid gain it; when instantly, a swift tremor was felt runninglike lightning along the keel, as the strained line, scrapingbeneath 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 morethe boats were free to fly. But the fagged whale abated hisspeed, and blindly altering his course, went round the sternof the ship towing the two boats after him, so that theyperformed a complete circuit.
Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, tillclose flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flaskwith lance for lance; and thus round and round the Pequodthe battle went, while the multitudes of sharks that hadbefore swum round the Sperm Whales body, rushed tothe fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking at everynew gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new burstingfountains that poured from the smitten rock.
At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll andvomit, he turned upon his back a corpse.
While the two headsmen were engaged in making fastcords to his flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in
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readiness for towing, some conversation ensued betweenthem.
I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foullard, said Stubb, not without some disgust at the thoughtof having to do with so ignoble a leviathan.
Wants with it? said Flask, coiling some spare line in theboats bow, did you never hear that the ship which but oncehas a Sperm Whales head hoisted on her starboard side,and at the same time a Right Whales on the larboard; didyou never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never afterwardscapsize?
Why not?
I dont know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallahsaying so, and he seems to know all about ships charms.But I sometimes think hell charm the ship to no good atlast. I dont half like that chap, Stubb. Did you ever noticehow that tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snakes head,Stubb?
Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I geta chance of a dark night, and he standing hard by thebulwarks, and no one by; look down there, Flaskpointinginto the sea with a peculiar motion of both handsAye, willI! Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in disguise.Do you believe that cock and bull story about his havingbeen stowed away on board ship? Hes the devil, I say. The
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reason why you dont see his tail, is because he tucks itup out of sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, Iguess. Blast him! now that I think of it, hes always wantingoakum to stuff into the toes of his boots.
He sleeps in his boots, dont he? He hasnt got anyhammock; but Ive seen him lay of nights in a coil ofrigging.
No doubt, and its because of his cursed tail; he coils itdown, do ye see, in the eye of the rigging.
Whats 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 WhiteWhale, and the devil there is trying to come round him,and get him to swap away his silver watch, or his soul, orsomething of that sort, and then hell surrender Moby Dick.
Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah dothat?
I dont know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, anda wicked one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went asauntering into the old flag-ship once, switching his tailabout devilish easy and gentlemanlike, and inquiring if theold governor was at home. Well, he was at home, and asked
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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,Iwant to use him. Take him, says the governorand by theLord, Flask, if the devil didnt give John the Asiatic cholerabefore he got through with him, Ill eat this whale in onemouthful. But look sharpaint you all ready there? Well,then, pull ahead, and lets get the whale alongside.
I think I remember some such story as you were telling,said Flask, when at last the two boats were slowlyadvancing with their burden towards the ship, but I cantremember where.
Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three bloody-minded soldadoes? Did ye read it there, Flask? I guess yedid?
No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now,tell me, Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you wasspeaking of just now, was the same you say is now on boardthe Pequod?
Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesntthe devil live for ever; who ever heard that the devil wasdead? Did you ever see any parson a wearing mourningfor the devil? And if the devil has a latch-key to get intothe admirals cabin, dont you suppose he can crawl into aporthole? Tell me that, Mr. Flask?
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How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?
Do you see that mainmast there? pointing to the ship; well,thats the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequodshold, and string along in a row with that mast, for oughts,do you see; well, that wouldnt begin to be Fedallahs age.Nor all the coopers in creation couldnt show hoops enoughto 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 agood chance. Now, if hes so old as all those hoops of yourscome to, and if he is going to live for ever, what good willit do to pitch him overboardtell me that?
Give him a good ducking, anyhow.
But hed crawl back.
Duck him again; and keep ducking him.
Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you,thoughyes, and drown youwhat then?
I should like to see him try it; Id give him such a pair ofblack eyes that he wouldnt dare to show his face in theadmirals cabin again for a long while, let alone down in theorlop there, where he lives, and hereabouts on the upperdecks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil, Flask;so you suppose Im afraid of the devil? Whos afraid of
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him, except the old governor who daresnt catch him andput him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him goabout kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him,that all the people the devil kidnapped, hed roast for him?Theres a governor!
Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?
Do I suppose it? Youll know it before long, Flask. But Iam going now to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I seeanything very suspicious going on, Ill just take him by thenape of his neck, and sayLook here, Beelzebub, you dontdo it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord Ill make a grabinto his pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan, and givehim such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail will comeshort off at the stumpdo you see; and then, I rather guesswhen he finds himself docked in that queer fashion, hellsneak off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tailbetween his legs.
And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?
Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;whatelse?
Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying allalong, Stubb?
Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship.
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The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on thelarboard side, where fluke chains and other necessarieswere already prepared for securing him.
Didnt I tell you so? said Flask; yes, youll soon see this rightwhales head hoisted up opposite that parmacettis.
In good time, Flasks saying proved true. As before, thePequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whaleshead, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regainedher even keel; though sorely strained, you may wellbelieve. So, when on one side you hoist in Lockes head,you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist inKants and you come back again; but in very poor plight.Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, yefoolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and thenyou will float light and right.
In disposing of the body of a right whale, when broughtalongside the ship, the same preliminary proceedingscommonly take place as in the case of a sperm whale;only, in the latter instance, the head is cut off whole, butin the former the lips and tongue are separately removedand hoisted on deck, with all the well known black boneattached to what is called the crown-piece. But nothinglike this, in the present case, had been done. The carcasesof both whales had dropped astern; and the head-ladenship not a little resembled a mule carrying a pair ofoverburdening panniers.
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Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whaleshead, and ever and anon glancing from the deep wrinklesthere to the lines in his own hand. And Ahab chancedso to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while,if the Parsees shadow was there at all it seemed onlyto blend with, and lengthen Ahabs. As the crew toiledon, Laplandish speculations were bandied among them,concerning all these passing things.
CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whales HeadContrasted View.
Here, now, are two great whales, laying their headstogether; let us join them, and lay together our own.
Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whaleand the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy.They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. Tothe Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all theknown varieties of the whale. As the external differencebetween them is mainly observable in their heads; and asa head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequodsside; and as we may freely go from one to the other, bymerely stepping across the deck:where, I should like toknow, will you obtain a better chance to study practicalcetology than here?
In the first place, you are struck by the general contrastbetween these heads. Both are massive enough in allconscience; but there is a certain mathematical symmetry
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in the Sperm Whales which the Right Whales sadly lacks.There is more character in the Sperm Whales head. As youbehold it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiorityto him, in point of pervading dignity. In the presentinstance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper andsalt colour of his head at the summit, giving token ofadvanced age and large experience. In short, he is what thefishermen technically call a grey-headed whale.
Let us now note what is least dissimilar in theseheadsnamely, the two most important organs, the eye andthe ear. Far back on the side of the head, and low down,near the angle of either whales jaw, if you narrowly search,you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would fancyto be a young colts eye; so out of all proportion is it to themagnitude of the head.
Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whaleseyes, it is plain that he can never see an object which isexactly ahead, no more than he can one exactly astern.In a word, the position of the whales eyes corresponds tothat of a mans ears; and you may fancy, for yourself, howit would fare with you, did you sideways survey objectsthrough your ears. You would find that you could onlycommand some thirty degrees of vision in advance of thestraight side-line of sight; and about thirty more behindit. If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you,with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be ableto see him, any more than if he were stealing upon you
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from behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so tospeak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side fronts):for what is it that makes the front of a manwhat, indeed,but his eyes?
Moreover, while in most other animals that I can nowthink of, the eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blendtheir visual power, so as to produce one picture and nottwo to the brain; the peculiar position of the whales eyes,effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solidhead, which towers between them like a great mountainseparating two lakes in valleys; this, of course, mustwholly separate the impressions which each independentorgan imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinctpicture on this side, and another distinct picture on thatside; while all between must be profound darkness andnothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to lookout on the world from a sentry-box with two joined sashesfor his window. But with the whale, these two sashesare separately inserted, making two distinct windows, butsadly impairing the view. This peculiarity of the whaleseyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery;and to be remembered by the reader in some subsequentscenes.
A curious and most puzzling question might be startedconcerning this visual matter as touching the Leviathan.But I must be content with a hint. So long as a mans eyesare open in the light, the act of seeing is involuntary; that is,
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he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever objectsare before him. Nevertheless, any ones experience willteach him, that though he can take in an undiscriminatingsweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossiblefor him, attentively, and completely, to examine any twothingshowever large or however smallat one and the sameinstant of time; never mind if they lie side by side andtouch each other. But if you now come to separate thesetwo objects, and surround each by a circle of profounddarkness; then, in order to see one of them, in such amanner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will beutterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness.How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, inthemselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain somuch more comprehensive, combining, and subtle thanmans, that he can at the same moment of time attentivelyexamine 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 wereable simultaneously to go through the demonstrations oftwo 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 displayedby some whales when beset by three or four boats; thetimidity and liability to queer frights, so common to suchwhales; I think that all this indirectly proceeds from thehelpless perplexity of volition, in which their divided
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and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involvethem.
But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If youare an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt overthese two heads for hours, and never discover that organ.The ear has no external leaf whatever; and into the holeitself you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously minuteis it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With respect to theirears, this important difference is to be observed betweenthe sperm whale and the right. While the ear of the formerhas an external opening, that of the latter is entirely andevenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quiteimperceptible from without.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale shouldsee the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunderthrough an ear which is smaller than a hares? But if hiseyes were broad as the lens of Herschels great telescope;and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; wouldthat 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 wehave at hand, cant over the sperm whales head, that it maylie bottom up; then, ascending by a ladder to the summit,have a peep down the mouth; and were it not that the bodyis now completely separated from it, with a lantern we
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might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Caveof his stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth,and look about us where we are. What a really beautifuland chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling, lined, orrather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossyas 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 youpry it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose its rows ofteeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such, alas! it provesto many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom thesespikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is itto behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see somesulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigiousjaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a ships jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; outof sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that thehinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in thatungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, whomust, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.
In most cases this lower jawbeing easily unhinged bya practised artistis disengaged and hoisted on deck forthe purpose of extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishinga supply of that hard white whalebone with which thefishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles, including
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canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.
With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as ifit were an anchor; and when the proper time comessomefew days after the other workQueequeg, Daggoo, andTashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set todrawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeglances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts,and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out theseteeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out ofwild wood lands. There are generally forty-two teeth in all;in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filledafter our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn intoslabs, and piled away like joists for building houses.
CHAPTER 75. The Right Whales HeadContrasted View.
Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at theRight Whales head.
As in general shape the noble Sperm Whales head maybe compared to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front,where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a broad view, theRight Whales head bears a rather inelegant resemblance toa gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago an oldDutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemakerslast. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman ofthe nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might verycomfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny.
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But as you come nearer to this great head it begins toassume 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 foran enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the aperturesin its sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eyeupon this strange, crested, comb-like incrustation on thetop of the massthis green, barnacled thing, which theGreenlanders call the crown, and the Southern fishers thebonnet of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes solely on this,you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak,with a birds nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watchthose live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such anidea will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed,your fancy has been fixed by the technical term crown alsobestowed upon it; in which case you will take great interestin thinking how this mighty monster is actually a diademedking of the sea, whose green crown has been put togetherfor him in this marvellous manner. But if this whale be aking, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem.Look at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk andpout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenters measurement,about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and poutthat will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.
A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should behare-lipped. The fissure is about a foot across. Probablythe mother during an important interval was sailing down
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the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach togape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we nowslide 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 isabout twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, asif there were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed,arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, halfvertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone, say threehundred on a side, which depending from the upper part ofthe head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds whichhave elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges ofthese bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through whichthe Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacieshe retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goesthrough the seas of brit in feeding time. In the centralblinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, thereare certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges,whereby some whalemen calculate the creatures age, asthe age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certaintyof this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has thesavor of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield toit, we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale thanat first glance will seem reasonable.
In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curiousfancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchascalls them the wondrous whiskers inside of the whalesmouth;* another, hogs bristles; a third old gentleman in
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Hackluyt uses the following elegant language: There areabout two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side ofhis upper _chop_, which arch over his tongue on each sideof his mouth.
*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has asort of whisker, or rather a moustache, consisting ofa few scattered white hairs on the upper part of theouter end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these tufts imparta rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemncountenance.
As every one knows, these same hogs bristles, fins,whiskers, blinds, or whatever you please, furnish to theladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances. But inthis particular, the demand has long been on the decline.It was in Queen Annes time that the bone was in its glory,the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as thoseancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws ofthe whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with thelike thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the samejaws for protection; the umbrella being a tent spread overthe same bone.
But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for amoment, and, standing in the Right Whales mouth, lookaround you afresh. Seeing all these colonnades of bone somethodically ranged about, would you not think you wereinside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its
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thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug ofthe softest Turkeythe tongue, which is glued, as it were, tothe floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt totear in pieces in hoisting it on deck. This particular tonguenow before us; at a passing glance I should say it was asix-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that amount ofoil.
Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what Istarted withthat the Sperm Whale and the Right Whalehave almost entirely different heads. To sum up, then: inthe Right Whales there is no great well of sperm; no ivoryteeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, likethe Sperm Whales. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there anyof those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcelyanything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has twoexternal 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 infollowing.
Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whales there?It is the same he died with, only some of the longerwrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think hisbroad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born ofa speculative indifference as to death. But mark the otherheads expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by
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accident against the vessels side, so as firmly to embracethe jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of anenormous practical resolution in facing death? This RightWhale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, aPlatonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latteryears.
CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.
Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whaleshead, I would have you, as a sensible physiologist,simplyparticularly remark its front aspect, in all itscompacted collectedness. I would have you investigateit now with the sole view of forming to yourself someunexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged there. Here is a vital point;for you must either satisfactorily settle this matter withyourself, or for ever remain an infidel as to one of the mostappalling, but not the less true events, perhaps anywhereto be found in all recorded history.
You observe that in the ordinary swimming position ofthe Sperm Whale, the front of his head presents an almostwholly vertical plane to the water; you observe that thelower part of that front slopes considerably backwards, soas to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket whichreceives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that themouth is entirely under the head, much in the same way,indeed, as though your own mouth were entirely under
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your chin. Moreover you observe that the whale has noexternal nose; and that what nose he hashis spout holeis onthe top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears areat the sides of his head, nearly one third of his entire lengthfrom the front. Wherefore, you must now have perceivedthat the front of the Sperm Whales head is a dead, blindwall, without a single organ or tender prominence of anysort whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider thatonly in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of thefront of the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; andnot till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do youcome to the full cranial development. So that this wholeenormous boneless mass is as one wad. Finally, though,as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise themost delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of thenature of the substance which so impregnably invests allthat apparent effeminacy. In some previous place I havedescribed to you how the blubber wraps the body of thewhale, 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, inestimableby any man who has not handled it. The severest pointedharpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest humanarm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though theforehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horseshoofs. 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
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other in the docks, what do the sailors do? They do notsuspend between them, at the point of coming contact,any merely hard substance, like iron or wood. No, theyhold there a large, round wad of tow and cork, envelopedin the thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravelyand uninjured takes the jam which would have snappedall their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By itselfthis sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at.But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurredto me, that as ordinary fish possess what is called aswimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of distensionor contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as Iknow, has no such provision in him; considering, too, theotherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresseshis head altogether beneath the surface, and anon swimswith it high elevated out of the water; considering theunobstructed elasticity of its envelope; considering theunique interior of his head; it has hypothetically occurredto me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombsthere may possibly have some hitherto unknown andunsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as to besusceptible to atmospheric distension and contraction. Ifthis be so, fancy the irresistibleness of that might, towhich the most impalpable and destructive of all elementscontributes.
Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable,uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there
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swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to beadequately estimated as piled wood isby the cord; and allobedient to one volition, as the smallest insect. So thatwhen I shall hereafter detail to you all the specialitiesand concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in thisexpansive monster; when I shall show you some of hismore inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will haverenounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abideby this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passagethrough the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlanticwith the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of youreye-brow. For unless you own the whale, you are buta provincial and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truthis a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; howsmall the chances for the provincials then? What befell theweakling youth lifting the dread goddesss veil at Lais?
CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend itaright, you must know something of the curious internalstructure of the thing operated upon.
Regarding the Sperm Whales head as a solid oblong, youmay, on an inclined plane, sideways divide it into twoquoins,* whereof the lower is the bony structure, formingthe cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous masswholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming theexpanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the
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middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upperquoin, and then you have two almost equal parts, whichbefore were naturally divided by an internal wall of a thicktendinous substance.
*Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the purenautical mathematics. I know not that it has been definedbefore. A quoin is a solid which differs from a wedge inhaving its sharp end formed by the steep inclination of oneside, instead of the mutual tapering of both sides.
The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immensehoneycomb of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing,into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of tough elastic whitefibres throughout its whole extent. The upper part, knownas the Case, may be regarded as the great HeidelburghTun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous great tierceis mystically carved in front, so the whales vast plaitedforehead forms innumerable strange devices for theemblematical adornment of his wondrous tun. Moreover,as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished with themost excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so thetun of the whale contains by far the most precious of allhis oily vintages; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, inits absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor isthis precious substance found unalloyed in any other partof the creature. Though in life it remains perfectly fluid,yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon beginsto concrete; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as
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when the first thin delicate ice is just forming in water.A large whales case generally yields about five hundredgallons of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances,considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, oris otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business ofsecuring what you can.
I know not with what fine and costly material theHeidelburgh Tun was coated within, but in superlativerichness that coating could not possibly have comparedwith the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like the liningof a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the SpermWhales case.
It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of theSperm Whale embraces the entire length of the entire topof the head; and sinceas has been elsewhere set forththehead embraces one third of the whole length of thecreature, then setting that length down at eighty feet for agood sized whale, you have more than twenty-six feet forthe depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up anddown against a ships side.
As in decapitating the whale, the operators instrumentis brought close to the spot where an entrance issubsequently forced into the spermaceti magazine; hehas, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest a careless,untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastinglylet out its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of
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the head, also, which is at last elevated out of the water, andretained in that position by the enormous cutting tackles,whose hempen combinations, on one side, make quite awilderness of ropes in that quarter.
Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, tothat marvellous andin this particular instancealmost fataloperation whereby the Sperm Whales great HeidelburghTun is tapped.
CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.
Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and withoutaltering his erect posture, runs straight out upon theoverhanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it exactlyprojects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him alight tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts,travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing thisblock, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swingsone end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by ahand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part,the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he landson the summit of the head. Therestill high elevated abovethe rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously criesheseems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good people toprayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharpspade being sent up to him, he diligently searches forthe proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In thisbusiness he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter
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in some old house, sounding the walls to find where thegold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search is over,a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, hasbeen attached to one end of the whip; while the other end,being stretched across the deck, is there held by two orthree alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket withingrasp of the Indian, to whom another person has reachedup a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket,Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till itentirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamenat the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubblinglike a dairy-maids pail of new milk. Carefully loweredfrom its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by anappointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large tub. Thenremounting aloft, it again goes through the same rounduntil the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end,Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, anddeeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet ofthe pole have gone down.
Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some timein this way; several tubs had been filled with the fragrantsperm; when all at once a queer accident happened.Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian, was soheedless and reckless as to let go for a moment hisone-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspendingthe head; or whether the place where he stood was sotreacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil One himself
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would have it to fall out so, without stating his particularreasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now;but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucketcame suckingly upmy God! poor Tashtegolike the twinreciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, andwith a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!
Man overboard! cried Daggoo, who amid the generalconsternation first came to his senses. Swing the bucketthis way! and putting one foot into it, so as the betterto secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself, thehoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almostbefore Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom.Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over theside, they saw the before lifeless head throbbing andheaving just below the surface of the sea, as if that momentseized with some momentous idea; whereas it was onlythe poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those strugglesthe perilous depth to which he had sunk.
At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head,was clearing the whipwhich had somehow got foul ofthe great cutting tacklesa sharp cracking noise was heard;and to the unspeakable horror of all, one of the twoenormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with avast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till thedrunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg.The one remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now
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depended, seemed every instant to be on the point of givingway; an event still more likely from the violent motions ofthe head.
Come down, come down! yelled the seamen to Daggoo,but with one hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so thatif the head should drop, he would still remain suspended;the negro having cleared the foul line, rammed downthe bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that theburied harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.
In heavens name, man, cried Stubb, are you ramminghome 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 ofa rocket.
Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, theenormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagaras Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolledaway from it, to far down her glittering copper; and allcaught their breath, as half swingingnow over the sailorsheads, and now over the waterDaggoo, through a thickmist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the penduloustackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinkingutterly down to the bottom of the sea! But hardly had theblinding vapor cleared away, when a naked figure with a
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boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift momentseen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splashannounced that my brave Queequeg had dived to therescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and everyeye 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 pusheda little off from the ship.
Ha! ha! cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet,swinging perch overhead; and looking further off from theside, we saw an arm thrust upright from the blue waves; asight strange to see, as an arm thrust forth from the grassover a grave.
Both! both!it is both!cried Daggoo again with a joyfulshout; and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly strikingout with one hand, and with the other clutching the longhair of the Indian. Drawn into the waiting boat, they werequickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was long incoming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.
Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why,diving after the slowly descending head, Queequeg withhis keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, soas to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword,had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and sohauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that uponfirst thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well
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knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and mightoccasion great trouble;he had thrust back the leg, and bya dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset uponthe Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in thegood old wayhead 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 obstetricsof Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery ofTashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth,too, of the most untoward and apparently hopelessimpediments; which is a lesson by no means to beforgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same coursewith fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.
I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Headers willbe sure to seem incredible to some landsmen, though theythemselves may have either seen or heard of some onesfalling into a cistern ashore; an accident which not seldomhappens, and with much less reason too than the Indians,considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of theSperm Whales well.
But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how isthis? We thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the SpermWhale, was the lightest and most corky part about him;and yet thou makest it sink in an element of a far greaterspecific 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
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been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving littlebut the dense tendinous wall of the wella double welded,hammered substance, as I have before said, much heavierthan the sea water, and a lump of which sinks in it like leadalmost. But the tendency to rapid sinking in this substancewas in the present instance materially counteracted by theother parts of the head remaining undetached from it, sothat it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, affordingQueequeg a fair chance for performing his agile obstetricson 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 avery precious perishing; smothered in the very whitestand daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed,and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctumsanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readilybe recalledthe delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter,who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, foundsuch exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, itsucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many,think ye, have likewise fallen into Platos honey head, andsweetly perished there?
CHAPTER 79. The Prairie.
To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the headof this Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomistor Phrenologist has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise
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would seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to havescrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar, orfor Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated theDome of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his,Lavater not only treats of the various faces of men, butalso attentively studies the faces of horses, birds, serpents,and fish; and dwells in detail upon the modificationsof expression discernible therein. Nor have Gall and hisdisciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touchingthe phrenological characteristics of other beings than man.Therefore, though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, inthe application of these two semi-sciences to the whale, Iwill do my endeavor. I try all things; I achieve what I can.
Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is ananomalous creature. He has no proper nose. And sincethe nose is the central and most conspicuous of thefeatures; and since it perhaps most modifies and finallycontrols their combined expression; hence it would seemthat its entire absence, as an external appendage, mustvery largely affect the countenance of the whale. Foras in landscape gardening, a spire, cupola, monument,or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensableto the completion of the scene; so no face can bephysiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the nose from Phidiassmarble Jove, and what a sorry remainder! Nevertheless,Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions
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are so stately, that the same deficiency which in thesculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no blemish atall. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whalewould have been impertinent. As on your physiognomicalvoyage you sail round his vast head in your jolly-boat,your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by thereflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilentconceit, which so often will insist upon obtruding evenwhen beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne.
In some particulars, perhaps the most imposingphysiognomical view to be had of the Sperm Whale, is thatof the full front of his head. This aspect is sublime.
In thought, a fine human brow is like the East whentroubled 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 elephantsbrow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow isas that great golden seal affixed by the German emperorsto their decrees. It signifiesGod: done this day by my hand.But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often thebrow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snowline. Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeares orMelancthons rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyesthemselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes;and all above them in the foreheads wrinkles, you seem totrack the antlered thoughts descending there to drink, asthe Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer. But
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in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-likedignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified,that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deityand the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding anyother object in living nature. For you see no one pointprecisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose,eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothingbut that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated withriddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, andships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous browdiminish; though that way viewed its grandeur does notdomineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive thathorizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the foreheadsmiddle, which, in man, is Lavaters mark of genius.
But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the SpermWhale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his greatgenius is declared in his doing nothing particular to proveit. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. Andthis reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale beenknown to the young Orient World, he would have beendeified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified thecrocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless;and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is soexceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. Ifhereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lureback to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old;and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical
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sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted toJoves high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it.
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granitehieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher theEgypt of every mans and every beings 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 peasants face in its profounderand more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmaelhope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whalesbrow? 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 thephrenologist his brain seems that geometrical circle whichit is impossible to square.
In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at leasttwenty feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the sideview of this skull is as the side of a moderately inclinedplane resting throughout on a level base. But in lifeas wehave elsewhere seenthis inclined plane is angularly filledup, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbentmass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skullforms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while under thelong floor of this craterin another cavity seldom exceedingten inches in length and as many in depthreposes the
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mere handful of this monsters brain. The brain is at leasttwenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hiddenaway behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadelwithin the amplified fortifications of Quebec. So like achoice casket is it secreted in him, that I have knownsome whalemen who peremptorily deny that the SpermWhale has any other brain than that palpable semblanceof one formed by the cubic-yards of his sperm magazine.Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions, to theirapprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea ofhis general might to regard that mystic part of him as theseat of his intelligence.
It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of thisLeviathan, in the creatures living intact state, is an entiredelusion. As for his true brain, you can then see noindications of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all thingsthat are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world.
If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then takea rear view of its rear end, which is the high end, youwill be struck by its resemblance to the human skull,beheld in the same situation, and from the same point ofview. Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down to thehuman magnitude) among a plate of mens skulls, and youwould involuntarily confound it with them; and remarkingthe depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenologicalphrase you would sayThis man had no self-esteem, and noveneration. And by those negations, considered along with
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the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and power, youcan best form to yourself the truest, though not the mostexhilarating conception of what the most exalted potencyis.
But if from the comparative dimensions of the whalesproper brain, you deem it incapable of being adequatelycharted, then I have another idea for you. If you attentivelyregard almost any quadrupeds spine, you will be struckwith the resemblance of its vertebr to a strung necklace ofdwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to theskull proper. It is a German conceit, that the vertebr areabsolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious externalresemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first men toperceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in theskeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebr of whichhe was inlaying, in a sort of basso-relievo, the beakedprow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the phrenologistshave omitted an important thing in not pushing theirinvestigations from the cerebellum through the spinalcanal. For I believe that much of a mans character will befound betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel yourspine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of aspine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice inmy spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag whichI fling half out to the world.
Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the SpermWhale. His cranial cavity is continuous with the first neck-
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vertebra; and in that vertebra the bottom of the spinal canalwill measure ten inches across, being eight in height, andof a triangular figure with the base downwards. As it passesthrough the remaining vertebr the canal tapers in size, butfor a considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now,of course, this canal is filled with much the same strangelyfibrous substancethe spinal cordas the brain; and directlycommunicates with the brain. And what is still more, formany feet after emerging from the brains cavity, the spinalcord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal tothat of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would itbe unreasonable to survey and map out the whales spinephrenologically? For, viewed in this light, the wonderfulcomparative smallness of his brain proper is more thancompensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude ofhis spinal cord.
But leaving this hint to operate as it may with thephrenologists, I would merely assume the spinal theory fora moment, in reference to the Sperm Whales hump. Thisaugust hump, if I mistake not, rises over one of the largervertebr, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer convexmould of it. From its relative situation then, I should callthis high hump the organ of firmness or indomitablenessin the Sperm Whale. And that the great monster isindomitable, you will yet have reason to know.
CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
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The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the shipJungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.
At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, theDutch and Germans are now among the least; but here andthere at very wide intervals of latitude and longitude, youstill occasionally meet with their flag in the Pacific.
For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to payher respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod,she rounded to, and dropping a boat, her captain wasimpelled towards us, impatiently standing in the bowsinstead of the stern.
What has he in his hand there? cried Starbuck, pointingto something wavingly held by the German. Impossible!alamp-feeder!
Not that, said Stubb, no, no, its a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck;hes coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; dontyou see that big tin can there alongside of him?thats hisboiling water. Oh! hes all right, is the Yarman.
Go along with you, cried Flask, its a lamp-feeder and anoil-can. Hes out of oil, and has come a-begging.
However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to beborrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much itmay invertedly contradict the old proverb about carryingcoals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing really
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happens; and in the present case Captain Derick DeDeer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask diddeclare.
As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him,without at all heeding what he had in his hand; but inhis broken lingo, the German soon evinced his completeignorance of the White Whale; immediately turning theconversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with someremarks touching his having to turn into his hammockat night in profound darknesshis last drop of Bremen oilbeing gone, and not a single flying-fish yet captured tosupply the deficiency; concluding by hinting that his shipwas indeed what in the Fishery is technically called a_clean_ one (that is, an empty one), well deserving thename of Jungfrau or the Virgin.
His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he hadnot gained his ships side, when whales were almostsimultaneously raised from the mast-heads of bothvessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that withoutpausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, heslewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.
Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and theother three German boats that soon followed him, hadconsiderably the start of the Pequods keels. There wereeight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger, they
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were going all abreast with great speed straight before thewind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans ofhorses in harness. They left a great, wide wake, as thoughcontinually unrolling a great wide parchment upon the sea.
Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swama huge, humped old bull, which by his comparatively slowprogress, as well as by the unusual yellowish incrustationsovergrowing him, seemed afflicted with the jaundice, orsome other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged tothe pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is notcustomary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social.Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed theirback water must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, likethe swell formed when two hostile currents meet. Hisspout was short, slow, and laborious; coming forth with achoking 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.
Whos got some paregoric? said Stubb, he has the stomach-ache, Im afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre ofstomach-ache! Adverse winds are holding mad Christmasin him, boys. Its the first foul wind I ever knew to blowfrom astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so before? itmust be, hes lost his tiller.
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As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostancoast with a deck load of frightened horses, careens,buries, rolls, and wallows on her way; so did this old whaleheave his aged bulk, and now and then partly turning overon his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his deviouswake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whetherhe had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it,it were hard to say.
Only wait a bit, old chap, and Ill give ye a sling for thatwounded arm, cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-linenear him.
Mind he dont sling thee with it, cried Starbuck. Give way,or the German will have him.
With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointedfor this one fish, because not only was he the largest, andtherefore the most valuable whale, but he was nearest tothem, and the other whales were going with such greatvelocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for the time.At this juncture the Pequods keels had shot by the threeGerman boats last lowered; but from the great start he hadhad, Dericks boat still led the chase, though every momentneared by his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared,was, that from being already so nigh to his mark, he wouldbe enabled to dart his iron before they could completelyovertake and pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quiteconfident that this would be the case, and occasionally
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with a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the otherboats.
The ungracious and ungrateful dog! cried Starbuck; hemocks and dares me with the very poor-box I filled for himnot five minutes ago!then in his old intense whisperGiveway, greyhounds! Dog to it!
I tell ye what it is, mencried Stubb to his crewits againstmy religion to get mad; but Id like to eat that villainousYarmanPullwont ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beatye? Do ye love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, tothe best man. Come, why dont some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Whos that been dropping an anchor overboardwedont budge an inchwere becalmed. Halloo, heres grassgrowing in the boats bottomand by the Lord, the masttheres budding. This wont 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 anddownWhat a humpOh, _do_ pile on the beeflays like alog! Oh! my lads, _do_ springslap-jacks and quahogs forsupper, you know, my ladsbaked clams and muffinsoh,_do_, _do_, spring,hes a hundred barrellerdont lose himnowdont oh, _dont!_see that YarmanOh, wont ye pull foryour duff, my ladssuch a sog! such a sogger! Dont yelove sperm? There goes three thousand dollars, men!abank!a whole bank! The bank of England!Oh, _do_, _do_,_do!_Whats that Yarman about now?
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At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhapswith the double view of retarding his rivals way, and atthe same time economically accelerating his own by themomentary 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 dye say, Tashtego; are you the man tosnap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces for the honor ofold Gayhead? What dye say?
I say, pull like god-dam,cried the Indian.
Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German,the Pequods three boats now began ranging almostabreast; and, so disposed, momentarily neared him. Inthat fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of the headsman whendrawing near to his prey, the three mates stood upproudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with anexhilarating cry of, There she slides, now! Hurrah for thewhite-ash breeze! Down with the Yarman! Sail over him!
But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spiteof all their gallantry, he would have proved the victor inthis race, had not a righteous judgment descended uponhim in a crab which caught the blade of his midshipoarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to free hiswhite-ash, and while, in consequence, Dericks boat was
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nigh to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in amighty rage;that was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, andFlask. With a shout, they took a mortal start forwards, andslantingly ranged up on the Germans quarter. An instantmore, and all four boats were diagonically in the whalesimmediate wake, while stretching from them, on bothsides, was the foaming swell that he made.
It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. Thewhale was now going head out, and sending his spoutbefore him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poorfin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand,now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still atevery billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in thesea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin.So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrightedbroken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape thepiratical hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintivecries will make known her fear; but the fear of this vastdumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted inhim; he had no voice, save that choking respiration throughhis spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakablypitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw,and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutestman who so pitied.
Seeing now that but a very few moments more would givethe Pequods boats the advantage, and rather than be thusfoiled of his game, Derick chose to hazard what to him
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must have seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the lastchance would for ever escape.
But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up forthe stroke, than all three tigersQueequeg, Tashtego,Daggooinstinctively sprang to their feet, and standing ina diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their barbs; anddarted over the head of the German harpooneer, their threeNantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors offoam and white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury ofthe whales headlong rush, bumped the Germans aside withsuch force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneerwere spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.
Dont be afraid, my butter-boxes, cried Stubb, casting apassing glance upon them as he shot by; yell be pickedup presentlyall rightI saw some sharks asternSt. Bernardsdogs, you knowrelieve distressed travellers. Hurrah! this isthe way to sail now. Every keel a sunbeam! Hurrah!Herewe go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad cougar! Thisputs me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury ona plainmakes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fastento him that way; and theres danger of being pitched out too,when you strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feelswhen hes going to Davy Jonesall a rush down an endlessinclined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries the everlastingmail!
But the monsters run was a brief one. Giving a sudden
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gasp, he tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, thethree lines flew round the loggerheads with such a force asto gouge deep grooves in them; while so fearful were theharpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaustthe lines, that using all their dexterous might, they caughtrepeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till atlastowing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-linedchocks of the boats, whence the three ropes went straightdown into the bluethe gunwales of the bows were almosteven with the water, while the three sterns tilted high inthe air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for sometime they remained in that attitude, fearful of expendingmore line, though the position was a little ticklish. Butthough boats have been taken down and lost in this way,yet it is this holding on, as it is called; this hooking up bythe sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it isthat often torments the Leviathan into soon rising again tomeet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of theperil of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this courseis always the best; for it is but reasonable to presume, thatthe longer the stricken whale stays under water, the morehe is exhausted. Because, owing to the enormous surfaceof himin a full grown sperm whale something less than2000 square feetthe pressure of the water is immense.We all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight weourselves stand up under; even here, above-ground, in theair; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on hisback a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at
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least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whalemanhas 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 singlegroan or cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple ora bubble came up from its depths; what landsman wouldhave thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, theutmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenchingin agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope werevisible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three suchthin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the bigweight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? Tothree bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was onceso triumphantly saidCanst thou fill his skin with barbedirons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of himthat layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor thehabergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannotmake him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laughethat the shaking of a spear! This the creature? this he? Oh!that unfulfilments should follow the prophets. For with thestrength of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had runhis head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him fromthe Pequods fish-spears!
In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that thethree boats sent down beneath the surface, must have beenlong enough and broad enough to shade half Xerxes army.
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Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale musthave been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!
Stand by, men; he stirs, cried Starbuck, as the threelines suddenly vibrated in the water, distinctly conductingupwards to them, as by magnetic wires, the life and deaththrobs of the whale, so that every oarsman felt them inhis seat. The next moment, relieved in great part fromthe downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a suddenbounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a denseherd of white bears are scared from it into the sea.
Haul in! Haul in! cried Starbuck again; hes rising.
The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one handsbreadth could have been gained, were now in long quickcoils flung back all dripping into the boats, and soon thewhale broke water within two ships lengths of the hunters.
His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. Inmost 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 incertain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whosepeculiarities it is to have an entire non-valvular structureof the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so smalla point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun uponhis whole arterial system; and when this is heightenedby the extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance
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below the surface, his life may be said to pour fromhim in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity ofblood in him, and so distant and numerous its interiorfountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and bleedingfor a considerable period; even as in a drought a riverwill flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-offand undiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats pulledupon this whale, and perilously drew over his swayingflukes, and the lances were darted into him, they werefollowed by steady jets from the new made wound, whichkept continually playing, while the natural spout-hole inhis head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending itsaffrighted moisture into the air. From this last vent noblood yet came, because no vital part of him had thusfar been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, wasuntouched.
As the boats now more closely surrounded him, thewhole upper part of his form, with much of it that isordinarily submerged, was plainly revealed. His eyes, orrather the places where his eyes had been, were beheld.As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes ofthe noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points whichthe whales eyes had once occupied, now protruded blindbulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none.For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, hemust die the death and be murdered, in order to light thegay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also toilluminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional
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inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood, atlast he partially disclosed a strangely discoloured bunch orprotuberance, 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, theres no need of that!
But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of thedart an ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goadedby it into more than sufferable anguish, the whale nowspouting thick blood, with swift fury blindly darted at thecraft, bespattering them and their glorying crews all overwith showers of gore, capsizing Flasks boat and marringthe bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, sospent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolledaway from the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side,impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then over andover slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up thewhite secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It wasmost piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseenhands the water is gradually drawn off from some mightyfountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings thespray-column lowers and lowers to the groundso the lastlong dying spout of the whale.
Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of theship, the body showed symptoms of sinking with all itstreasures unrifled. Immediately, by Starbucks orders, lines
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were secured to it at different points, so that ere longevery boat was a buoy; the sunken whale being suspendeda few inches beneath them by the cords. By very heedfulmanagement, when the ship drew nigh, the whale wastransferred to her side, and was strongly secured thereby the stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unlessartificially upheld, the body would at once sink to thebottom.
It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him withthe spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon wasfound imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of thebunch before described. But as the stumps of harpoons arefrequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales,with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and noprominence of any kind to denote their place; therefore,there must needs have been some other unknown reason inthe present case fully to account for the ulceration alludedto. But still more curious was the fact of a lance-head ofstone being found in him, not far from the buried iron, theflesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stonelance? And when? It might have been darted by some NorWest Indian long before America was discovered.
What other marvels might have been rummaged out ofthis monstrous cabinet there is no telling. But a suddenstop was put to further discoveries, by the ships beingunprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea, owingto the bodys immensely increasing tendency to sink.
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However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hungon 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, suchwas the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to whichthe fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it wasimpossible to cast them off. Meantime everything in thePequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deckwas like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. Theship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings ofher bulwarks and cabins were started from their places, bythe unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crowswere brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains,to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low hadthe whale now settled that the submerged ends could notbe at all approached, while every moment whole tons ofponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the shipseemed on the point of going over.
Hold on, hold on, wont ye? cried Stubb to the body, dontbe in such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, wemust do something or go for it. No use prying there; avast,I say with your handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayerbook and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains.
Knife? Aye, aye, cried Queequeg, and seizing thecarpenters heavy hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, andsteel to iron, began slashing at the largest fluke-chains.
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But a few strokes, full of sparks, were given, when theexceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific snap,every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the carcasesank.
Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recentlykilled Sperm Whale is a very curious thing; nor has anyfisherman yet adequately accounted for it. Usually thedead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy, with itsside or belly considerably elevated above the surface. Ifthe only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, andbroken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminishedand all their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you mightwith some reason assert that this sinking is caused byan 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 offin the warm flush and May of life, with all their pantinglard about them; even these brawny, buoyant heroes dosometimes sink.
Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liableto this accident than any other species. Where one of thatsort go down, twenty Right Whales do. This difference inthe species is no doubt imputable in no small degree to thegreater quantity of bone in the Right Whale; his Venetianblinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; fromthis incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But
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there are instances where, after the lapse of many hours orseveral days, the sunken whale again rises, more buoyantthan in life. But the reason of this is obvious. Gases aregenerated in him; he swells to a prodigious magnitude;becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle shipcould hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whaling,on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand, when aRight Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys tohim, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gonedown, they know where to look for it when it shall haveascended again.
It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry washeard from the Pequods mast-heads, announcing that theJungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the onlyspout in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to thespecies of uncapturable whales, because of its incrediblepower of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Backs spoutis so similar to the Sperm Whales, that by unskilfulfishermen it is often mistaken for it. And consequentlyDerick and all his host were now in valiant chase of thisunnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made afterher four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far toleeward, 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.
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There are some enterprises in which a carefuldisorderliness is the true method.
The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and pushmy researches up to the very spring-head of it so muchthe more am I impressed with its great honorablenessand antiquity; and especially when I find so many greatdemi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one wayor other have shed distinction upon it, I am transportedwith the reflection that I myself belong, though butsubordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.
The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the firstwhaleman; and to the eternal honor of our calling be itsaid, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood wasnot killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightlydays of our profession, when we only bore arms to succorthe distressed, and not to fill mens lamp-feeders. Everyone knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda;how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, wastied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was inthe very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince ofwhalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster,and delivered and married the maid. It was an admirableartistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneersof the present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slainat the very first dart. And let no man doubt this Arkitestory; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syriancoast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many
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ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the citys legendsand all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical bonesof the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans tookJoppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph.What seems most singular and suggestively important inthis story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromedaindeed,by some supposed to be indirectly derived from itis thatfamous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragonI maintain to have been a whale; for in many old chronicleswhales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, andoften stand for each other. Thou art as a lion of the waters,and as a dragon of the sea, saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainlymeaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible usethat word itself. Besides, it would much subtract fromthe glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered acrawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle withthe great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake,but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heartin them to march boldly up to a whale.
Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; forthough the creature encountered by that valiant whalemanof old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape, andthough the battle is depicted on land and the saint onhorseback, yet considering the great ignorance of thosetimes, when the true form of the whale was unknown toartists; and considering that as in Perseus case, St. Georges
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whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach;and considering that the animal ridden by St. Georgemight have been only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearingall this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatiblewith the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of thescene, to hold this so-called dragon no other than thegreat Leviathan himself. In fact, placed before the strictand piercing truth, this whole story will fare like that fish,flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; whobeing planted before the ark of Israel, his horses head andboth the palms of his hands fell off from him, and onlythe stump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, oneof our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelaryguardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneersof Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble orderof St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of thathonorable company (none of whom, I venture to say, haveever had to do with a whale like their great patron), letthem never eye a Nantucketer with disdain, since even inour woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we are much betterentitled to St. Georges decoration than they.
Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerningthis I long remained dubious: for though according tothe Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and KitCarsonthat brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, wasswallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whetherthat strictly makes a whaleman of him, that mightbe mooted. It nowhere appears that he ever actually
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harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from the inside.Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntarywhaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did notthe whale. I claim him for one of our clan.
But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecianstory of Hercules and the whale is considered to be derivedfrom the still more ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and thewhale; and vice vers; certainly they are very similar. If Iclaim the demi-god then, why not the prophet?
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alonecomprise the whole roll of our order. Our grand masteris still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, wefind the head waters of our fraternity in nothing short ofthe great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental storyis now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which givesus the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in thegodhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoohimself for our Lord;Vishnoo, who, by the first of his tenearthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctifiedthe whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saiththe Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one ofits periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, topreside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books,whose perusal would seem to have been indispensableto Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and whichtherefore must have contained something in the shape ofpractical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying
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at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnatein a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermostdepths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnooa whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse iscalled a horseman?
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! theresa member-roll for you! What club but the whalemans canhead off like that?
CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and thewhale in the preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketersrather 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 thosetraditions did not make those traditions one whit the lessfacts, for all that.
One old Sag-Harbor whalemans chief reason forquestioning the Hebrew story was this:He had one of thosequaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious,unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonahs whalewith two spouts in his heada peculiarity only true withrespect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale,and the varieties of that order), concerning which the
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fishermen have this saying, A penny roll would choke him;his swallow is so very small. But, to this, Bishop Jebbsanticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary, hints theBishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whalesbelly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth.And this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop.For truly, the Right Whales mouth would accommodatea couple of whist-tables, and comfortably seat all theplayers. Possibly, too, Jonah might have ensconcedhimself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, theRight 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, wassomething obscurely in reference to his incarcerated bodyand the whales gastric juices. But this objection likewisefalls to the ground, because a German exegetist supposesthat Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body ofa _dead_ whaleeven as the French soldiers in the Russiancampaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawledinto them. Besides, it has been divined by other continentalcommentators, that when Jonah was thrown overboardfrom the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his escapeto another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for afigure-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 exegetistswho have opined that the whale mentioned in the bookof Jonah merely meant a life-preserveran inflated bag of
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windwhich the endangered prophet swam to, and so wassaved from a watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore,seems worsted all round. But he had still another reasonfor his want of faith. It was this, if I remember right: Jonahwas swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea,and after three days he was vomited up somewhere withinthree days journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, verymuch more than three days journey across from the nearestpoint of the Mediterranean coast. How is that?
But was there no other way for the whale to land theprophet within that short distance of Nineveh? Yes. Hemight have carried him round by the way of the Cape ofGood Hope. But not to speak of the passage through thewhole length of the Mediterranean, and another passageup the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a suppositionwould involve the complete circumnavigation of all Africain three days, not to speak of the Tigris waters, near thesite of Nineveh, being too shallow for any whale to swimin. Besides, this idea of Jonahs weathering the Cape ofGood Hope at so early a day would wrest the honor of thediscovery 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 onlyevinced his foolish pride of reasona thing still morereprehensible in him, seeing that he had but little learningexcept what he had picked up from the sun and thesea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and
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abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy.For by a Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea ofJonahs going to Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope wasadvanced as a signal magnification of the general miracle.And so it was. Besides, to this day, the highly enlightenedTurks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah.And some three centuries ago, an English traveller in oldHarriss Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built inhonor of Jonah, in which Mosque was a miraculous lampthat burnt without any oil.
CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling.
To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriagesare anointed; and for much the same purpose, somewhalers perform an analogous operation upon their boat;they grease the bottom. Nor is it to be doubted that assuch a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly be ofno contemptible advantage; considering that oil and waterare hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object inview is to make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believedstrongly in anointing his boat, and one morning not longafter the German ship Jungfrau disappeared, took morethan customary pains in that occupation; crawling underits bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in theunctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a cropof hair from the crafts bald keel. He seemed to be workingin obedience to some particular presentiment. Nor did itremain unwarranted by the event.
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Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as theship sailed down to them, they turned and fled with swiftprecipitancy; a disordered flight, as of Cleopatras bargesfrom Actium.
Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubbs was foremost.By great exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in plantingone iron; but the stricken whale, without at all sounding,still continued his horizontal flight, with added fleetness.Such unintermitted strainings upon the planted iron mustsooner or later inevitably extract it. It became imperativeto lance the flying whale, or be content to lose him. But tohaul the boat up to his flank was impossible, he swam sofast and furious. What then remained?
Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleightsof hand and countless subtleties, to which the veteranwhaleman is so often forced, none exceed that finemanuvre 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 towhich the long lance is accurately darted from a violentlyrocking, jerking boat, under extreme headway. Steel andwood included, the entire spear is some ten or twelvefeet in length; the staff is much slighter than that of theharpoon, and also of a lighter materialpine. It is furnishedwith a small rope called a warp, of considerable length, bywhich it can be hauled back to the hand after darting.
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But before going further, it is important to mention here,that though the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the sameway with the lance, yet it is seldom done; and when done,is still less frequently successful, on account of the greaterweight and inferior length of the harpoon as comparedwith the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks.As a general thing, therefore, you must first get fast to awhale, before any pitchpoling comes into play.
Look now at Stubb; a man who from hishumorous, deliberate coolness and equanimity in thedirest emergencies, was specially qualified to excel inpitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossedbow of the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towingwhale is forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly,glancing twice or thrice along its length to see if it beexactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers up the coil ofthe warp in one hand, so as to secure its free end inhis grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then holding thelance full before his waistbands middle, he levels it at thewhale; when, covering him with it, he steadily depressesthe butt-end in his hand, thereby elevating the point till theweapon stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feetin the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing along staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, namelessimpulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans thefoaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale.Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.
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That drove the spigot out of him! cried Stubb. Tis Julysimmortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine today!Would now, it were old Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, orunspeakable old Monongahela! Then, Tashtego, lad, Idhave ye hold a canakin to the jet, and wed drink roundit! Yea, verily, hearts alive, wed brew choice punch in thespread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff.
Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterousdart is repeated, the spear returning to its master like agreyhound held in skilful leash. The agonized whale goesinto his flurry; the tow-line is slackened, and the pitchpolerdropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches themonster die.
CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.
That for six thousand yearsand no one knows how manymillions of ages beforethe great whales should have beenspouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifyingthe gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinklingor mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back,thousands of hunters should have been close by thefountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings andspoutingsthat all this should be, and yet, that down tothis blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes pastone oclock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December,A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether
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these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing butvaporthis is surely a noteworthy thing.
Let us, then, look at this matter, along with someinteresting items contingent. Every one knows that bythe peculiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes ingeneral breathe the air which at all times is combinedwith the element in which they swim; hence, a herringor a cod might live a century, and never once raise itshead above the surface. But owing to his marked internalstructure which gives him regular lungs, like a humanbeings, the whale can only live by inhaling the disengagedair in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity forhis periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannotin any degree breathe through his mouth, for, in hisordinary attitude, the Sperm Whales mouth is buried atleast eight feet beneath the surface; and what is still more,his windpipe has no connexion with his mouth. No, hebreathes through his spiracle alone; and this is on the topof his head.
If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a functionindispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws fromthe air a certain element, which being subsequentlybrought into contact with the blood imparts to the blood itsvivifying principle, I do not think I shall err; though I maypossibly use some superfluous scientific words. Assumeit, and it follows that if all the blood in a man could beaerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils
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and not fetch another for a considerable time. That is tosay, he would then live without breathing. Anomalous asit may seem, this is precisely the case with the whale,who systematically lives, by intervals, his full hour andmore (when at the bottom) without drawing a singlebreath, or so much as in any way inhaling a particle ofair; for, remember, he has no gills. How is this? Betweenhis ribs and on each side of his spine he is suppliedwith a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface,are completely distended with oxygenated blood. So thatfor an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, hecarries a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camelcrossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply ofdrink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs.The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable; andthat the supposition founded upon it is reasonable andtrue, seems the more cogent to me, when I considerthe otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in_having his spoutings out_, as the fishermen phrase it. Thisis what I mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface,the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of timeexactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. Sayhe stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is,respires seventy breaths; then whenever he rises again, hewill be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to aminute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarmhim, so that he sounds, he will be always dodging up
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again to make good his regular allowance of air. And nottill those seventy breaths are told, will he finally go downto stay out his full term below. Remark, however, that indifferent individuals these rates are different; but in anyone they are alike. Now, why should the whale thus insistupon having his spoutings out, unless it be to replenish hisreservoir of air, ere descending for good? How obviousis it, too, that this necessity for the whales rising exposeshim to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For not by hookor by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailinga thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thyskill, then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike thevictory to thee!
In man, breathing is incessantly going onone breath onlyserving for two or three pulsations; so that whatever otherbusiness he has to attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe hemust, or die he will. But the Sperm Whale only breathesabout one seventh or Sunday of his time.
It has been said that the whale only breathes through hisspout-hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spoutsare mixed with water, then I opine we should be furnishedwith the reason why his sense of smell seems obliterated inhim; for the only thing about him that at all answers to hisnose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged withtwo elements, it could not be expected to have the powerof smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spoutwhetherit be water or whether it be vaporno absolute certainty can
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as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it is, nevertheless,that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But whatdoes he want of them? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea.
Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube ofhis spouting canal, and as that long canallike the grand ErieCanalis furnished with a sort of locks (that open and shut)for the downward retention of air or the upward exclusionof water, therefore the whale has no voice; unless youinsult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, hetalks through his nose. But then again, what has the whaleto say? Seldom have I known any profound being that hadanything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer outsomething by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that theworld is such an excellent listener!
Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chieflyintended as it is for the conveyance of air, and for severalfeet laid along, horizontally, just beneath the upper surfaceof his head, and a little to one side; this curious canal isvery much like a gas-pipe laid down in a city on one sideof a street. But the question returns whether this gas-pipeis also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout ofthe Sperm Whale is the mere vapor of the exhaled breath,or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water takenin at the mouth, and discharged through the spiracle. Itis certain that the mouth indirectly communicates withthe spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that this is
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for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle.Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem tobe, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But theSperm Whales food is far beneath the surface, and therehe cannot spout even if he would. Besides, if you regardhim very closely, and time him with your watch, you willfind that when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhymebetween the periods of his jets and the ordinary periods ofrespiration.
But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject?Speak out! You have seen him spout; then declare whatthe 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. Ihave ever found your plain things the knottiest of all. Andas for this whale spout, you might almost stand in it, andyet be undecided as to what it is precisely.
The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparklingmist enveloping it; and how can you certainly tell whetherany water falls from it, when, always, when you are closeenough to a whale to get a close view of his spout, he is ina prodigious commotion, the water cascading all aroundhim. And if at such times you should think that you reallyperceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do youknow that they are not merely condensed from its vapor;or how do you know that they are not those identical dropssuperficially lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which iscountersunk into the summit of the whales head? For even
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when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in acalm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedarysin the desert; even then, the whale always carries a smallbasin of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you willsometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain.
Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curioustouching the precise nature of the whale spout. It will notdo for him to be peering into it, and putting his face in it.You cannot go with your pitcher to this fountain and fillit, and bring it away. For even when coming into slightcontact with the outer, vapory shreds of the jet, whichwill often happen, your skin will feverishly smart, fromthe acridness of the thing so touching it. And I knowone, 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 andarm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is deemedpoisonous; they try to evade it. Another thing; I have heardit said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairlyspouted into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thingthe investigator can do then, it seems to me, is to let thisdeadly spout alone.
Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove andestablish. My hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothingbut mist. And besides other reasons, to this conclusion Iam impelled, by considerations touching the great inherentdignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I account
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him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is anundisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, ornear shores; all other whales sometimes are. He is bothponderous and profound. And I am convinced that fromthe heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato,Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there alwaysgoes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act ofthinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatiseon Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror beforeme; and ere long saw reflected there, a curious involvedworming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head.The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deepthought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic,of an August noon; this seems an additional argument forthe above supposition.
And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty,misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing througha calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung bya canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicablecontemplations, and that vaporas you will sometimes seeitglorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put itsseal upon his thoughts. For, dye see, rainbows do not visitthe clear air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, throughall the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divineintuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with aheavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts;many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them,
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have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitionsof some things heavenly; this combination makes neitherbeliever nor infidel, but makes a man who regards themboth with equal eye.
CHAPTER 86. The Tail.
Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of theantelope, and the lovely plumage of the bird that neveralights; less celestial, I celebrate a tail.
Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whales tail to begin atthat point of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth ofa man, it comprises upon its upper surface alone, an areaof at least fifty square feet. The compact round body ofits 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, leavinga wide vacancy between. In no living thing are the linesof beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescenticborders of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the fullgrown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty feetacross.
The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of weldedsinews; but cut into it, and you find that three distinctstrata compose it:upper, middle, and lower. The fibres inthe upper and lower layers, are long and horizontal; those
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of the middle one, very short, and running crosswisebetween the outside layers. This triune structure, as muchas anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the studentof old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curiousparallel to the thin course of tiles always alternatingwith the stone in those wonderful relics of the antique,and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the greatstrength of the masonry.
But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were notenough, the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over witha warp and woof of muscular fibres and filaments, whichpassing on either side the loins and running down into theflukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely contributeto their might; so that in the tail the confluent measurelessforce of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point.Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing todo it.
Nor does thisits amazing strength, at all tend to cripple thegraceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of easeundulates through a Titanism of power. On the contrary,those motions derive their most appalling beauty fromit. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but itoften bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful,strength has much to do with the magic. Take away thetied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marblein the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone. Asdevout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked
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corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massivechest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphalarch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in humanform, mark what robustness is there. And whatever theymay reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft,curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his ideahas been most successfully embodied; these pictures, sodestitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of anypower, but the mere negative, feminine one of submissionand endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form thepeculiar practical virtues of his teachings.
Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, thatwhether wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger,whatever be the mood it be in, its flexions are invariablymarked by exceeding grace. Therein no fairys arm cantranscend it.
Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as afin for progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle;Third, in sweeping; Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peakingflukes.
First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathans tailacts in a different manner from the tails of all other seacreatures. It never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is asign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the sole means ofpropulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the body,and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives
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that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster whenfuriously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer by.
Second: It is a little significant, that while one spermwhale only fights another sperm whale with his head andjaw, nevertheless, in his conflicts with man, he chieflyand contemptuously uses his tail. In striking at a boat, heswiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the blow is onlyinflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructedair, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke is thensimply irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can withstandit. Your only salvation lies in eluding it; but if it comessideways through the opposing water, then partly owing tothe light buoyancy of the whale-boat, and the elasticity ofits materials, a cracked rib or a dashed plank or two, a sortof stitch in the side, is generally the most serious result.These submerged side blows are so often received in thefishery, that they are accounted mere childs play. Some onestrips off a frock, and the hole is stopped.
Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that inthe whale the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail;for in this respect there is a delicacy in it only equalledby the daintiness of the elephants trunk. This delicacyis chiefly evinced in the action of sweeping, when inmaidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft slownessmoves his immense flukes from side to side upon thesurface of the sea; and if he feel but a sailors whisker,woe to that sailor, whiskers and all. What tenderness there
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is in that preliminary touch! Had this tail any prehensilepower, I should straightway bethink me of Darmonodeselephant that so frequented the flower-market, and withlow salutations presented nosegays to damsels, and thencaressed their zones. On more accounts than one, a pity itis that the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue inhis tail; for I have heard of yet another elephant, that whenwounded in the fight, curved round his trunk and extractedthe dart.
Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fanciedsecurity of the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbentfrom the vast corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, heplays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you seehis power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirtedhigh into the air; then smiting the surface, the thunderousconcussion resounds for miles. You would almost think agreat gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the lightwreath 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 leviathanthe 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 entireflukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossederect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, tillthey downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime
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_breach_somewhere else to be describedthis peaking ofthe whales flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen inall animated nature. Out of the bottomless profundities thegigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highestheaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrustingforth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic ofHell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what moodyou are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; ifin that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-headof my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea,I once saw a large herd of whales in the east, all headingtowards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concertwith peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, sucha grand embodiment of adoration of the gods was neverbeheld, even in Persia, the home of the fire worshippers. AsPtolemy Philopater testified of the African elephant, I thentestified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devoutof all beings. For according to King Juba, the militaryelephants of antiquity often hailed the morning with theirtrunks uplifted in the profoundest silence.
The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whaleand the elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of theone and the trunk of the other are concerned, should nottend 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 Leviathans tail, his trunk is but thestalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephants
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trunk were as the playful tap of a fan, compared withthe measureless crush and crash of the sperm whalesponderous flukes, which in repeated instances have oneafter the other hurled entire boats with all their oars andcrews into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosseshis balls.*
*Though all comparison in the way of general bulkbetween the whale and the elephant is preposterous,inasmuch as in that particular the elephant stands in muchthe same respect to the whale that a dog does to theelephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some pointsof curious similitude; among these is the spout. It is wellknown that the elephant will often draw up water or dustin his trunk, and then elevating it, jet it forth in a stream.
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deploremy inability to express it. At times there are gesturesin it, which, though they would well grace the hand ofman, remain wholly inexplicable. In an extensive herd, soremarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that Ihave heard hunters who have declared them akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by thesemethods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor arethere wanting other motions of the whale in his generalbody, full of strangeness, and unaccountable to his mostexperienced assailant. Dissect him how I may, then, I butgo skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I knownot even the tail of this whale, how understand his head?
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much more, how comprehend his face, when face he hasnone? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems tosay, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completelymake out his back parts; and hint what he will about hisface, I say again he has no face.
CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.
The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extendingsouth-eastward from the territories of Birmah, forms themost southerly point of all Asia. In a continuous linefrom that peninsula stretch the long islands of Sumatra,Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, forma vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asiawith Australia, and dividing the long unbroken Indianocean from the thickly studded oriental archipelagoes.This rampart is pierced by several sally-ports for theconvenience of ships and whales; conspicuous amongwhich are the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straitsof 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 toseamen as Java Head; they not a little correspond to thecentral gateway opening into some vast walled empire:and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, andsilks, and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the
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thousand islands of that oriental sea are enriched, it seemsa significant provision of nature, that such treasures, bythe very formation of the land, should at least bearthe appearance, however ineffectual, of being guardedfrom the all-grasping western world. The shores of theStraits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineeringfortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean,the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, theseOrientals do not demand the obsequious homage oflowered top-sails from the endless procession of shipsbefore the wind, which for centuries past, by night andby day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra andJava, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east. Butwhile they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do byno means renounce their claim to more solid tribute.
Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurkingamong the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, havesallied out upon the vessels sailing through the straits,fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears.Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they havereceived at the hands of European cruisers, the audacityof these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet,even at the present day, we occasionally hear of Englishand American vessels, which, in those waters, have beenremorselessly boarded and pillaged.
With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawingnigh to these straits; Ahab purposing to pass through them
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into the Javan sea, and thence, cruising northwards, overwaters known to be frequented here and there by the SpermWhale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, and gainthe far coast of Japan, in time for the great whaling seasonthere. By these means, the circumnavigating Pequodwould sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale cruisinggrounds of the world, previous to descending upon theLine in the Pacific; where Ahab, though everywhere elsefoiled in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle toMoby Dick, in the sea he was most known to frequent; andat a season when he might most reasonably be presumedto be haunting it.
But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch noland? does his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop forwater. Nay. For a long time, now, the circus-running sunhas raced within his fiery ring, and needs no sustenancebut whats in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in thewhaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff,to be transferred to foreign wharves; the world-wanderingwhale-ship carries no cargo but herself and crew, theirweapons and their wants. She has a whole lakes contentsbottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities;not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. Shecarries years water in her. Clear old prime Nantucketwater; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, inthe Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, butyesterday rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian
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streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may have goneto China from New York, and back again, touching at ascore of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may nothave sighted one grain of soil; her crew having seen noman but floating seamen like themselves. So that did youcarry them the news that another flood had come; theywould only answerWell, boys, heres the ark!
Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off thewestern coast of Java, in the near vicinity of the Straitsof Sunda; indeed, as most of the ground, roundabout,was generally recognised by the fishermen as an excellentspot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained moreand more upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedlyhailed, and admonished to keep wide awake. But thoughthe green palmy cliffs of the land soon loomed onthe starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils the freshcinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet wasdescried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in withany game hereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered thestraits, when the customary cheering cry was heard fromaloft, and ere long a spectacle of singular magnificencesaluted us.
But here be it premised, that owing to the unweariedactivity with which of late they have been hunted overall four oceans, the Sperm Whales, instead of almostinvariably sailing in small detached companies, as in
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former times, are now frequently met with in extensiveherds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that itwould almost seem as if numerous nations of them hadsworn solemn league and covenant for mutual assistanceand protection. To this aggregation of the Sperm Whaleinto such immense caravans, may be imputed thecircumstance that even in the best cruising grounds, youmay now sometimes sail for weeks and months together,without being greeted by a single spout; and then besuddenly saluted by what sometimes seems thousands onthousands.
Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or threemiles, and forming a great semicircle, embracing one halfof the level horizon, a continuous chain of whale-jetswere up-playing and sparkling in the noon-day air. Unlikethe straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right Whale,which, dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like thecleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curledbush of white mist, continually rising and falling away toleeward.
Seen from the Pequods deck, then, as she would rise on ahigh hill of the sea, this host of vapory spouts, individuallycurling up into the air, and beheld through a blendingatmosphere of bluish haze, showed like the thousandcheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis, descried of abalmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.
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As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile inthe mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness toplace that perilous passage in their rear, and once moreexpand in comparative security upon the plain; even sodid this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forwardthrough the straits; gradually contracting the wings oftheir semicircle, and swimming on, in one solid, but stillcrescentic centre.
Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; theharpooneers handling their weapons, and loudly cheeringfrom the heads of their yet suspended boats. If the windonly held, little doubt had they, that chased through theseStraits of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy into theOriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of theirnumber. And who could tell whether, in that congregatedcaravan, Moby Dick himself might not temporarily beswimming, like the worshipped white-elephant in thecoronation procession of the Siamese! So with stun-sailpiled on stun-sail, we sailed along, driving these leviathansbefore us; when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego washeard, loudly directing attention to something in our wake.
Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheldanother in our rear. It seemed formed of detached whitevapors, rising and falling something like the spouts of thewhales; 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
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in his pivot-hole, crying, Aloft there, and rig whips andbuckets to wet the sails;Malays, sir, and after us!
As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequodshould fairly have entered the straits, these rascallyAsiatics were now in hot pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay. But when the swift Pequod, with a freshleading wind, was herself in hot chase; how very kind ofthese tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her onto her own chosen pursuit,mere riding-whips and rowelsto her, that they were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the deck; in his forward turn beholding themonsters he chased, and in the after one the bloodthirstypirates chasing _him_; some such fancy as the aboveseemed his. And when he glanced upon the green walls ofthe watery defile in which the ship was then sailing, andbethought him that through that gate lay the route to hisvengeance, and beheld, how that through that same gate hewas now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end;and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates andinhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering himon with their curses;when all these conceits had passedthrough his brain, Ahabs brow was left gaunt and ribbed,like the black sand beach after some stormy tide has beengnawing it, without being able to drag the firm thing fromits place.
But thoughts like these troubled very few of the recklesscrew; and when, after steadily dropping and dropping the
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pirates astern, the Pequod at last shot by the vivid greenCockatoo Point on the Sumatra side, emerging at last uponthe broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers seemedmore to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining uponthe ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriouslygained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wakeof the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed;gradually the ship neared them; and the wind now dyingaway, word was passed to spring to the boats. But nosooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinctof the Sperm Whale, become notified of the three keels thatwere after them,though as yet a mile in their rear,than theyrallied again, and forming in close ranks and battalions, sothat their spouts all looked like flashing lines of stackedbayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.
Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and after several hours pulling were almost disposedto renounce the chase, when a general pausing commotionamong the whales gave animating token that they werenow at last under the influence of that strange perplexityof inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceiveit in the whale, they say he is gallied. The compactmartial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidlyand steadily swimming, were now broken up in onemeasureless rout; and like King Porus elephants in theIndian battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad withconsternation. In all directions expanding in vast irregular
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circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, bytheir short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed theirdistraction of panic. This was still more strangely evincedby those of their number, who, completely paralysed asit were, helplessly floated like water-logged dismantledships on the sea. Had these Leviathans been but aflock of simple sheep, pursued over the pasture by threefierce wolves, they could not possibly have evincedsuch excessive dismay. But this occasional timidity ischaracteristic of almost all herding creatures. Thoughbanding together in tens of thousands, the lion-manedbuffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman.Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded togetherin the sheepfold of a theatres pit, they will, at the slightestalarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding,trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each otherto death. Best, therefore, withhold any amazement at thestrangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly ofthe beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone bythe madness of men.
Though many of the whales, as has been said, were inviolent motion, yet it is to be observed that as a wholethe herd neither advanced nor retreated, but collectivelyremained in one place. As is customary in those cases, theboats at once separated, each making for some one lonewhale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three minutestime, Queequegs harpoon was flung; the stricken fishdarted blinding spray in our faces, and then running away
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with us like light, steered straight for the heart of the herd.Though such a movement on the part of the whale struckunder such circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented;and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated; yetdoes it present one of the more perilous vicissitudes ofthe fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper anddeeper into the frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspectlife and only exist in a delirious throb.
As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if bysheer power of speed to rid himself of the iron leech thathad fastened to him; as we thus tore a white gash in the sea,on all sides menaced as we flew, by the crazed creaturesto and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was like a shipmobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steerthrough their complicated channels and straits, knowingnot at what moment it may be locked in and crushed.
But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; nowsheering off from this monster directly across our routein advance; now edging away from that, whose colossalflukes were suspended overhead, while all the time,Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand, prickingout of our way whatever whales he could reach by shortdarts, for there was no time to make long ones. Nor werethe oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted duty was nowaltogether dispensed with. They chiefly attended to theshouting part of the business. Out of the way, Commodore!cried one, to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose
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bodily to the surface, and for an instant threatened toswamp us. Hard down with your tail, there! cried a secondto another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmlycooling himself with his own fan-like extremity.
All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances,originally invented by the Nantucket Indians, calleddruggs. Two thick squares of wood of equal size are stoutlyclenched together, so that they cross each others grain atright angles; a line of considerable length is then attachedto the middle of this block, and the other end of the linebeing 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 canpossibly chase at one time. But sperm whales are not everyday encountered; while you may, then, you must kill allyou can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, youmust wing them, so that they can be afterwards killed atyour leisure. Hence it is, that at times like these the drugg,comes into requisition. Our boat was furnished with threeof them. The first and second were successfully darted, andwe saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered by theenormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg. Theywere cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball. Butupon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard theclumsy wooden block, it caught under one of the seats ofthe boat, and in an instant tore it out and carried it away,dropping the oarsman in the boats bottom as the seat slidfrom under him. On both sides the sea came in at the
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wounded planks, but we stuffed two or three drawers andshirts 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 whales way greatly diminished; moreover, that as wewent still further and further from the circumference ofcommotion, the direful disorders seemed waning. So thatwhen at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towingwhale sideways vanished; then, with the tapering force ofhis parting momentum, we glided between two whales intothe innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some mountaintorrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here thestorms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales,were heard but not felt. In this central expanse the seapresented that smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek,produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale inhis more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchantedcalm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion.And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumultsof the outer concentric circles, and saw successive podsof whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round andround, like multiplied spans of horses in a ring; and soclosely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic circus-ridermight easily have over-arched the middle ones, and sohave gone round on their backs. Owing to the density of thecrowd of reposing whales, more immediately surroundingthe embayed axis of the herd, no possible chance of escapewas at present afforded us. We must watch for a breach in
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the living wall that hemmed us in; the wall that had onlyadmitted us in order to shut us up. Keeping at the centre ofthe lake, we were occasionally visited by small tame cowsand calves; the women and children of this routed host.
Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals betweenthe revolving outer circles, and inclusive of the spacesbetween the various pods in any one of those circles,the entire area at this juncture, embraced by the wholemultitude, must have contained at least two or three squaremiles. At any ratethough indeed such a test at such a timemight be deceptivespoutings might be discovered fromour low boat that seemed playing up almost from the rimof the horizon. I mention this circumstance, because, as ifthe cows and calves had been purposely locked up in thisinnermost fold; and as if the wide extent of the herd hadhitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause ofits stopping; or, possibly, being so young, unsophisticated,and every way innocent and inexperienced; however itmay have been, these smaller whalesnow and then visitingour becalmed boat from the margin of the lakeevinceda wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or else a stillbecharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvelat. Like household dogs they came snuffling round us,right up to our gunwales, and touching them; till it almostseemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated them.Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched theirbacks with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, forthe time refrained from darting it.
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But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface,another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazedover 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 shortlyto become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, wasto a considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and ashuman infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gazeaway from the breast, as if leading two different livesat the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment,be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthlyreminiscence;even so did the young of these whales seemlooking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but abit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on theirsides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One ofthese little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemedhardly a day old, might have measured some fourteenfeet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a littlefrisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recoveredfrom that irksome position it had so lately occupied in thematernal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready forthe final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartarsbow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes,still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of ababys ears newly arrived from foreign parts.
Line! line! cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; himfast! him fast!Who line him! Who struck?Two whale; onebig, one little!
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What ails ye, man? cried Starbuck.
Look-e here, said Queequeg, pointing down.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeledout hundreds of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding,he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling linebuoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now,Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of MadameLeviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered toits dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase,this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomesentangled with the hempen one, so that the cub is therebytrapped. Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas seemeddivulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw youngLeviathan amours in the deep.*
*The sperm whale, as with all other species of theLeviathan, but unlike most other fish, breeds indifferentlyat all seasons; after a gestation which may probably be setdown at nine months, producing but one at a time; thoughin some few known instances giving birth to an Esau andJacob:a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats,curiously situated, one on each side of the anus; but thebreasts themselves extend upwards from that. When bychance these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut bythe hunters lance, the mothers pouring milk and bloodrivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The milk is verysweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well
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with strawberries. When overflowing with mutual esteem,the whales salute _more hominum_.
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circleof consternations and affrights, did these inscrutablecreatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in allpeaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dallianceand delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic ofmy being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport inmute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woerevolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I stillbathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasionalsudden frantic spectacles in the distance evinced theactivity of the other boats, still engaged in drugging thewhales on the frontier of the host; or possibly carrying onthe war within the first circle, where abundance of roomand some convenient retreats were afforded them. But thesight of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindlydarting to and fro across the circles, was nothing to what atlast met our eyes. It is sometimes the custom when fast toa whale more than commonly powerful and alert, to seekto hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or maiming hisgigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handledcutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling itback again. A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned)in this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had broken
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away from the boat, carrying along with him half of theharpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony of the wound,he was now dashing among the revolving circles like thelone mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga,carrying dismay wherever he went.
But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and anappalling spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiarhorror with which he seemed to inspire the rest of the herd,was owing to a cause which at first the intervening distanceobscured from us. But at length we perceived that by oneof the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this whalehad become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed;he had also run away with the cutting-spade in him; andwhile the free end of the rope attached to that weapon, hadpermanently caught in the coils of the harpoon-line roundhis tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose from hisflesh. So that tormented to madness, he was now churningthrough the water, violently flailing with his flexible tail,and tossing the keen spade about him, wounding andmurdering his own comrades.
This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd fromtheir stationary fright. First, the whales forming the marginof our lake began to crowd a little, and tumble against eachother, as if lifted by half spent billows from afar; then thelake itself began faintly to heave and swell; the submarinebridal-chambers and nurseries vanished; in more and morecontracting orbits the whales in the more central circles
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began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long calmwas departing. A low advancing hum was soon heard; andthen like to the tumultuous masses of block-ice when thegreat river Hudson breaks up in Spring, the entire hostof whales came tumbling upon their inner centre, as if topile themselves up in one common mountain. InstantlyStarbuck and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck takingthe stern.
Oars! Oars! he intensely whispered, seizing the helmgripeyour oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, standby! Shove him off, you Queequegthe whale there!prickhim!hit him! Stand upstand up, and stay so! Spring,menpull, men; never mind their backsscrape them!scrapeaway!
The boat was now all but jammed between two vastblack bulks, leaving a narrow Dardanelles between theirlong lengths. But by desperate endeavor we at last shotinto a temporary opening; then giving way rapidly, andat the same time earnestly watching for another outlet.After many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last swiftlyglided into what had just been one of the outer circles, butnow crossed by random whales, all violently making forone centre. This lucky salvation was cheaply purchasedby the loss of Queequegs hat, who, while standing in thebows to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken cleanfrom his head by the air-eddy made by the sudden tossingof a pair of broad flukes close by.
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Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion nowwas, it soon resolved itself into what seemed a systematicmovement; for having clumped together at last in onedense body, they then renewed their onward flight withaugmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless; but theboats still lingered in their wake to pick up what druggedwhales might be dropped astern, and likewise to secureone which Flask had killed and waifed. The waif is apennoned pole, two or three of which are carried by everyboat; and which, when additional game is at hand, areinserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale,both to mark its place on the sea, and also as token of priorpossession, should the boats of any other ship draw near.
The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative ofthat sagacious saying in the Fishery,the more whales theless fish. Of all the drugged whales only one was captured.The rest contrived to escape for the time, but only to betaken, as will hereafter be seen, by some other craft thanthe Pequod.
CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
The previous chapter gave account of an immense body orherd of Sperm Whales, and there was also then given theprobable 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
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detached bands are occasionally observed, embracingfrom twenty to fifty individuals each. Such bands areknown as schools. They generally are of two sorts; thosecomposed almost entirely of females, and those musteringnone but young vigorous males, or bulls, as they arefamiliarly designated.
In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, youinvariably see a male of full grown magnitude, but notold; who, upon any alarm, evinces his gallantry by fallingin the rear and covering the flight of his ladies. In truth,this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming aboutover the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by allthe solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrastbetween this Ottoman and his concubines is striking;because, while he is always of the largest leviathanicproportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not morethan one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. Theyare comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not toexceed half a dozen yards round the waist. Nevertheless, itcannot be denied, that upon the whole they are hereditarilyentitled to _en bon point_.
It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in theirindolent ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever onthe move in leisurely search of variety. You meet them onthe Line in time for the full flower of the Equatorial feedingseason, having just returned, perhaps, from spending thesummer in the Northern seas, and so cheating summer of
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all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time theyhave lounged up and down the promenade of the Equatorawhile, they start for the Oriental waters in anticipationof the cool season there, and so evade the other excessivetemperature of the year.
When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, ifany strange suspicious sights are seen, my lord whalekeeps a wary eye on his interesting family. Should anyunwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming that way,presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies,with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, andchases him away! High times, indeed, if unprincipledyoung rakes like him are to be permitted to invade thesanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the Bashawwill, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out ofhis bed; for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore,the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among theirrival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimescome to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence withtheir long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together,and so striving for the supremacy like elks that warringlyinterweave their antlers. Not a few are captured havingthe deep scars of these encounters,furrowed heads, brokenteeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched anddislocated mouths.
But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betakehimself away at the first rush of the harems lord, then is it
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very diverting to watch that lord. Gently he insinuates hisvast bulk among them again and revels there awhile, still intantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious Solomondevoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines.Granting other whales to be in sight, the fishermen willseldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for theseGrand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hencetheir unctuousness is small. As for the sons and thedaughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters musttake care of themselves; at least, with only the maternalhelp. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers thatmight be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for thenursery, however much for the bower; and so, being agreat traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over theworld; every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, asthe ardour of youth declines; as years and dumps increase;as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a generallassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of easeand virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottomanenters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stageof life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to anexemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone among themeridians and parallels saying his prayers, and warningeach young Leviathan from his amorous errors.
Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen aschool, so is the lord and master of that school technicallyknown as the schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict
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character, however admirably satirical, that after goingto school himself, he should then go abroad inculcatingnot what he learned there, but the folly of it. His title,schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived fromthe name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some havesurmised that the man who first thus entitled this sort ofOttoman whale, must have read the memoirs of Vidocq,and informed himself what sort of a country-schoolmasterthat famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and whatwas the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated intosome of his pupils.
The same secludedness and isolation to which theschoolmaster whale betakes himself in his advancingyears, is true of all aged Sperm Whales. Almostuniversally, a lone whaleas a solitary Leviathan iscalledproves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-beardedDaniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Natureherself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness ofwaters, and the best of wives she is, though she keeps somany moody secrets.
The schools composing none but young and vigorousmales, previously mentioned, offer a strong contrast tothe harem schools. For while those female whales arecharacteristically timid, the young males, or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnaciousof all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerousto encounter; excepting those wondrous grey-headed,
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grizzled whales, sometimes met, and these will fight youlike grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.
The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the haremschools. Like a mob of young collegians, they are full offight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world atsuch a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriterwould insure them any more than he would a riotous ladat Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulencethough, 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 femaleschools is still more characteristic of the sexes. Say youstrike a Forty-barrel-bullpoor devil! all his comrades quithim. But strike a member of the harem school, and hercompanions swim around her with every token of concern,sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as themselvesto fall a prey.
CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapterbut one, necessitates some account of the laws andregulations of the whale fishery, of which the waif may bedeemed the grand symbol and badge.
It frequently happens that when several ships are cruisingin company, a whale may be struck by one vessel, then
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escape, and be finally killed and captured by anothervessel; and herein are indirectly comprised many minorcontingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature. Forexample,after a weary and perilous chase and capture ofa whale, the body may get loose from the ship by reasonof a violent storm; and drifting far away to leeward, beretaken by a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly towsit alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus the mostvexatious and violent disputes would often arise betweenthe fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten,universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases.
Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized bylegislative enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreedby the States-General in A.D. 1695. But though no othernation has ever had any written whaling law, yet theAmerican fishermen have been their own legislators andlawyers in this matter. They have provided a systemwhich for terse comprehensiveness surpasses JustiniansPandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for theSuppression of Meddling with other Peoples Business.Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Annesfarthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round theneck, 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 soonestcatch it.
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But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is theadmirable brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volumeof commentaries to expound it.
First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish istechnically fast, when it is connected with an occupiedship or boat, by any medium at all controllable by theoccupant or occupants,a mast, an oar, a nine-inch cable, atelegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same.Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, orany other recognised symbol of possession; so long as theparty waifing it plainly evince their ability at any time totake it alongside, as well as their intention so to do.
These are scientific commentaries; but the commentariesof the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hardwords and harder knocksthe Coke-upon-Littleton ofthe fist. True, among the more upright and honorablewhalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases,where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for oneparty to claim possession of a whale previously chasedor killed by another party. But others are by no means soscrupulous.
Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forththat after a hard chase of a whale in the Northern seas;and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had succeeded inharpooning the fish; they were at last, through peril of
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their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but theirboat itself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of anothership) came up with the whale, struck, killed, seized, andfinally appropriated it before the very eyes of the plaintiffs.And when those defendants were remonstrated with, theircaptain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs teeth, andassured them that by way of doxology to the deed he haddone, he would now retain their line, harpoons, and boat,which had remained attached to the whale at the time of theseizure. Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for the recoveryof the value of their whale, line, harpoons, and boat.
Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; LordEllenborough was the judge. In the course of the defence,the witty Erskine went on to illustrate his position, byalluding to a recent crim. con. case, wherein a gentleman,after in vain trying to bridle his wifes viciousness, hadat last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in thecourse of years, repenting of that step, he instituted anaction to recover possession of her. Erskine was on theother side; and he then supported it by saying, that thoughthe gentleman had originally harpooned the lady, and hadonce had her fast, and only by reason of the great stressof 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-harpoonedher, the lady then became that subsequent gentlemansproperty, along with whatever harpoon might have beenfound sticking in her.
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Now in the present case Erskine contended that theexamples of the whale and the lady were reciprocallyillustrative of each other.
These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being dulyheard, the very learned judge in set terms decided, towit,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 madeoff with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in thosearticles; and hence anybody who afterwards took the fishhad a right to them. Now the defendants afterwards tookthe fish; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs.
A common man looking at this decision of the very learnedJudge, might possibly object to it. But ploughed up to theprimary rock of the matter, the two great principles laiddown in the twin whaling laws previously quoted, andapplied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in the abovecited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentalsof all human jurisprudence; for notwithstanding itscomplicated tracery of sculpture, the Temple of the Law,like the Temple of the Philistines, has but two props tostand on.
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Is it not a saying in every ones mouth, Possession ishalf of the law: that is, regardless of how the thing cameinto possession? But often possession is the whole ofthe law. What are the sinews and souls of Russian serfsand Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possessionis the whole of the law? What to the rapacious landlordis the widows last mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonderundetected villains marble mansion with a door-plate fora waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinousdiscount which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poorWoebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegonesfamily from starvation; what is that ruinous discount buta Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop of Savesouls incomeof 100,000 seized from the scant bread and cheese ofhundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (allsure of heaven without any of Savesouls help) whatis that globular 100,000 but a Fast-Fish? What are theDuke of Dunders hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish? What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, ispoor Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What to that apostoliclancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas but a Fast-Fish? Andconcerning all these, is not Possession the whole of thelaw?
But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generallyapplicable, the kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is stillmore widely so. That is internationally and universallyapplicable.
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What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in whichColumbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing itfor his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to theCzar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England?What at last will Mexico be to the United States? AllLoose-Fish.
What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of theWorld but Loose-Fish? What all mens minds and opinionsbut Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious beliefin them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatioussmuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers butLoose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and aFast-Fish, too?
CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.
De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et reginacaudam. _Bracton, l. 3, c. 3._
Latin from the books of the Laws of England, whichtaken along with the context, means, that of all whalescaptured by anybody on the coast of that land, the King, asHonorary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head, and theQueen be respectfully presented with the tail. A divisionwhich, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; thereis no intermediate remainder. Now as this law, under amodified form, is to this day in force in England; and as
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it offers in various respects a strange anomaly touchingthe general law of Fast and Loose-Fish, it is here treatedof in a separate chapter, on the same courteous principlethat prompts the English railways to be at the expense of aseparate car, specially reserved for the accommodation ofroyalty. In the first place, in curious proof of the fact thatthe above-mentioned law is still in force, I proceed to laybefore you a circumstance that happened within the lasttwo years.
It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich,or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chasesucceeded in killing and beaching a fine whale whichthey had originally descried afar off from the shore. Nowthe Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under thejurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called aLord Warden. Holding the office directly from the crown,I believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the CinquePort territories become by assignment his. By somewriters this office is called a sinecure. But not so. Becausethe Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbinghis perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that samefobbing 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, promisingthemselves a good 150 from the precious oil and bone;and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good
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ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their respectiveshares; up steps a very learned and most Christian andcharitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under hisarm; and laying it upon the whales head, he saysHands off!this fish, my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the LordWardens. Upon this the poor mariners in their respectfulconsternationso truly Englishknowing not what to say, fallto vigorously scratching their heads all round; meanwhileruefully glancing from the whale to the stranger. Butthat did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften thehard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy ofBlackstone. At length one of them, after long scratchingabout 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 someexpense, and is all that to go to the Dukes benefit; wegetting nothing at all for our pains but our blisters?
It is his.
Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperatemode of getting a livelihood?
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It is his.
I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part ofmy share of this whale.
It is his.
Wont the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?
It is his.
In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Gracethe Duke of Wellington received the money. Thinkingthat viewed in some particular lights, the case mightby a bare possibility in some small degree be deemed,under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honestclergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to hisGrace, begging him to take the case of those unfortunatemariners into full consideration. To which my Lord Dukein substance replied (both letters were published) that hehad already done so, and received the money, and would beobliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (thereverend gentleman) would decline meddling with otherpeoples business. Is this the still militant old man, standingat the corners of the three kingdoms, on all hands coercingalms of beggars?
It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged rightof the Duke to the whale was a delegated one from theSovereign. We must needs inquire then on what principle
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the Sovereign is originally invested with that right. The lawitself has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives us thereason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongsto the King and Queen, because of its superior excellence.And by the soundest commentators this has ever been helda cogent argument in such matters.
But why should the King have the head, and the Queen thetail? A reason for that, ye lawyers!
In his treatise on Queen-Gold, or Queen-pinmoney, anold Kings Bench author, one William Prynne, thusdiscourseth: Ye tail is ye Queens, that ye Queens wardrobemay be supplied with ye whalebone. Now this was writtenat a time when the black limber bone of the Greenlandor Right whale was largely used in ladies bodices. Butthis same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, whichis a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. Butis the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? Anallegorical meaning may lurk here.
There are two royal fish so styled by the English lawwritersthe whale and the sturgeon; both royal propertyunder certain limitations, and nominally supplying thetenth branch of the crowns ordinary revenue. I know notthat any other author has hinted of the matter; but byinference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be dividedin the same way as the whale, the King receiving thehighly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which,
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symbolically regarded, may possibly be humorouslygrounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thusthere 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 thisLeviathan, 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 Pequods deckproved more vigilant discoverers than the three pairs ofeyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell wassmelt in the sea.
I will bet something now, said Stubb, that somewherehereabouts are some of those drugged whales we tickledthe other day. I thought they would keel up before long.
Presently, the vapors in advance slid aside; and there inthe distance lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened thatsome sort of whale must be alongside. As we glidednearer, 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 thatthe whale alongside must be what the fishermen call ablasted whale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested onthe sea, and so floated an unappropriated corpse. It may
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well be conceived, what an unsavory odor such a massmust exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the plague,when the living are incompetent to bury the departed. Sointolerable indeed is it regarded by some, that no cupiditycould persuade them to moor alongside of it. Yet are therethose who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that theoil 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 thatthe Frenchman had a second whale alongside; and thissecond whale seemed even more of a nosegay than thefirst. In truth, it turned out to be one of those problematicalwhales that seem to dry up and die with a sort of prodigiousdyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodiesalmost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless,in the proper place we shall see that no knowing fishermanwill ever turn up his nose at such a whale as this, howevermuch 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-poleentangled in the lines that were knotted round the tail ofone of these whales.
Theres a pretty fellow, now, he banteringly laughed,standing in the ships bows, theres a jackal for ye! I wellknow that these Crappoes of Frenchmen are but poordevils in the fishery; sometimes lowering their boats for
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breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes,and sometimes sailing from their port with their holdfull of boxes of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers,foreseeing that all the oil they will get wont be enoughto dip the Captains wick into; aye, we all know thesethings; but look ye, heres a Crappo that is content withour leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean; aye, andis content too with scraping the dry bones of that otherprecious fish he has there. Poor devil! I say, pass round ahat, some one, and lets make him a present of a little oil fordear charitys sake. For what oil hell get from that druggedwhale there, wouldnt be fit to burn in a jail; no, not in acondemned cell. And as for the other whale, why, Ill agreeto get more oil by chopping up and trying out these threemasts of ours, than hell get from that bundle of bones;though, now that I think of it, it may contain somethingworth a good deal more than oil; yes, ambergris. I wondernow if our old man has thought of that. Its worth trying.Yes, Im for it; and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.
By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; sothat whether or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped inthe smell, with no hope of escaping except by its breezingup again. Issuing from the cabin, Stubb now called hisboats crew, and pulled off for the stranger. Drawing acrossher bow, he perceived that in accordance with the fancifulFrench taste, the upper part of her stem-piece was carvedin the likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted green,and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it here
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and there; the whole terminating in a symmetrical foldedbulb of a bright red colour. Upon her head boards, in largegilt 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 theinscription, 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 thepeople on deck, he had to pull round the bows to thestarboard 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 bawledBouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of youBouton-de-Roses that speak English?
Yes, rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, whoturned out to be the chief-mate.
Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen theWhite Whale?
_What_ whale?
The _White_ Whalea Sperm WhaleMoby Dick, have yeseen him?
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Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! WhiteWhaleno.
Very good, then; good bye now, and Ill call again in aminute.
Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, andseeing Ahab leaning over the quarter-deck rail awaitinghis report, he moulded his two hands into a trumpet andshoutedNo, Sir! No! Upon which Ahab retired, and Stubbreturned to the Frenchman.
He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just gotinto the chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slunghis nose in a sort of bag.
Whats the matter with your nose, there? said Stubb. Brokeit?
I wish it was broken, or that I didnt have any nose at all!answered the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relishthe job he was at very much. But what are you holding_yours_ for?
Oh, nothing! Its a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day,aint it? Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunchof posies, will ye, Bouton-de-Rose?
What in the devils name do you want here? roared theGuernseyman, flying into a sudden passion.
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Oh! keep coolcool? yes, thats the word! why dont you packthose whales in ice while youre working at em? But jokingaside, though; do you know, Rose-bud, that its all nonsensetrying to get any oil out of such whales? As for that driedup one, there, he hasnt a gill in his whole carcase.
I know that well enough; but, dye see, the Captain herewont believe it; this is his first voyage; he was a Colognemanufacturer before. But come aboard, and mayhap hellbelieve you, if he wont me; and so Ill get out of this dirtyscrape.
Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow,rejoined Stubb, and with that he soon mounted to thedeck. There a queer scene presented itself. The sailors,in tasselled caps of red worsted, were getting the heavytackles in readiness for the whales. But they worked ratherslow and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but agood humor. All their noses upwardly projected from theirfaces like so many jib-booms. Now and then pairs of themwould drop their work, and run up to the mast-head toget some fresh air. Some thinking they would catch theplague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held itto their nostrils. Others having broken the stems of theirpipes almost short off at the bowl, were vigorously puffingtobacco-smoke, so that it constantly filled their olfactories.
Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemasproceeding from the Captains round-house abaft; and
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looking in that direction saw a fiery face thrust frombehind the door, which was held ajar from within. This wasthe tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstratingagainst the proceedings of the day, had betaken himself tothe Captains round-house (_cabinet_ he called it) to avoidthe pest; but still, could not help yelling out his entreatiesand indignations at times.
Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, andturning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him,during which the stranger mate expressed his detestationof his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had broughtthem all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle.Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that theGuernsey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerningthe 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 bothcircumventing and satirizing the Captain, without his at alldreaming of distrusting their sincerity. According to thislittle plan of theirs, the Guernsey-man, under cover of aninterpreters office, was to tell the Captain what he pleased,but as coming from Stubb; and as for Stubb, he was to utterany nonsense that should come uppermost in him duringthe interview.
By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin.He was a small and dark, but rather delicate looking manfor a sea-captain, with large whiskers and moustache,
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however; and wore a red cotton velvet vest with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb was nowpolitely introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at onceostentatiously put on the aspect of interpreting betweenthem.
What shall I say to him first? said he.
Why, said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch andseals, you may as well begin by telling him that he looks asort of babyish to me, though I dont pretend to be a judge.
He says, Monsieur, said the Guernsey-man, in French,turning to his captain, that only yesterday his ship spoke avessel, whose captain and chief-mate, with six sailors, hadall died of a fever caught from a blasted whale they hadbrought alongside.
Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to knowmore.
What now? said the Guernsey-man to Stubb.
Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I haveeyed him carefully, Im quite certain that hes no more fitto command a whale-ship than a St. Jago monkey. In fact,tell him from me hes a baboon.
He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, thedried one, is far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine,
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Monsieur, he conjures us, as we value our lives, to cutloose from these fish.
Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voicecommanded his crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast loose the cables and chainsconfining the whales to the ship.
What now? said the Guernsey-man, when the Captain hadreturned to them.
Why, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him nowthatthatin fact, tell him Ive diddled him, and (aside tohimself) perhaps somebody else.
He says, Monsieur, that hes very happy to have been ofany service to us.
Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the gratefulparties (meaning himself and mate) and concluded byinviting Stubb down into his cabin to drink a bottle ofBordeaux.
He wants you to take a glass of wine with him, said theinterpreter.
Thank him heartily; but tell him its against my principlesto drink with the man Ive diddled. In fact, tell him I mustgo.
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He says, Monsieur, that his principles wont admit of hisdrinking; but that if Monsieur wants to live another day todrink, then Monsieur had best drop all four boats, and pullthe ship away from these whales, for its so calm they wontdrift.
By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into hisboat, hailed the Guernsey-man to this effect,that having along tow-line in his boat, he would do what he could tohelp them, by pulling out the lighter whale of the two fromthe ships side. While the Frenchmans boats, then, wereengaged in towing the ship one way, Stubb benevolentlytowed away at his whale the other way, ostentatiouslyslacking out a most unusually long tow-line.
Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast offfrom the whale; hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soonincreased his distance, while the Pequod slid in betweenhim and Stubbs whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly pulledto the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give noticeof his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit ofhis unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, hecommenced an excavation in the body, a little behind theside fin. You would almost have thought he was digging acellar there in the sea; and when at length his spade struckagainst the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old Romantiles and pottery buried in fat English loam. His boats crewwere all in high excitement, eagerly helping their chief,and looking as anxious as gold-hunters.
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And all the time numberless fowls were diving, andducking, and screaming, and yelling, and fightingaround them. Stubb was beginning to look disappointed,especially as the horrible nosegay increased, whensuddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stolea faint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tideof bad smells without being absorbed by it, as one riverwill flow into and then along with another, without at allblending with it for a time.
I have it, I have it, cried Stubb, with delight, strikingsomething in the subterranean regions, a purse! a purse!
Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drewout handfuls of something that looked like ripe Windsorsoap, or rich mottled old cheese; very unctuous and savorywithal. You might easily dent it with your thumb; it isof a hue between yellow and ash colour. And this, goodfriends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to anydruggist. Some six handfuls were obtained; but more wasunavoidably lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, mighthave been secured were it not for impatient Ahabs loudcommand to Stubb to desist, and come on board, else theship would bid them good bye.
CHAPTER 92. Ambergris.
Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and soimportant as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain
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Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the barof the English House of Commons on that subject. For atthat time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, theprecise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself,a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris isbut the French compound for grey amber, yet the twosubstances are quite distinct. For amber, though at timesfound on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inlandsoils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon thesea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorlesssubstance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads andornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highlyfragrant 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, forthe same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Petersin Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains intoclaret, to flavor it.
Who would think, then, that such fine ladies andgentlemen should regale themselves with an essencefound in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so itis. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, andby others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. Howto cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless byadministering three or four boat loads of Brandreths pills,and then running out of harms way, as laborers do inblasting rocks.
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I have forgotten to say that there were found in thisambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at firstStubb thought might be sailors trowsers buttons; but itafterwards turned out that they were nothing more thanpieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergrisshould 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 sownin dishonor, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mindthat saying of Paracelsus about what it is that makeththe best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that ofall things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimentalmanufacturing 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 oftenmade against whalemen, and which, in the estimationof some already biased minds, might be considered asindirectly substantiated by what has been said of theFrenchmans two whales. Elsewhere in this volume theslanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocationof whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business.But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that allwhales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigmaoriginate?
I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of
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the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than twocenturies ago. Because those whalemen did not then,and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southernships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubberin small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of largecasks, and carry it home in that manner; the shortness ofthe season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violentstorms to which they are exposed, forbidding any othercourse. The consequence is, that upon breaking into thehold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in theGreenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similarto that arising from excavating an old city grave-yard, forthe foundations of a Lying-in Hospital.
I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge againstwhalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on thecoast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch villagecalled Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter nameis the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in hisgreat work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As itsname imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village wasfounded in order to afford a place for the blubber of theDutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken hometo Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces,fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in fulloperation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. Butall this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler;which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after completelyfilling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty
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days in the business of boiling out; and in the state thatit is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, thatliving or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a speciesare by no means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemenbe recognised, as the people of the middle ages affectedto detect a Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor indeedcan the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when,as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; takingabundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it istrue, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of aSperm Whales flukes above water dispenses a perfume,as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warmparlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to forfragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be tothat famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolentwith myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to dohonor to Alexander the Great?
CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.
It was but some few days after encountering theFrenchman, that a most significant event befell themost insignificant of the Pequods crew; an event mostlamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimesmadly merry and predestinated craft with a living andever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequelmight prove her own.
Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the
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boats. Some few hands are reserved called ship-keepers,whose province it is to work the vessel while the boatsare pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising theboats crews. But if there happen to be an unduly slender,clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is certainto be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with thelittle negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation. PoorPip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember histambourine on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.
In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, likea 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 andtorpid 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 everenjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relishthan any other race. For blacks, the years calendar shouldshow naught but three hundred and sixty-five Fourth ofJulys and New Years Days. Nor smile so, while I writethat this little black was brilliant, for even blacknesshas its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled inkings cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all lifes peaceablesecurities; so that the panic-striking business in which hehad somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had mostsadly blurred his brightness; though, as ere long will beseen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the
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end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wildfires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times thenatural lustre with which in his native Tolland County inConnecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddlers frolicon the green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gayha-ha! had turned the round horizon into one star-belledtambourine. So, though in the clear air of day, suspendedagainst a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamonddrop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jewellerwould show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre,he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, notby the sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come outthose fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystalskies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the Kingof Hell. But let us to the story.
It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubbs after-oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time tobecome quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip was put intohis place.
The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evincedmuch nervousness; but happily, for that time, escapedclose contact with the whale; and therefore came offnot altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing him,took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish hiscourageousness to the utmost, for he might often find itneedful.
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Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled uponthe whale; and as the fish received the darted iron, it gaveits customary rap, which happened, in this instance, to beright under poor Pips seat. The involuntary consternationof the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, out ofthe boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whaleline coming against his chest, he breasted it overboardwith him, so as to become entangled in it, when at lastplumping into the water. That instant the stricken whalestarted on a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened; andpresto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of theboat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which hadtaken several turns around his chest and neck.
Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of thehunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over theline, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively,Cut? Meantime Pips blue, choked face plainly looked, Do,for Gods sake! All passed in a flash. In less than half aminute, this entire thing happened.
Damn him, cut! roared Stubb; and so the whale was lostand Pip was saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro wasassailed by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquillypermitting these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubbthen in a plain, business-like, but still half humorous
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manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done, unofficiallygave him much wholesome advice. The substance was,Never jump from a boat, Pip, exceptbut all the rest wasindefinite, as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general,_Stick to the boat_, is your true motto in whaling; but caseswill sometimes happen when _Leap from the boat_, is stillbetter. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he shouldgive undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would beleaving him too wide a margin to jump in for the future;Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded witha peremptory command, Stick to the boat, Pip, or by theLord, I wont pick you up if you jump; mind that. We cantafford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale wouldsell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bearthat in mind, and dont jump any more. Hereby perhapsStubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow,yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity toooften interferes with his benevolence.
But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumpedagain. It was under very similar circumstances to the firstperformance; but this time he did not breast out the line;and hence, when the whale started to run, Pip was leftbehind on the sea, like a hurried travellers trunk. Alas!Stubb was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful,bounteous, blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool, andflatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon, like gold-beaters skin hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing upand down in that sea, Pips ebon head showed like a head
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of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidlyastern. Stubbs inexorable back was turned upon him; andthe whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mileof shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb. Out fromthe centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling,black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though theloftiest and the brightest.
Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is aseasy 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 aheartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, howwhen sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open seamark howclosely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides.
But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to hisfate? No; he did not mean to, at least. Because there weretwo boats in his wake, and he supposed, no doubt, that theywould of course come up to Pip very quickly, and pick himup; though, indeed, such considerations towards oarsmenjeopardized through their own timidity, is not alwaysmanifested by the hunters in all similar instances; andsuch instances not unfrequently occur; almost invariablyin the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the sameruthless 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,
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and gave chase; and Stubbs boat was now so far away,and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pipsringed horizon began to expand around him miserably. Bythe merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; butfrom that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot;such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kepthis finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down aliveto wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarpedprimal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoardedheaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenileeternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent,coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heavedthe colossal orbs. He saw Gods foot upon the treadle of theloom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called himmad. So mans insanity is heavens sense; and wanderingfrom all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestialthought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and wealor woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing iscommon 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 Stubbs, so dearly purchased, was dulybrought to the Pequods side, where all those cutting and
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hoisting operations previously detailed, were regularlygone through, even to the baling of the Heidelburgh Tun,or Case.
While some were occupied with this latter duty, otherswere employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soonas filled with the sperm; and when the proper time arrived,this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going tothe 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 Constantinesbath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, hereand there rolling about in the liquid part. It was ourbusiness to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweetand unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times thissperm was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! sucha sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious molifier!After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, myfingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentineand spiralise.
As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; afterthe bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquilsky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenelyalong; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentleglobules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within thehour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and dischargedall their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I
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snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,literally and truly,like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that forthe time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all aboutour horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washedmy hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit theold Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue inallaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I feltdivinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, ofany sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; Isqueezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; Isqueezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity cameover me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing myco-laborers hands in it, mistaking their hands for thegentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly,loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last Iwas continually squeezing their hands, and looking upinto their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,Oh! mydear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish anysocial acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy!Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us allsqueeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselvesuniversally 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
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lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; notplacing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in thewife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside,the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am readyto squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of thenight, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with hishands in a jar of spermaceti.
Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak ofother things akin to it, in the business of preparing thesperm whale for the try-works.
First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained fromthe tapering part of the fish, and also from the thickerportions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed tendonsawad of musclebut still contains some oil. After beingsevered from the whale, the white-horse is first cut intoportable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look muchlike blocks of Berkshire marble.
Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certainfragmentary parts of the whales flesh, here and thereadhering to the blanket of blubber, and often participatingto a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a mostrefreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As itsname imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint,with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted withspots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums ofrubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard
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to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once Istole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something asI should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louisle Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have beenkilled the first day after the venison season, and thatparticular venison season contemporary with an unusuallyfine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
There is another substance, and a very singular one, whichturns up in the course of this business, but which I feelit to be very puzzling adequately to describe. It is calledslobgollion; an appellation original with the whalemen,and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an ineffablyoozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubsof sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequentdecanting. I hold it to be the wondrously thin, rupturedmembranes of the case, coalescing.
Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to rightwhalemen, but sometimes incidentally used by the spermfishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous substancewhich is scraped off the back of the Greenland or rightwhale, and much of which covers the decks of thoseinferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.
Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whalesvocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. Awhalemans nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuffcut from the tapering part of Leviathans tail: it averages
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an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the sizeof the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the oilydeck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by namelessblandishments, as of magic, allures along with it allimpurities.
But to learn all about these recondite matters, your bestway is at once to descend into the blubber-room, and havea long talk with its inmates. This place has previouslybeen mentioned as the receptacle for the blanket-pieces,when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the propertime arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment isa scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On oneside, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for theworkmen. They generally go in pairs,a pike-and-gaffmanand a spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a frigatesboarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is somethinglike a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on toa sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, asthe ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping itinto the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as honecan make it; the spademans feet are shoeless; the thing hestands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him,like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one ofhis assistants, would you be very much astonished? Toesare scarce among veteran blubber-room men.
CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.
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Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certainjuncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and hadyou strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am Ithat you would have scanned with no small curiosity avery strange, enigmatical object, which you would haveseen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Notthe wondrous cistern in the whales huge head; not theprodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of hissymmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, ashalf a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,longer than aKentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, andjet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And anidol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was.Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of QueenMaachah in Judea; and for worshipping which, King Asa,her son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burntit for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly setforth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of Kings.
Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comesalong, and assisted by two allies, heavily backs thegrandissimus, as the mariners call it, and with bowedshoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a grenadiercarrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending itupon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindricallyto remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of aboa. This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloonleg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double itsdiameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to
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dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some threefeet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cuttingtwo slits for arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slipshimself bodily into it. The mincer now stands before youinvested in the full canonicals of his calling. Immemorialto all his order, this investiture alone will adequatelyprotect him, while employed in the peculiar functions ofhis office.
That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubberfor the pots; an operation which is conducted at a curiouswooden horse, planted endwise against the bulwarks, andwith a capacious tub beneath it, into which the mincedpieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt oratorsdesk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuouspulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for anarchbishopric, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!*
*Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cryfrom the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful,and cut his work into as thin slices as possible, inasmuchas by so doing the business of boiling out the oil ismuch accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased,besides perhaps improving it in quality.
CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.
Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler isoutwardly distinguished by her try-works. She presents the
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curious anomaly of the most solid masonry joining withoak and hemp in constituting the completed ship. It is asif from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to herplanks.
The try-works are planted between the foremast andmainmast, the most roomy part of the deck. The timbersbeneath are of a peculiar strength, fitted to sustain theweight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar, someten feet by eight square, and five in height. The foundationdoes not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmlysecured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracingit on all sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. Onthe flanks it is cased with wood, and at top completelycovered by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Removingthis hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in number, andeach of several barrels capacity. When not in use, they arekept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished withsoapstone and sand, till they shine within like silver punch-bowls. During the night-watches some cynical old sailorswill crawl into them and coil themselves away there for anap. While employed in polishing themone man in eachpot, side by sidemany confidential communications arecarried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profoundmathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot ofthe Pequod, with the soapstone diligently circling roundme, that I was first indirectly struck by the remarkablefact, that in geometry all bodies gliding along the cycloid,
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my soapstone for example, will descend from any point inprecisely the same time.
Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works,the bare masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated bythe two iron mouths of the furnaces, directly underneaththe pots. These mouths are fitted with heavy doors ofiron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented fromcommunicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallowreservoir extending under the entire inclosed surface of theworks. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this reservoir is keptreplenished with water as fast as it evaporates. There areno external chimneys; they open direct from the rear wall.And here let us go back for a moment.
It was about nine oclock at night that the Pequods try-works were first started on this present voyage. It belongedto 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 hadbeen thrusting his shavings into the furnace throughout thepassage. Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the firstfire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood.After that no wood is used, except as a means of quickignition 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
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martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, thewhale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke ishorrible 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 vicinityof funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day ofjudgment; it is an argument for the pit.
By midnight the works were in full operation. We wereclear from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind wasfreshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But thatdarkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which atintervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminatedevery lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greekfire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselesslycommissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch andsulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris,issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets offlame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, andfolded them in conflagrations.
The hatch, removed from the top of the works, nowafforded a wide hearth in front of them. Standing onthis were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers,always the whale-ships stokers. With huge pronged polesthey pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scaldingpots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flamesdarted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet.
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The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch ofthe ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemedall eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouthof the works, on the further side of the wide woodenhearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Herelounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, lookinginto the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched intheir heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed withsmoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrastingbarbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangelyrevealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. Asthey narrated to each other their unholy adventures, theirtales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilizedlaughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames fromthe furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneerswildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks anddippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, andthe ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot herred hell further and further into the blackness of the seaand the night, and scornfully champed the white bone inher mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; thenthe rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and ladenwith fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into thatblackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart ofher monomaniac commanders soul.
So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for longhours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea.Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the
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better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness ofothers. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me,capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begatkindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yieldto that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would comeover me at a midnight helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever sinceinexplicable) thing occurred to me. Starting from a briefstanding sleep, I was horribly conscious of somethingfatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote my side, whichleaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails,just beginning to shake in the wind; I thought my eyeswere open; I was half conscious of putting my fingersto the lids and mechanically stretching them still furtherapart. But, spite of all this, I could see no compass beforeme to steer by; though it seemed but a minute sinceI had been watching the card, by the steady binnaclelamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but ajet gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes ofredness. Uppermost was the impression, that whateverswift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much boundto any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern.A stark, bewildered feeling, as of death, came overme. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but withthe crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in someenchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter withme? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myselfabout, and was fronting the ships stern, with my back to her
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prow and the compass. In an instant I faced back, just intime to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, andvery probably capsizing her. How glad and how gratefulthe 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! Neverdream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to thecompass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believenot the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things lookghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will bebright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames,the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; theglorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lampall others butliars!
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginias Dismal Swamp,nor Romes accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor allthe millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath themoon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the darkside of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth.So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy thansorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be truenot true,or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of allmen was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all booksis Solomons, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steelof woe. All is vanity. ALL. This wilful world hath notgot hold of unchristian Solomons wisdom yet. But hewho dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing
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graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell;calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all ofsick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears byRabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;not that manis fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the greendamp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
But even Solomon, he says, the man that wandereth out ofthe way of understanding shall remain (_i.e._, even whileliving) in the congregation of the dead. Give not thyselfup, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for thetime it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is awoe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in somesouls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, andsoar out of them again and become invisible in the sunnyspaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, thatgorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoopthe mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon theplain, even though they soar.
CHAPTER 97. The Lamp.
Had you descended from the Pequods try-works tothe Pequods forecastle, where the off duty watch weresleeping, for one single moment you would have almostthought you were standing in some illuminated shrineof canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay intheir triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselledmuteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
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In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than themilk 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 livesin light. He makes his berth an Aladdins lamp, and layshim down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ships blackhull still houses an illumination.
See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes hishandful of lampsoften but old bottles and vials, thoughtothe copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes themthere, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too, the purestof oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiatedstate; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivancesashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goesand hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness andgenuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts uphis own supper of game.
CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
Already has it been related how the great leviathan isafar off descried from the mast-head; how he is chasedover the watery moors, and slaughtered in the valleys ofthe deep; how he is then towed alongside and beheaded;and how (on the principle which entitled the headsmanof old to the garments in which the beheaded waskilled) his great padded surtout becomes the property ofhis executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to
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the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through thefire;but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of thispart of the description by rehearsingsinging, if I maytheromantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casksand striking them down into the hold, where once againleviathan returns to his native profundities, sliding alongbeneath the surface as before; but, alas! never more to riseand blow.
While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is receivedinto the six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship ispitching 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 theslippery 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, fornow, _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 theship are thrown open, and down go the casks to their finalrest in the sea. This done, the hatches are replaced, andhermetically closed, like a closet walled up.
In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the mostremarkable incidents in all the business of whaling. Oneday the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil; on
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the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whaleshead are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, asin a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works hasbesooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffusedwith unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathanhimself; while on all hands the din is deafening.
But a day or two after, you look about you, and prickyour ears in this self-same ship; and were it not forthe tell-tale boats and try-works, you would all butswear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with amost scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufacturedsperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This isthe reason why the decks never look so white as just afterwhat they call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashesof the burned scraps of the whale, a potent lye is readilymade; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back ofthe whale remains clinging to the side, that lye quicklyexterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks,and with buckets of water and rags restore them to theirfull tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower rigging.All the numerous implements which have been in use arelikewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The great hatchis scrubbed and placed upon the try-works, completelyhiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles arecoiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined andsimultaneous industry of almost the entire ships company,the whole of this conscientious duty is at last concluded,then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions;
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shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to theimmaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as bridegroomsnew-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.
Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twosand threes, and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas,carpets, and fine cambrics; propose to mat the deck; thinkof having hanging to the top; object not to taking tea bymoonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to suchmusked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were littleshort of audacity. They know not the thing you distantlyallude to. Away, and bring us napkins!
But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand threemen intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught,infallibly will again soil the old oaken furniture, and dropat least one small grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and manyis the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors,which know no night; continuing straight through forninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they haveswelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line,theyonly step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave theheavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their verysweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combinedfires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works;when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirredthemselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairyroom of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoningthe necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry
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of There she blows! and away they fly to fight anotherwhale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh!my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. Forhardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted fromthis worlds vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; andthen, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from itsdefilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles ofthe soul; hardly is this done, when_There she blows!_theghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some otherworld, and go through young lifes old routine again.
Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in brightGreece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise,so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast lastvoyageand, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simpleboy, how to splice a rope!
CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.
Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pacehis quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, thebinnacle and mainmast; but in the multiplicity of otherthings requiring narration it has not been added how thatsometimes in these walks, when most plunged in hismood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, andstand there strangely eyeing the particular object beforehim. When he halted before the binnacle, with his glancefastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that glanceshot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose;
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and when resuming his walk he again paused before themainmast, then, as the same riveted glance fastened uponthe riveted gold coin there, he still wore the same aspect ofnailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing,if not hopefulness.
But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, heseemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures andinscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first timebeginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniacway whatever significance might lurk in them. And somecertain significance lurks in all things, else all things arelittle 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, rakedsomewhere out of the heart of gorgeous hills, whence,east and west, over golden sands, the head-waters of manya Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst all therustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes,yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it stillpreserved its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst aruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands, andthrough the livelong nights shrouded with thick darknesswhich might cover any pilfering approach, neverthelessevery sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left itlast. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-strikingend; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and
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all, the mariners revered it as the white whales talisman.Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night,wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he wouldever live to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are asmedals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms,alpacas, and volcanoes; suns disks and stars; ecliptics,horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are in luxuriantprofusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almostto derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, bypassing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a mostwealthy example of these things. On its round border itbore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO.So this bright coin came from a country planted in themiddle of the world, and beneath the great equator, andnamed after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes,in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned bythose letters you saw the likeness of three Andes summits;from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third acrowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of thepartitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usualcabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctialpoint at Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved byothers, was now pausing.
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Theres something ever egotistical in mountain-tops andtowers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here,threepeaks 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; andthis round gold is but the image of the rounder globe,which, like a magicians glass, to each and every man inturn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains,small gains for those who ask the world to solve them; itcannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears aruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, theequinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of aformer equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it,then. Born in throes, tis fit that man should live in painsand die in pangs! So be it, then! Heres stout stuff for woeto work on. So be it, then.
No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devilsclaws must have left their mouldings there sinceyesterday, murmured Starbuck to himself, leaning againstthe bulwarks. The old man seems to read Belshazzarsawful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly.He goes below; let me read. A dark valley betweenthree mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem theTrinity, in some faint earthly symbol. So in this vale ofDeath, God girds us round; and over all our gloom, the sunof Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope. If webend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil;but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half
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way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, atmidnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace fromhim, we gaze for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely,mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truthshake me falsely.
There nows the old Mogul, soliloquized Stubb by thetry-works, hes been twigging it; and there goes Starbuckfrom the same, and both with faces which I should saymight be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And allfrom looking at a piece of gold, which did I have it nowon Negro Hill or in Corlaers Hook, Id not look at it verylong ere spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificantopinion, I regard this as queer. I have seen doubloonsbefore now in my voyagings; your doubloons of old Spain,your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, yourdoubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; withplenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes, and halfjoes, and quarter joes. What then should there be in thisdoubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful? ByGolconda! let me read it once. Halloa! heres signs andwonders truly! That, now, is what old Bowditch in hisEpitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanac belowcalls ditto. Ill get the almanac and as I have heard devilscan be raised with Dabolls arithmetic, Ill try my hand atraising a meaning out of these queer curvicues here withthe Massachusetts calendar. Heres the book. Lets see now.Signs and wonders; and the sun, hes always among em.Hem, hem, hem; here they arehere they goall alive:Aries,
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or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull and Jimimi! heres Geminihimself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he wheels amongem. Aye, here on the coin hes just crossing the thresholdbetween two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book!you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places.Youll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come into supply the thoughts. Thats my small experience, so faras the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditchs navigator,and Dabolls arithmetic go. Signs and wonders, eh? Pityif there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant inwonders! Theres a clue somewhere; wait a bit; histhark!By Jove, I have it! Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac hereis the life of man in one round chapter; and now Ill read itoff, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin:theres Aries, or the Ramlecherous dog, he begets us; then,Taurus, or the Bullhe bumps us the first thing; then Gemini,or the Twinsthat is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue,when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; andhere, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in thepathhe gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with hispaw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! thats our firstlove; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when popcomes Libra, or the Scaleshappiness weighed and foundwanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! howwe suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings usin the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang comethe arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusinghimself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! heres the
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battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comesrushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, orthe Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drownsus; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.Theres a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sungoes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all aliveand hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil andtrouble; and so, alow here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jollys theword for aye! Adieu, Doubloon! But stop; here comes littleKing-Post; dodge round the try-works, now, and lets hearwhat hell have to say. There; hes before it; hell out withsomething presently. So, so; hes beginning.
I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, andwhoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongsto him. So, whats all this staring been about? It is worthsixteen dollars, thats true; and at two cents the cigar, thatsnine hundred and sixty cigars. I wont smoke dirty pipeslike Stubb, but I like cigars, and heres nine hundred andsixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy em out.
Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise ithas a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has ita sort of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our oldManxmanthe 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,theres a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and now hes backagain; what does that mean? Hark! hes mutteringvoice like
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an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!
If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and aday, when the sun stands in some one of these signs. Ivestudied signs, and know their marks; they were taught metwo score years ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now,in what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe sign; forthere it is, right opposite the gold. And whats the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe signthe roaring anddevouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to thinkof thee.
Theres another rendering now; but still one text. All sortsof men in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! herecomes Queequegall tattooinglooks like the signs of theZodiac himself. What says the Cannibal? As I live hescomparing notes; looking at his thigh bone; thinks the sunis in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose,as the old women talk Surgeons Astronomy in the backcountry. And by Jove, hes found something there in thevicinity of his thighI guess its Sagittarius, or the Archer.No: he dont know what to make of the doubloon; he takesit for an old button off some kings trowsers. But, asideagain! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiledout of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps asusual. What does he say, with that look of his? Ah, onlymakes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a sunon the coinfire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more andmore. This way comes Pippoor boy! would he had died, or
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I; hes half horrible to me. He too has been watching all ofthese interpretersmyself includedand look now, he comesto read, with that unearthly idiot face. Stand away againand hear him. Hark!
I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.
Upon my soul, hes been studying Murrays Grammar!Improving his mind, poor fellow! But whats that he saysnowhist!
I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.
Why, hes getting it by hearthist! again.
I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.
Well, thats funny.
And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; andIm a crow, especially when I stand atop of this pine treehere. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Aint I a crow? Andwheres the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuckinto a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into thesleeves of an old jacket.
Wonder if he means me?complimentary!poor lad!I couldgo hang myself. Any way, for the present, Ill quit Pipsvicinity. I can stand the rest, for they have plain wits;but hes too crazy-witty for my sanity. So, so, I leave himmuttering.
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Heres the ships navel, this doubloon here, and they are allon fire to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and whatsthe consequence? Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly,too, for when aughts nailed to the mast its a sign that thingsgrow desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; hellnail ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in old Tollandcounty, cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver ringgrown over in it; some old darkeys wedding ring. How didit get there? And so theyll say in the resurrection, whenthey come to fish up this old mast, and find a doubloonlodged in it, with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. Oh,the gold! the precious, precious, gold! the green miserllhoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes mong the worldsblackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey,hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cakedone!
CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm.
The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, ofLondon.
Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?
So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing Englishcolours, bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth,the old man was standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, hisivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who wascarelessly reclining in his own boats bow. He was a darkly-
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tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty orthereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hunground him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one emptyarm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broideredarm of a hussars surcoat.
Hast seen the White Whale?
See you this? and withdrawing it from the folds that hadhidden 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 aboutthe oars near himStand by to lower!
In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, heand his crew were dropped to the water, and were soonalongside of the stranger. But here a curious difficultypresented itself. In the excitement of the moment, Ahabhad forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had neveronce stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own,and then it was always by an ingenious and very handymechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and athing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel ata moments warning. Now, it is no very easy matter foranybodyexcept those who are almost hourly used to it,like whalemento clamber up a ships side from a boat onthe open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat highup towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it
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half way down to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, andthe strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied withthe kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectlyreduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeingthe uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope toattain.
It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every littleuntoward circumstance that befell him, and whichindirectly sprang from his luckless mishap, almostinvariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And in thepresent instance, all this was heightened by the sight ofthe two officers of the strange ship, leaning over theside, by the perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there,and swinging towards him a pair of tastefully-ornamentedman-ropes; for at first they did not seem to bethink themthat a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to usetheir sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted aminute, because the strange captain, observing at a glancehow affairs stood, cried out, I see, I see!avast heavingthere! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle.
As good luck would have it, they had had a whalealongside a day or two previous, and the great tackles werestill aloft, and the massive curved blubber-hook, now cleanand dry, was still attached to the end. This was quicklylowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slidhis solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was likesitting in the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple
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tree), and then giving the word, held himself fast, and atthe same time also helped to hoist his own weight, bypulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts ofthe tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the highbulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head. Withhis ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the othercaptain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory leg, andcrossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) criedout in his walrus way, Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bonestogether!an arm and a leg!an arm that never can shrink,dye see; and a leg that never can run. Where didst thou seethe White Whale?how long ago?
The White Whale, said the Englishman, pointing his ivoryarm towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, asif it had been a telescope; there I saw him, on the Line, lastseason.
And he took that arm off, did he? asked Ahab, now slidingdown from the capstan, and resting on the Englishmansshoulder, 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 theLine, began the Englishman. I was ignorant of the WhiteWhale at that time. Well, one day we lowered for a pod offour or five whales, and my boat fastened to one of them;
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a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling andmilling round so, that my boats crew could only trim dish,by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presentlyup breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing greatwhale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows feetand wrinkles.
It was he, it was he! cried Ahab, suddenly letting out hissuspended breath.
And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.
Aye, ayethey were mine_my_ irons, cried Ahab,exultinglybut on!
Give me a chance, then, said the Englishman, good-humoredly. Well, this old great-grandfather, with the whitehead and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, and goes tosnapping furiously at my fast-line!
Aye, I see!wanted to part it; free the fast-fishan old trickIknow him.
How it was exactly, continued the one-armed commander,I do not know; but in biting the line, it got foul of histeeth, caught there somehow; but we didnt know it then;so that when we afterwards pulled on the line, bounce wecame plump on to his hump! instead of the other whales;that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how mattersstood, and what a noble great whale it wasthe noblest and
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biggest I ever saw, sir, in my lifeI resolved to capturehim, spite of the boiling rage he seemed to be in. Andthinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or the toothit was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boatscrew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, Ijumped into my first mates boatMr. Mounttops here (bythe way, CaptainMounttop; Mounttopthe captain);as I wassaying, I jumped into Mounttops boat, which, dye see,was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatchingthe first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it.But, Lord, look you, sirhearts and souls alive, manthenext instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a batboth eyes outallbefogged and bedeadened with black foamthe whales taillooming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, likea marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I wasgroping at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels;as I was groping, I say, after the second iron, to toss itoverboarddown comes the tail like a Lima tower, cuttingmy boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and, flukesfirst, the white hump backed through the wreck, as thoughit was all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terribleflailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him,and for a moment clung to that like a sucking fish. Buta combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant,the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like aflash; and the barb of that cursed second iron towing alongnear me caught me here (clapping his hand just below hisshoulder); yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me
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down to Hells flames, I was thinking; when, when, all ofa sudden, thank the good God, the barb ript its way alongthe fleshclear along the whole length of my armcame outnigh my wrist, and up I floated;and that gentleman therewill tell you the rest (by the way, captainDr. Bunger, shipssurgeon: 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 nothingspecific visible, to denote his gentlemanly rank on board.His face was an exceedingly round but sober one; he wasdressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patchedtrowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attentionbetween a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other, occasionally casting a critical glanceat the ivory limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at hissuperiors introduction of him to Ahab, he politely bowed,and straightway went on to do his captains bidding.
It was a shocking bad wound, began the whale-surgeon;and, taking my advice, Captain Boomer here, stood ourold Sammy
Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship, interrupted theone-armed captain, addressing Ahab; go on, boy.
Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out ofthe blazing hot weather there on the Line. But it was no
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useI did all I could; sat up with him nights; was very severewith him in the matter of diet
Oh, very severe! chimed in the patient himself; thensuddenly altering his voice, Drinking hot rum toddies withme every night, till he couldnt see to put on the bandages;and sending me to bed, half seas over, about three oclockin the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up with me indeed,and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great watcher, andvery dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog,laugh out! why dont ye? You know youre a precious jollyrascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, Id rather be killed by youthan kept alive by any other man.
My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respectedsirsaid the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightlybowing to Ahabis apt to be facetious at times; he spins usmany clever things of that sort. But I may as well sayenpassant, as the French remarkthat I myselfthat is to say,Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergyam a strict totalabstinence man; I never drink
Water! cried the captain; he never drinks it; its a sort of fitsto him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; butgo ongo on with the arm story.
Yes, I may as well, said the surgeon, coolly. I wasabout observing, sir, before Captain Boomers facetiousinterruption, that spite of my best and severest endeavors,
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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 measuredit with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I knew whatwas threatened, and off it came. But I had no hand inshipping that ivory arm there; that thing is against allrulepointing at it with the marlingspikethat is the captainswork, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; hehad that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock someones brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. Heflies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see thisdent, sirremoving his hat, and brushing aside his hair, andexposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which borenot the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever havingbeen a woundWell, the captain there will tell you how thatcame here; he knows.
No, I dont, said the captain, but his mother did; he was bornwith it. Oh, you solemn rogue, youyou Bunger! was thereever such another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger,when you die, you ought to die in pickle, you dog; youshould be preserved to future ages, you rascal.
What became of the White Whale? now cried Ahab, whothus far had been impatiently listening to this by-playbetween the two Englishmen.
Oh! cried the one-armed captain, oh, yes! Well; after hesounded, we didnt see him again for some time; in fact, as
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I before hinted, I didnt then know what whale it was thathad served me such a trick, till some time afterwards, whencoming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dickassome call himand then I knew it was he.
Didst thou cross his wake again?
Twice.
But could not fasten?
Didnt want to try to: aint one limb enough? What shouldI do without this other arm? And Im thinking Moby Dickdoesnt bite so much as he swallows.
Well, then, interrupted Bunger, give him your left armfor bait to get the right. Do you know, gentlemenverygravely and mathematically bowing to each Captain insuccessionDo you know, gentlemen, that the digestiveorgans of the whale are so inscrutably constructed byDivine Providence, that it is quite impossible for him tocompletely digest even a mans arm? And he knows it too.So that what you take for the White Whales malice is onlyhis awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a singlelimb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes heis like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of minein Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, onceupon a time let one drop into him in good earnest, and thereit stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave him an
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emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, dye see. Nopossible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fullyincorporate it into his general bodily system. Yes, CaptainBoomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a mindto pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of givingdecent burial to the other, why in that case the arm is yours;only let the whale have another chance at you shortly, thatsall.
No, thank ye, Bunger, said the English Captain, heswelcome to the arm he has, since I cant help it, and didntknow him then; but not to another one. No more WhiteWhales for me; Ive lowered for him once, and that hassatisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, Iknow that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm inhim, but, hark ye, hes best let alone; dont you think so,Captain?glancing at the ivory leg.
He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What isbest let alone, that accursed thing is not always what leastallures. Hes all a magnet! How long since thou sawst himlast? Which way heading?
Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiends, cried Bunger,stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangelysnuffing; this mans bloodbring the thermometer!its at theboiling point!his pulse makes these planks beat!sir!takinga lancet from his pocket, and drawing near to Ahabs arm.
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Avast! roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarksManthe boat! Which way heading?
Good God! cried the English Captain, to whom thequestion was put. Whats the matter? He was heading east,I think.Is your Captain crazy? whispering Fedallah.
But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid overthe bulwarks to take the boats steering oar, and Ahab,swinging the cutting-tackle towards him, commanded theships sailors to stand by to lower.
In a moment he was standing in the boats stern, and theManilla men were springing to their oars. In vain theEnglish Captain hailed him. With back to the stranger ship,and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright tillalongside 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 lateSamuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original of thefamous whaling house of Enderby & Sons; a house whichin my poor whalemans opinion, comes not far behind theunited royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in pointof real historical interest. How long, prior to the year ofour Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence,my numerous fish-documents do not make plain; but inthat year (1775) it fitted out the first English ships that ever
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regularly hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some scoreof years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant Coffins andMaceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleetspursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and SouthAtlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, thatthe Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoonwith civilized steel the great Sperm Whale; and that forhalf a century they were the only people of the whole globewho so harpooned him.
In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the expresspurpose, and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys,boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among thenations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the greatSouth Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one; andreturning to her berth with her hold full of the precioussperm, the Amelias example was soon followed by otherships, English and American, and thus the vast SpermWhale grounds of the Pacific were thrown open. But notcontent with this good deed, the indefatigable house againbestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sonshow many, theirmother only knowsand under their immediate auspices,and partly, I think, at their expense, the British governmentwas induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whalingvoyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded bya naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyageof it, and did some service; how much does not appear.But this is not all. In 1819, the same house fitted outa discovery whale ship of their own, to go on a tasting
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cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That shipwell calledthe Syrenmade a noble experimental cruise; and it wasthus that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first becamegenerally known. The Syren in this famous voyage wascommanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer.
All honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, Ithink, exists to the present day; though doubtless theoriginal Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable forthe great South Sea of the other world.
The ship named after him was worthy of the honor, beinga very fast sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded heronce at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, anddrank good flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam wehad, and they were all trumpsevery soul on board. A shortlife to them, and a jolly death. And that fine gam I hadlong,very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his ivoryheelit minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality ofthat ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devilremember me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say wehad flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons thehour; and when the squall came (for its squally off there byPatagonia), and all handsvisitors and allwere called to reeftopsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing eachother aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirtsof our jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefedfast in the howling gale, a warning example to all drunkentars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by and
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by we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass theflip again, though the savage salt spray bursting down theforecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it tomy taste.
The beef was finetough, but with body in it. They saidit was bull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef;but I do not know, for certain, how that was. Theyhad dumplings too; small, but substantial, symmetricallyglobular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that youcould feel them, and roll them about in you after they wereswallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you riskedtheir pitching out of you like billiard-balls. The breadbutthat couldnt be helped; besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; inshort, the bread contained the only fresh fare they had. Butthe forecastle was not very light, and it was very easy tostep over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all in all,taking her from truck to helm, considering the dimensionsof the cooks boilers, including his own live parchmentboilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jollyship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crackfellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band.
But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, andsome other English whalers I know ofnot all thoughweresuch famous, hospitable ships; that passed round the beef,and the bread, and the can, and the joke; and were not soonweary of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I will tellyou. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers is
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matter for historical research. Nor have I been at all sparingof historical whale research, when it has seemed needed.
The English were preceded in the whale fishery by theHollanders, Zealanders, and Danes; from whom theyderived many terms still extant in the fishery; and what isyet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat anddrink. For, as a general thing, the English merchant-shipscrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence, inthe English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normaland 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, Istumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by themusty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers.The title was, Dan Coopman, wherefore I concluded thatthis must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdamcooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry itscooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that itwas the production of one Fitz Swackhammer. But myfriend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of LowDutch and High German in the college of Santa Clausand St. Potts, to whom I handed the work for translation,giving him a box of sperm candles for his troublethis sameDr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured methat Dan Coopman did not mean The Cooper, but TheMerchant. In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch
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book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, amongother subjects, contained a very interesting account of itswhale fishery. And in this chapter it was, headed, Smeer,or Fat, that I found a long detailed list of the outfits for thelarders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; fromwhich list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe thefollowing:
400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000lbs. of stock fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of softbread. 2,800 firkins of butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & Leydencheese. 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 isflooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of goodgin and good cheer.
At the time, I devoted three days to the studiousdigesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during whichmany profound thoughts were incidentally suggested tome, capable of a transcendental and Platonic application;and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables ofmy own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish,etc., consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in thatancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In thefirst place, the amount of butter, and Texel and Leydencheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to
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their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still moreunctuous by the nature of their vocation, and especially bytheir pursuing their game in those frigid Polar Seas, on thevery coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivialnatives 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 prosecutedin the short summer of that climate, so that the wholecruise of one of these Dutch whalemen, including the shortvoyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not muchexceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each oftheir fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamenin all; therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels ofbeer per man, for a twelve weeks allowance, exclusive ofhis fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin. Now, whetherthese gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one mightfancy them to have been, were the right sort of men tostand up in a boats head, and take good aim at flyingwhales; this would seem somewhat improbable. Yet theydid aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very farNorth, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with theconstitution; upon the Equator, in our southern fishery,beer would be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at themast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss mightensue to Nantucket and New Bedford.
But no more; enough has been said to show that the oldDutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high
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livers; and that the English whalers have not neglected soexcellent an example. For, say they, when cruising in anempty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world,get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties thedecanter.
CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale,I have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outeraspect; or separately and in detail upon some few interiorstructural features. But to a large and thorough sweepingcomprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbuttonhim still further, and untagging the points of his hose,unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and theeyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him beforeyou in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditionalskeleton.
But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mereoarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught aboutthe subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb,mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures on theanatomy 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 deckfor examination, as a cook dishes a roast-pig? Surely not.A veritable witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael; buthave a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone;
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the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; therafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, makingup 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 penetratedvery far beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless,I have been blessed with an opportunity to dissect himin miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small cub SpermWhale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his pokeor bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, andfor the heads of the lances. Think you I let that chancego, without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, andbreaking the seal and reading all the contents of that youngcub?
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of theleviathan in their gigantic, full grown development, forthat rare knowledge I am indebted to my late royal friendTranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides. Forbeing at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of theArsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at his retiredpalm villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distantfrom what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital.
Among many other fine qualities, my royal friendTranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all matters ofbarbaric vertu, had brought together in Pupella whatever
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rare things the more ingenious of his people could invent;chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices, chiselledshells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes; andall these distributed among whatever natural wonders, thewonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast uponhis shores.
Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which,after an unusually long raging gale, had been found deadand stranded, with his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whoseplumage-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 Pupellaglen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now shelteredit.
The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebr were carvedwith Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in theskull, the priests kept up an unextinguished aromaticflame, so that the mystic head again sent forth its vaporyspout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lowerjaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung swordthat so affrighted Damocles.
It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mossesof the Icy Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feelingtheir living sap; the industrious earth beneath was as aweavers loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the
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ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and theliving flowers the figures. All the trees, with all theirladen branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; themessage-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active.Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemeda flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busyweaver! unseen weaver!pause!one word!whither flows thefabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all theseceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!stay thy hand!but onesingle word with thee! Naythe shuttle fliesthe figures floatfrom forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for everslides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by thatweaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice;and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loomare deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hearthe thousand voices that speak through it. For even soit is in all material factories. The spoken words that areinaudible among the flying spindles; those same words areplainly heard without the walls, bursting from the openedcasements. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah,mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the greatworlds loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.
Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacideanwood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay loungingagigantic idler! Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp andwoof intermixed and hummed around him, the mightyidler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over
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with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresherverdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Deathtrellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, andbegat him curly-headed glories.
Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrouswhale, and saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smokeascending from where the real jet had issued, I marvelledthat the king should regard a chapel as an object of vertu.He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests shouldswear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I pacedbefore this skeletonbrushed the vines asidebroke throughthe ribsand with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered,eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnadesand arbours. But soon my line was out; and following itback, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I sawno living thing within; naught was there but bones.
Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more divedwithin the skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, thepriests perceived me taking the altitude of the final rib,How now! they shouted; Darst thou measure this our god!Thats for us. Aye, priestswell, how long do ye make him,then? But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them,concerning feet and inches; they cracked each otherssconces with their yard-sticksthe great skull echoedandseizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded my ownadmeasurements.
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These admeasurements I now propose to set before you.But first, be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am notfree to utter any fancied measurement I please. Becausethere are skeleton authorities you can refer to, to test myaccuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, inHull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country,where they have some fine specimens of fin-backs andother whales. Likewise, I have heard that in the museumof Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what theproprietors call the only perfect specimen of a Greenlandor River Whale in the United States. Moreover, at a place inYorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certainSir Clifford Constable has in his possession the skeletonof a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no means ofthe full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquos.
In both cases, the stranded whales to which these twoskeletons belonged, were originally claimed by theirproprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizinghis because he wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he waslord of the seignories of those parts. Sir Cliffords whalehas been articulated throughout; so that, like a great chestof drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bonycavitiesspread out his ribs like a gigantic fanand swing allday upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some ofhis trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show roundfuture visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir Cliffordthinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering
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gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echoin the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for theunrivalled view from his forehead.
The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set downare copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had themtattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, therewas no other secure way of preserving such valuablestatistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wishedthe other parts of my body to remain a blank page for apoem I was then composingat least, what untattooed partsmight remainI did not trouble myself with the odd inches;nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenialadmeasurement of the whale.
CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whales Skeleton.
In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plainstatement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whoseskeleton we are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement mayprove useful here.
According to a careful calculation I have made, and whichI partly base upon Captain Scoresbys estimate, of seventytons for the largest sized Greenland whale of sixty feet inlength; according to my careful calculation, I say, a SpermWhale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five andninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet inits fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least
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ninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, hewould considerably outweigh the combined population ofa whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants.
Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, shouldbe put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to anylandsmans imagination?
Having already in various ways put before you his skull,spout-hole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers otherparts, I shall now simply point out what is most interestingin the general bulk of his unobstructed bones. But asthe colossal skull embraces so very large a proportionof the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far themost complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeatedconcerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry itin your mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, otherwiseyou will not gain a complete notion of the general structurewe are about to view.
In length, the Sperm Whales skeleton at Tranque measuredseventy-two feet; so that when fully invested and extendedin life, he must have been ninety feet long; for in the whale,the skeleton loses about one fifth in length comparedwith the living body. Of this seventy-two feet, his skulland jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fiftyfeet of plain back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, forsomething less than a third of its length, was the mightycircular basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals.
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To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long,unrelieved spine, extending far away from it in a straightline, not a little resembled the hull of a great ship new-laidupon 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 theneck, was nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourthwere each successively longer, till you came to the climaxof the fifth, or one of the middle ribs, which measuredeight feet and some inches. From that part, the remainingribs diminished, till the tenth and last only spanned fivefeet and some inches. In general thickness, they all borea seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribswere the most arched. In some of the Arsacides they areused for beams whereon to lay footpath bridges over smallstreams.
In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anewwith the circumstance, so variously repeated in this book,that the skeleton of the whale is by no means the mouldof his invested form. The largest of the Tranque ribs,one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the fishwhich, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatestdepth of the invested body of this particular whale musthave been at least sixteen feet; whereas, the correspondingrib measured but little more than eight feet. So that thisrib only conveyed half of the true notion of the living
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magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where Inow saw but a naked spine, all that had been once wrappedround with tons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, andbowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a fewdisordered joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic,but boneless flukes, an utter blank!
How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelledman to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, bymerely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretchedin this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickestperils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes;only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully investedwhale 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 speedyenterprise. But now its done, it looks much like PompeysPillar.
There are forty and odd vertebr in all, which in the skeletonare not locked together. They mostly lie like the greatknobbed blocks on a Gothic spire, forming solid coursesof heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in widthsomething less than three feet, and in depth more than four.The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, isonly two inches in width, and looks something like a whitebilliard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones,but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the
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priests children, who had stolen them to play marbles with.Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of livingthings tapers off at last into simple childs play.
CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.
From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenialtheme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generallyexpatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. Bygood 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 ofthe gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they liein him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in thesubterranean orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship.
Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, itbehooves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustivein the enterprise; not overlooking the minutest seminalgerms of his blood, and spinning him out to the uttermostcoil of his bowels. Having already described him in mostof his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities,it now remains to magnify him in an archological,fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied toany other creature than the Leviathanto an ant or a fleasuchportly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantablygrandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the caseis altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under theweightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said,
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that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in thecourse of these dissertations, I have invariably used a hugequarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased for thatpurpose; because that famous lexicographers uncommonpersonal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to beused by a whale author like me.
One often hears of writers that rise and swell with theirsubject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How,then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciouslymy chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me acondors quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning mythoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make mefaint with their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep,as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and allthe generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past,present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramasof empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe,not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is thevirtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk.To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mightytheme. No great and enduring volume can ever be writtenon the flea, though many there be who have tried it.
Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I presentmy credentials as a geologist, by stating that in mymiscellaneous time I have been a stone-mason, and alsoa great digger of ditches, canals and wells, wine-vaults,
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cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by way ofpreliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while inthe earlier geological strata there are found the fossils ofmonsters now almost completely extinct; the subsequentrelics discovered in what are called the Tertiary formationsseem the connecting, or at any rate intercepted links,between the antichronical creatures, and those whoseremote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; allthe Fossil Whales hitherto discovered belong to theTertiary period, which is the last preceding the superficialformations. And though none of them precisely answerto any known species of the present time, they are yetsufficiently akin to them in general respects, to justify theirtaking rank as Cetacean fossils.
Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragmentsof their bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past,at various intervals, been found at the base of the Alps, inLombardy, in France, in England, in Scotland, and in theStates of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Among themore curious of such remains is part of a skull, which inthe year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris,a short street opening almost directly upon the palace ofthe Tuileries; and bones disinterred in excavating the greatdocks of Antwerp, in Napoleons time. Cuvier pronouncedthese fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknownLeviathanic species.
But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was
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the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster,found in the year 1842, on the plantation of JudgeCreagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous slavesin the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallenangels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile,and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But somespecimen bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen,the English Anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptilewas a whale, though of a departed species. A significantillustration of the fact, again and again repeated in thisbook, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but littleclue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owenrechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper readbefore the London Geological Society, pronounced it, insubstance, one of the most extraordinary creatures whichthe mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence.
When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons,skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebr, all characterizedby partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the otherhand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronicalLeviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood,borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself canbe said to have begun; for time began with man. HereSaturns grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim,shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; whenwedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are nowthe Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this worlds
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circumference, not an inhabitable hands breadth of landwas visible. Then the whole world was the whales; and,king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines ofthe Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigreelike Leviathan? Ahabs harpoon had shed older blood thanthe Pharaohs. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I lookround to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck atthis antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakableterrors 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-adamitetraces in the stereotype plates of nature, and in limestoneand marl bequeathed his ancient bust; but upon Egyptiantablets, whose antiquity seems to claim for them an almostfossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable print ofhis fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah,some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the graniteceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding incentaurs, griffins, and dolphins, similar to the grotesquefigures on the celestial globe of the moderns. Glidingamong them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was thereswimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomonwas cradled.
Nor must there be omitted another strange attestationof the antiquity of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by the venerable John Leo,the old Barbary traveller.
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Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Raftersand Beams of which are made of Whale-Bones; forWhales of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up deadupon that shore. The Common People imagine, that by asecret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no Whalecan pass it without immediate death. But the truth of theMatter is, that on either side of the Temple, there are Rocksthat shoot two Miles into the Sea, and wound the Whaleswhen they light upon em. They keep a Whales Rib ofan incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon theGround with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch,the Head of which cannot be reached by a Man upon aCamels Back. This Rib (says John Leo) is said to havelayn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historiansaffirm, that a Prophet who prophesyd of Mahomet, camefrom this Temple, and some do not stand to assert, that theProphet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at the Base ofthe Temple.
In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, andif you be a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silentlyworship there.
CHAPTER 105. Does the Whales MagnitudeDiminish?Will He Perish?
Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes flounderingdown upon us from the head-waters of the Eternities, itmay be fitly inquired, whether, in the long course of his
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generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulkof his sires.
But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whalesof the present day superior in magnitude to those whosefossil remains are found in the Tertiary system (embracinga distinct geological period prior to man), but of the whalesfound in that Tertiary system, those belonging to its latterformations exceed in size those of its earlier ones.
Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far thelargest 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-measuregives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a large sizedmodern whale. And I have heard, on whalemens authority,that Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feetlong at the time of capture.
But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hourare an advance in magnitude upon those of all previousgeological periods; may it not be, that since Adams timethey have degenerated?
Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit theaccounts of such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancientnaturalists generally. For Pliny tells us of whales thatembraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus of otherswhich measured eight hundred feet in lengthRope Walks
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and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days ofBanks and Solander, Cookes naturalists, we find a Danishmember of the Academy of Sciences setting down certainIceland Whales (reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) atone hundred and twenty yards; that is, three hundredand sixty feet. And Lacpde, the French naturalist, in hiselaborate history of whales, in the very beginning of hiswork (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at one hundredmetres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet. And thiswork was published so late as A.D. 1825.
But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. Thewhale of to-day is as big as his ancestors in Plinys time.And if ever I go where Pliny is, I, a whaleman (more thanhe was), will make bold to tell him so. Because I cannotunderstand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummiesthat were buried thousands of years before even Pliny wasborn, do not measure so much in their coffins as a modernKentuckian in his socks; and while the cattle and otheranimals sculptured on the oldest Egyptian and Ninevehtablets, by the relative proportions in which they aredrawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred, stall-fed,prize cattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far exceed inmagnitude the fattest of Pharaohs fat kine; in the face ofall this, I will not admit that of all animals the whale aloneshould have degenerated.
But still another inquiry remains; one often agitatedby the more recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to
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the almost omniscient look-outs at the mast-heads ofthe whale-ships, now penetrating even through Behringsstraits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockersof the world; and the thousand harpoons and lancesdarted along all continental coasts; the moot point is,whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, andso remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last beexterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like thelast man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporatein the final puff.
Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humpedherds of buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread bytens of thousands the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, andshook 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 aninch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument wouldseem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot nowescape speedy extinction.
But you must look at this matter in every light. Thoughso short a period agonot a good lifetimethe census of thebuffalo in Illinois exceeded the census of men now inLondon, and though at the present day not one horn or hoofof them remains in all that region; and though the causeof this wondrous extermination was the spear of man; yetthe far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily
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forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men inone ship hunting the Sperm Whales for forty-eight monthsthink they have done extremely well, and thank God, if atlast they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in thedays of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappersof the West, when the far west (in whose sunset sunsstill rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same numberof moccasined men, for the same number of months,mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would haveslain not forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes; afact that, if need were, could be statistically stated.
Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument infavour of the gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale,for example, that in former years (the latter part ofthe last century, say) these Leviathans, in small pods,were encountered much oftener than at present, and, inconsequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, andwere also much more remunerative. Because, as has beenelsewhere noticed, those whales, influenced by someviews 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 aggregatedinto vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies. That isall. And equally fallacious seems the conceit, that becausethe so-called whale-bone whales no longer haunt manygrounds in former years abounding with them, hence thatspecies also is declining. For they are only being driven
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from promontory to cape; and if one coast is no longerenlivened with their jets, then, be sure, some other andremoter strand has been very recently startled by theunfamiliar spectacle.
Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans,they have two firm fortresses, which, in all humanprobability, will for ever remain impregnable. And asupon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty Swiss haveretreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the savannasand glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales canat last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under theultimate glassy barriers and walls there, come up amongicy fields and floes; and in a charmed circle of everlastingDecember, bid defiance to all pursuit from man.
But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales areharpooned for one cachalot, some philosophers of theforecastle have concluded that this positive havoc hasalready very seriously diminished their battalions. Butthough for some time past a number of these whales, notless than 13,000, have been annually slain on the nor westcoast by the Americans alone; yet there are considerationswhich render even this circumstance of little or no accountas an opposing argument in this matter.
Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning thepopulousness of the more enormous creatures of the globe,yet what shall we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when
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he tells us that at one hunting the King of Siam took 4,000elephants; that in those regions elephants are numerous asdroves of cattle in the temperate climes. And there seemsno reason to doubt that if these elephants, which havenow been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, byPorus, by Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs ofthe Eastif they still survive there in great numbers, muchmore may the great whale outlast all hunting, since he has apasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as large asall Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland,and all the Isles of the sea combined.
Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumedgreat longevity of whales, their probably attaining the ageof 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 familyvaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men,women, and children who were alive seventy-five yearsago; and adding this countless host to the present humanpopulation of the globe.
Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whaleimmortal in his species, however perishable in hisindividuality. He swam the seas before the continentsbroke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries,and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noahs flood hedespised Noahs Ark; and if ever the world is to be again
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flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, thenthe eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon thetopmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frotheddefiance to the skies.
CHAPTER 106. Ahabs Leg.
The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab hadquitted the Samuel Enderby of London, had not beenunattended with some small violence to his own person.He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boatthat 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 urgentcommand to the steersman (it was, as ever, somethingabout his not steering inflexibly enough); then, the alreadyshaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench,that though it still remained entire, and to all appearanceslusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy.
And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, thatfor all his pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did attimes give careful heed to the condition of that deadbone upon which he partly stood. For it had not beenvery long prior to the Pequods sailing from Nantucket,that he had been found one night lying prone upon theground, and insensible; by some unknown, and seeminglyinexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb havingbeen so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten,
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and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extremedifficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured.
Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniacmind, that all the anguish of that then present sufferingwas but the direct issue of a former woe; and he tooplainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptileof the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as thesweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with everyfelicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like.Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both theancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestryand posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it isan inference from certain canonic teachings, that whilesome natural enjoyments here shall have no children bornto them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shallbe followed by the joy-childlessness of all hells despair;whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilelybeget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny ofgriefs beyond the grave; not at all to hint of this, there stillseems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing.For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicitiesever 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 diligenttracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail thegenealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us atlast among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so
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that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and softcymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give into this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. Theineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but thestamp of sorrow in the signers.
Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, whichperhaps might more properly, in set way, have beendisclosed before. With many other particulars concerningAhab, always had it remained a mystery to some, why itwas, that for a certain period, both before and after thesailing of the Pequod, he had hidden himself away withsuch Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that oneinterval, sought speechless refuge, as it were, among themarble senate of the dead. Captain Pelegs bruited reasonfor this thing appeared by no means adequate; though,indeed, as touching all Ahabs deeper part, every revelationpartook more of significant darkness than of explanatorylight. But, in the end, it all came out; this one matterdid, at least. That direful mishap was at the bottom of histemporary 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 casualtyremaining,as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahabinvested itselfwith terrors, not entirely underived from the land of spiritsand of wails. So that, through their zeal for him, theyhad all conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up theknowledge of this thing from others; and hence it was, that
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not till a considerable interval had elapsed, did it transpireupon the Pequods decks.
But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod inthe air, or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, haveto do or not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matterof his leg, he took plain practical procedures;he called thecarpenter.
And when that functionary appeared before him, he badehim without delay set about making a new leg, anddirected the mates to see him supplied with all the studsand joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which had thus farbeen accumulated on the voyage, in order that a carefulselection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might besecured. This done, the carpenter received orders to havethe leg completed that night; and to provide all the fittingsfor it, independent of those pertaining to the distrusted onein use. Moreover, the ships forge was ordered to be hoistedout of its temporary idleness in the hold; and, to acceleratethe affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed atonce to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might beneeded.
CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, andtake high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder,a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take
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mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem amob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary andhereditary. But most humble though he was, and far fromfurnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; thePequods carpenter was no duplicate; hence, he now comesin person on this stage.
Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especiallythose belonging to whaling vessels, he was, to acertain off-handed, practical extent, alike experienced innumerous trades and callings collateral to his own; thecarpenters pursuit being the ancient and outbranchingtrunk of all those numerous handicrafts which more or lesshave to do with wood as an auxiliary material. But, besidesthe application to him of the generic remark above, thiscarpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in thosethousand nameless mechanical emergencies continuallyrecurring in a large ship, upon a three or four yearsvoyage, in uncivilized and far-distant seas. For not tospeak of his readiness in ordinary duties:repairing stoveboats, sprung spars, reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bulls eyes in the deck, or newtree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneousmatters more directly pertaining to his special business;he was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all manner ofconflicting aptitudes, both useful and capricious.
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various partsso manifold, was his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous
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table furnished with several vices, of different sizes, andboth of iron and of wood. At all times except whenwhales were alongside, this bench was securely lashedathwartships against the rear of the Try-works.
A belaying pin is found too large to be easily insertedinto 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 acaptive: out of clean shaved rods of right-whale bone, andcross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes apagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist:the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longedfor vermillion stars to be painted upon the blade of hisevery oar; screwing each oar in his big vice of wood,the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. Asailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: thecarpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: thecarpenter out pincers, and clapping one hand upon hisbench bids him be seated there; but the poor fellowunmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation;whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, thecarpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that, if he would havehim draw the tooth.
Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alikeindifferent and without respect in all. Teeth he accountedbits of ivory; heads he deemed but top-blocks; menthemselves he lightly held for capstans. But while now
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upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and withsuch liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this wouldseem to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence.But not precisely so. For nothing was this man moreremarkable, than for a certain impersonal stolidity as itwere; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into thesurrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with thegeneral stolidity discernible in the whole visible world;which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes,still eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, thoughyou 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 attimes, with an old, crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezinghumorousness, not unstreaked now and then with acertain grizzled wittiness; such as might have served topass the time during the midnight watch on the beardedforecastle of Noahs ark. Was it that this old carpenterhad been a life-long wanderer, whose much rolling, toand fro, not only had gathered no moss; but what ismore, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingingsmight have originally pertained to him? He was a striptabstract; an unfractioned integral; uncompromised as anew-born babe; living without premeditated reference tothis world or the next. You might almost say, that thisstrange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort ofunintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did notseem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply
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because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixtureof all these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind ofdeaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was apure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, musthave early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. Hewas like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful,_multum in parvo_, Sheffield contrivances, assuming theexteriorthough a little swelledof a common pocket knife;but containing, not only blades of various sizes, but alsoscrew-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers,nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted touse the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do wasto open that part of him, and the screw was fast: or if fortweezers, take him up by the legs, and there they were.
Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shutcarpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton.If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtlesomething that somehow anomalously did its duty. Whatthat was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few dropsof hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was; andthere 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 ofthe time soliloquizing; but only like an unreasoning wheel,which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his bodywas a sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there, andtalking all the time to keep himself awake.
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CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
The DeckFirst Night Watch.
(_Carpenter standing before his vice-bench, and by thelight of two lanterns busily filing the ivory joist for theleg, which joist is firmly fixed in the vice. Slabs of ivory,leather straps, pads, screws, and various tools of all sortslying about the bench. Forward, the red flame of the forgeis seen, where the blacksmith is at work._)
Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which shouldbe soft, and that is soft which should be hard. So we go,who file old jaws and shinbones. Lets try another. Aye,now, this works better (_sneezes_). Halloa, this bone dustis (_sneezes_)why its (_sneezes_)yes its (_sneezes_)blessmy soul, it wont let me speak! This is what an old fellowgets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree, andyou dont get this dust; amputate a live bone, and you dontget it (_sneezes_). Come, come, you old Smut, there, beara hand, and lets have that ferule and buckle-screw; Ill beready for them presently. Lucky now (_sneezes_) theres noknee-joint to make; that might puzzle a little; but a mereshinbonewhy its easy as making hop-poles; only I shouldlike to put a good finish on. Time, time; if I but only hadthe time, I could turn him out as neat a leg now as ever(_sneezes_) scraped to a lady in a parlor. Those buckskinlegs and calves of legs Ive seen in shop windows wouldntcompare at all. They soak water, they do; and of course
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get rheumatic, and have to be doctored (_sneezes_) withwashes and lotions, just like live legs. There; before I sawit off, now, I must call his old Mogulship, and see whetherthe length will be all right; too short, if anything, I guess.Ha! thats the heel; we are in luck; here he comes, or itssomebody else, thats certain.
AHAB (_advancing_). (_During the ensuing scene, thecarpenter continues sneezing at times._)
Well, manmaker!
Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark thelength. Let me measure, sir.
Measured for a leg! good. Well, its not the first time. Aboutit! There; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thouhast here, carpenter; let me feel its grip once. So, so; it doespinch some.
Oh, sir, it will break bonesbeware, beware!
No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something inthis slippery world that can hold, man. Whats Prometheusabout there?the blacksmith, I meanwhats he about?
He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.
Right. Its a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. Hemakes a fierce red flame there!
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Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of finework.
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 withfire; for whats made in fire must properly belong to fire;and so hells probable. How the soot flies! This must bethe remainder the Greek made the Africans of. Carpenter,when hes through with that buckle, tell him to forge apair of steel shoulder-blades; theres a pedlar aboard witha crushing pack.
Sir?
Hold; while Prometheus is about it, Ill order a completeman after a desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high inhis socks; then, chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel;then, legs with roots to em, to stay in one place; then, armsthree feet through the wrist; no heart at all, brass forehead,and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains; and let meseeshall I order eyes to see outwards? No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards. There, takethe order, and away.
Now, whats he speaking about, and whos he speaking to, Ishould like to know? Shall I keep standing here? (_aside_).
Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; heresone. No, no, no; I must have a lantern.
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Ho, ho! Thats it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve myturn.
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 thatsbut no;a very tidy, and, I may say, anextremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here,carpenter;or wouldst thou rather work in clay?
Sir?Clay? clay, sir? Thats mud; we leave clay to ditchers,sir.
The fellows impious! What art thou sneezing about?
Bone is rather dusty, sir.
Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never burythyself under living peoples noses.
Sir?oh! ah!I guess so;yesoh, dear!
Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a rightgood workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speakthoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mountthis leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another legin the same identical place with it; that is, carpenter, myold lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thounot drive that old Adam away?
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Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, Ihave heard something curious on that score, sir; how thata dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his oldspar, but it will be still pricking him at times. May I humblyask if it be really so, sir?
It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place wheremine once was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to theeye, yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life;there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I. Ist 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 anduninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou nowstandest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy mostsolitary hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers?Hold, dont speak! And if I still feel the smart of my crushedleg, though it be now so long dissolved; then, why maystnot thou, carpenter, feel the fiery pains of hell for ever, andwithout a body? Hah!
Good Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculateover again; I think I didnt carry a small figure, sir.
Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises.Howlong before the leg is done?
Perhaps an hour, sir.
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Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (_turns to go_).Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standingdebtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursedbe that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do awaywith ledgers. I would be free as air; and Im down in thewhole worlds books. I am so rich, I could have given bidfor bid with the wealthiest Prtorians at the auction of theRoman empire (which was the worlds); and yet I owe forthe flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens! Ill geta crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to onesmall, compendious vertebra. So.
CARPENTER (_resuming his work_).
Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubbalways says hes queer; says nothing but that one sufficientlittle word queer; hes queer, says Stubb; hes queerqueer,queer; and keeps dinning it into Mr. Starbuck all thetimequeersirqueer, queer, very queer. And heres his leg!Yes, now that I think of it, heres his bedfellow! has a stickof whales jaw-bone for a wife! And this is his leg; hellstand on this. What was that now about one leg standing inthree places, and all three places standing in one hellhowwas that? Oh! I dont wonder he looked so scornful at me!Im a sort of strange-thoughted sometimes, they say; butthats only haphazard-like. Then, a short, little old body likeme, should never undertake to wade out into deep waterswith tall, heron-built captains; the water chucks you underthe chin pretty quick, and theres a great cry for life-boats.
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And heres the herons leg! long and slim, sure enough!Now, for most folks one pair of legs lasts a lifetime, andthat must be because they use them mercifully, as a tender-hearted old lady uses her roly-poly old coach-horses. ButAhab; oh hes a hard driver. Look, driven one leg to death,and spavined the other for life, and now wears out bonelegs by the cord. Halloa, there, you Smut! bear a hand therewith those screws, and lets finish it before the resurrectionfellow comes a-calling with his horn for all legs, true orfalse, as brewery-men go round collecting old beer barrels,to fill em up again. What a leg this is! It looks like a reallive leg, filed down to nothing but the core; hell be standingon this to-morrow; hell be taking altitudes on it. Halloa! Ialmost forgot the little oval slate, smoothed ivory, where hefigures 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 nextmorning; and lo! no inconsiderable oil came up with thewater; the casks below must have sprung a bad leak. Muchconcern was shown; and Starbuck went down into thecabin to report this unfavourable affair.*
*In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity ofoil on board, it is a regular semi-weekly duty to conducta hose into the hold, and drench the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals, is removed
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by the ships pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to bekept damply tight; while by the changed character of thewithdrawn water, the mariners readily detect any seriousleakage in the precious cargo.
Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawingnigh to Formosa and the Bashee Isles, between whichlies one of the tropical outlets from the China waters intothe Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab with a generalchart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him; andanother separate one representing the long eastern coastsof the Japanese islandsNiphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke.With his snow-white new ivory leg braced against thescrewed leg of his table, and with a long pruning-hook ofa jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man, with hisback to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, andtracing his old courses again.
Whos there? hearing the footstep at the door, but notturning round to it. On deck! Begone!
Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold isleaking, 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 wemay make good in a year. What we come twenty thousandmiles to get is worth saving, sir.
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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! Im all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! notonly full of leaky casks, but those leaky casks are in a leakyship; and thats a far worse plight than the Pequods, man.Yet I dont stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in thedeep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, inthis lifes howling gale? Starbuck! Ill not have the Burtonshoisted.
What will the owners say, sir?
Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyellthe Typhoons. What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thouart always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserlyowners, as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye,the only real owner of anything is its commander; and harkye, my conscience is in this ships keel.On deck!
Captain Ahab, said the reddening mate, moving furtherinto the cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful andcautious that it almost seemed not only every way seekingto avoid the slightest outward manifestation of itself, butwithin also seemed more than half distrustful of itself; Abetter man than I might well pass over in thee what hewould quickly enough resent in a younger man; aye, andin a happier, Captain Ahab.
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Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically thinkof me?On deck!
Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sirto beforbearing! Shall we not understand each other better thanhitherto, Captain Ahab?
Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming partof most South-Sea-mens cabin furniture), and pointing ittowards Starbuck, exclaimed: There is one God that isLord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over thePequod.On deck!
For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fierycheeks, you would have almost thought that he had reallyreceived the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering hisemotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin,paused for an instant and said: Thou hast outraged, notinsulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware ofStarbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware ofAhab; beware of thyself, old man.
He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most carefulbravery that! murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared.Whats that he saidAhab beware of Ahabtheres somethingthere! 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, andreturning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.
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Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck, he said lowlyto the mate; then raising his voice to the crew: Furl thetgallant-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 asrespecting Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have been aflash of honesty in him; or mere prudential policy which,under the circumstance, imperiously forbade the slightestsymptom of open disaffection, however transient, in theimportant chief officer of his ship. However it was, hisorders were executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.
CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struckinto the hold were perfectly sound, and that the leak mustbe further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke outdeeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the hugeground-tier butts; and from that black midnight sendingthose gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deepdid they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedythe aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almostlooked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containingcoins 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, andshooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted
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out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; andthe hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treadingover empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sealike an air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship asa dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head. Well wasit 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 areunknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; till youget to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil.So with poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer, must notonly face all the rage of the living whale, butas we haveelsewhere seenmount his dead back in a rolling sea; andfinally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterlysweating all day in that subterraneous confinement,resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to theirstowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneersare the holders, so called.
Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about halfdisembowelled, you should have stooped over thehatchway, and peered down upon him there; where,stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage wascrawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a greenspotted lizard at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an
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ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where,strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he caughta terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, aftersome days suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to thevery sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wastedaway in those few long-lingering days, till there seemedbut little left of him but his frame and tattooing. But asall 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 mildlybut deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, awondrous testimony to that immortal health in him whichcould not die, or be weakened. And like circles on thewater, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyesseemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity.An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as yousat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strangethings in his face, as any beheld who were bystanderswhen Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous andfearful 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 anauthor from the dead could adequately tell. So thatletus say it againno dying Chaldee or Greek had higherand holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shadesyou saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as hequietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling seaseemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the oceans
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invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towardshis destined heaven.
Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as forQueequeg himself, what he thought of his case wasforcibly shown by a curious favour he asked. He called oneto him in the grey morning watch, when the day was justbreaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantuckethe 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 ofbeing so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlikethe custom of his own race, who, after embalming a deadwarrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him tobe floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not onlydo they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyondall visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas,interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the whitebreakers of the milky way. He added, that he shudderedat the thought of being buried in his hammock, accordingto the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile tothe death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe likethose of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being awhaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes werewithout 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,
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the carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequegsbidding, whatever it might include. There was someheathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber aboard, which,upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from theaboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and from thesedark planks the coffin was recommended to be made. Nosooner was the carpenter apprised of the order, than takinghis rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent promptitudeof his character, proceeded into the forecastle andtook Queequegs measure with great accuracy, regularlychalking Queequegs person as he shifted the rule.
Ah! poor fellow! hell have to die now, ejaculated the LongIsland sailor.
Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for conveniencesake and general reference, now transferringly measuredon it the exact length the coffin was to be, and thenmade the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at itsextremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and histools, and to work.
When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed andfitted, he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forwardwith it, inquiring whether they were ready for it yet in thatdirection.
Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries withwhich the people on deck began to drive the coffin away,
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Queequeg, to every ones consternation, commanded thatthe thing should be instantly brought to him, nor was thereany denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some dyingmen are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they willshortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellowsought to be indulged.
Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regardedthe coffin with an attentive eye. He then called for hisharpoon, had the wooden stock drawn from it, and thenhad the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of thepaddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuitswere then ranged round the sides within: a flask of freshwater was placed at the head, and a small bag of woodyearth scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreatedto be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial ofits comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a fewminutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out hislittle god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast withYojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he calledit) to be placed over him. The head part turned over witha leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin withlittle but his composed countenance in view. Rarmai (itwill do; it is easy), he murmured at last, and signed to bereplaced in his hammock.
But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hoveringnear by all this while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and
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with soft sobbings, took him by the hand; in the other,holding his tambourine.
Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this wearyroving? where go ye now? But if the currents carry ye tothose sweet Antilles where the beaches are only beat withwater-lilies, will ye do one little errand for me? Seek outone Pip, whos now been missing long: I think hes in thosefar Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he mustbe very sad; for look! hes left his tambourine behind;Ifound it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and Illbeat ye your dying march.
I have heard, murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle,that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked inancient tongues; and that when the mystery is probed, itturns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhoodthose ancient tongues had been really spoken in theirhearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith,poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, bringsheavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Wherelearned he that, but there?Hark! he speaks again: but morewildly now.
Form two and two! Lets make a General of him! Ho,wheres his harpoon? Lay it across here.Rig-a-dig, dig, dig!huzza! Oh for a game cock now to sit upon his head andcrow! Queequeg dies game!mind ye that; Queequeg diesgame!take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game!
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I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died acoward; died all ashiver;out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye findPip, tell all the Antilles hes a runaway; a coward, a coward,a coward! Tell them he jumped from a whale-boat! Idnever beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail himGeneral, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shameupon all cowardsshame upon them! Let em go drown likePip, that jumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!
During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in adream. Pip was led away, and the sick man was replacedin his hammock.
But now that he had apparently made every preparationfor death; now that his coffin was proved a good fit,Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon there seemed no need ofthe carpenters box: and thereupon, when some expressedtheir delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that thecause of his sudden convalescence was this;at a criticalmoment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which hewas leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mindabout dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They askedhim, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his ownsovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In aword, it was Queequegs conceit, that if a man made uphis mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothingbut a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable,unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
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Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savageand civilized; that while a sick, civilized man may be sixmonths convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savageis almost half-well again in a day. So, in good time myQueequeg gained strength; and at length after sitting onthe windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with avigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw outhis arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawneda little bit, and then springing into the head of his hoistedboat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for afight.
With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for asea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes,set them in order there. Many spare hours he spent, incarving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures anddrawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, inhis rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on hisbody. And this tattooing had been the work of a departedprophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphicmarks, had written out on his body a complete theory of theheavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art ofattaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper personwas a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume;but whose mysteries not even himself could read, thoughhis own live heart beat against them; and these mysterieswere therefore destined in the end to moulder away withthe living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and
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so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must havebeen which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation ofhis, when one morning turning away from surveying poorQueequegOh, devilish tantalization of the gods!
CHAPTER 111. The Pacific.
When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last uponthe great South Sea; were it not for other things, I couldhave greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, fornow the long supplication of my youth was answered; thatserene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leaguesof blue.
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea,whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hiddensoul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesiansod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is,that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairiesand Potters Fields of all four continents, the waves shouldrise 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 intheir beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by theirrestlessness.
To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, oncebeheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls
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the midmost waters of the world, the Indian ocean andAtlantic being but its arms. The same waves wash themoles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterdayplanted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded butstill gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham;while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrableJapans. Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones theworlds whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay toit; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by thoseeternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god,bowing your head to Pan.
But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahabs brain, as standinglike an iron statue at his accustomed place beside themizen rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffedthe sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweetwoods mild lovers must be walking), and with the otherconsciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea;that sea in which the hated White Whale must even thenbe swimming. Launched at length upon these almostfinal waters, and gliding towards the Japanese cruising-ground, the old mans purpose intensified itself. His firmlips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his foreheadsveins swelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, hisringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, Stern all! theWhite Whale spouts thick blood!
CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.
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Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather thatnow reigned in these latitudes, and in preparation for thepeculiarly active pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth,the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, had not removedhis portable forge to the hold again, after concludinghis contributory work for Ahabs leg, but still retainedit 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 jobfor them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping theirvarious weapons and boat furniture. Often he would besurrounded 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 hetoiled. Nevertheless, this old mans was a patient hammerwielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, nopetulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn;bowing over still further his chronically broken back, hetoiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beatingof his hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so itwas.Most miserable!
A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painfulappearing yawing in his gait, had at an early period of thevoyage excited the curiosity of the mariners. And to theimportunity of their persisted questionings he had finallygiven in; and so it came to pass that every one now knewthe shameful story of his wretched fate.
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Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winters midnight,on the road running between two country towns, theblacksmith half-stupidly felt the deadly numbness stealingover 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 thefour acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yetuncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his lifes drama.
He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, hadpostponedly encountered that thing in sorrows technicalscalled 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 threeblithe, ruddy children; every Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church, planted in a grove. But one night, undercover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunningdisguisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happyhome, and robbed them all of everything. And darker yetto tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct thisburglar into his familys 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 blacksmiths shop was in thebasement of his dwelling, but with a separate entranceto it; so that always had the young and loving healthywife listened with no unhappy nervousness, but withvigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her young-armed
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old husbands hammer; whose reverberations, muffled bypassing through the floors and walls, came up to her, notunsweetly, in her nursery; and so, to stout Labors ironlullaby, the blacksmiths infants were rocked to slumber.
Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimesbe timely? Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyselfere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widowhad a delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable,legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all ofthem a care-killing competency. But Death plucked downsome virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling dailytoil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family,and left the worse than useless old man standing, till thehideous rot of life should make him easier to harvest.
Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammerevery day grew more and more between; and each blowevery day grew fainter than the last; the wife sat frozen atthe window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly gazing into theweeping faces of her children; the bellows fell; the forgechoked up with cinders; the house was sold; the motherdived down into the long church-yard grass; her childrentwice followed her thither; and the houseless, familylessold man staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woeunreverenced; 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
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Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities ofthe immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored;therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, whostill have left in them some interior compunctions againstsuicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive oceanalluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable,taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; andfrom the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaidssing to themCome hither, broken-hearted; here is anotherlife without the guilt of intermediate death; here arewonders supernatural, without dying for them. Comehither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equallyabhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more obliviousthan 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 earlysunrise, and by fall of eve, the blacksmiths soul responded,Aye, I come! And so Perth went a-whaling.
CHAPTER 113. The Forge.
With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skinapron, about mid-day, Perth was standing between hisforge and anvil, the latter placed upon an iron-wood log,with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and withthe other at his forges lungs, when Captain Ahab camealong, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathernbag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody
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Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron fromthe fire, began hammering it upon the anvilthe red masssending off the sparks in thick hovering flights, some ofwhich flew close to Ahab.
Are these thy Mother Careys chickens, Perth? they arealways flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but notto all;look here, they burn; but thouthou livst among themwithout a scorch.
Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab, answeredPerth, resting for a moment on his hammer; I am pastscorching; not easily canst thou scorch a scar.
Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly,sanely woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatientof all misery in others that is not mad. Thou shouldst gomad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? Howcanst thou endure without being mad? Do the heavensyet hate thee, that thou canst not go mad?What wert thoumaking there?
Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dentsin it.
And canst thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, aftersuch hard usage as it had?
I think so, sir.
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And I suppose thou canst smoothe almost any seams anddents; 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 Perths shoulders; lookye here_here_can ye smoothe out a seam like this,blacksmith, sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow; ifthou couldst, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my headupon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between myeyes. Answer! Canst thou smoothe this seam?
Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents butone?
Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it isunsmoothable; for though thou only seest it here in myflesh, it has worked down into the bone of my skull_that_is all wrinkles! But, away with childs play; no more gaffsand 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.Theres the stuff, flinging the pouch upon the anvil. Lookye, blacksmith, these are the gathered nail-stubbs of thesteel shoes of racing horses.
Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hasthere, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths
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ever work.
I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together likeglue from the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge methe harpoon. And forge me first, twelve rods for its shank;then wind, and twist, and hammer these twelve togetherlike the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! Ill blow thefire.
When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them,one by one, by spiralling them, with his own hand, round along, heavy iron bolt. A flaw! rejecting the last one. Workthat over again, Perth.
This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelveinto one, when Ahab stayed his hand, and said he wouldweld his own iron. As, then, with regular, gasping hems, hehammered on the anvil, Perth passing to him the glowingrods, one after the other, and the hard pressed forgeshooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passedsilently, and bowing over his head towards the fire, seemedinvoking some curse or some blessing on the toil. But, asAhab looked up, he slid aside.
Whats that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?muttered Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. ThatParsee smells fire like a fusee; and smells of it himself, likea hot muskets powder-pan.
At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final
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heat; and as Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing intothe cask of water near by, the scalding steam shot up intoAhabs bent face.
Wouldst thou brand me, Perth? wincing for a moment withthe pain; have I been but forging my own branding-iron,then?
Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Isnot this harpoon for the White Whale?
For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must makethem thyself, man. Here are my razorsthe best of steel;here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of theIcy Sea.
For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors asthough he would fain not use them.
Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neithershave, sup, nor pray tillbut hereto work!
Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded byPerth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of theiron; and as the blacksmith was about giving the barbstheir final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahabto place the water-cask near.
No, nono water for that; I want it of the true death-temper.Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye,
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pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover thisbarb? holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied,Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, andthe White Whales barbs were then tempered.
Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nominediaboli! deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant ironscorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.
Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selectingone of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fittedthe end to the socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-linewas then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to thewindlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing hisfoot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, theneagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahabexclaimed, Good! and now for the seizings.
At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separatespread yarns were all braided and woven round the socketof the harpoon; the pole was then driven hard up intothe socket; from the lower end the rope was traced half-way along the poles length, and firmly secured so, withintertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and ropelikethe Three Fatesremained inseparable, and Ahab moodilystalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg,and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringingalong every plank. But ere he entered his cabin, light,unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was
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heard. Oh, Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unrestingeye; all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blendedwith the black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and mockedit!
CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.
Penetrating further and further into the heart of theJapanese cruising ground, the Pequod was soon all astir inthe fishery. Often, in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve,fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the stretch, theywere engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing, orpaddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty orseventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; thoughwith but small success for their pains.
At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day uponsmooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as abirch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft wavesthemselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr againstthe gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, whenbeholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the oceansskin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; andwould not willingly remember, that this velvet paw butconceals a remorseless fang.
These are the times, when in his whale-boat the roversoftly feels a certain filial, confident, land-like feelingtowards the sea; that he regards it as so much flowery
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earth; and the distant ship revealing only the tops of hermasts, seems struggling forward, not through high rollingwaves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: aswhen the western emigrants horses only show their erectedears, while their hidden bodies widely wade through theamazing verdure.
The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; asover these there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swearthat play-wearied children lie sleeping in these solitudes,in some glad May-time, when the flowers of the woods areplucked. 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, failof at least as temporary an effect on Ahab. But if thesesecret golden keys did seem to open in him his own secretgolden treasuries, yet did his breath upon them prove buttarnishing.
Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes inthe soul; in ye,though long parched by the dead droughtof the earthy life,in ye, men yet may roll, like younghorses in new morning clover; and for some few fleetingmoments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them.Would to God these blessed calms would last. But themingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp andwoof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm.
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There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; wedo not advance through fixed gradations, and at the lastone pause:through infancys unconscious spell, boyhoodsthoughtless faith, adolescence doubt (the common doom),then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhoodspondering repose of If. But once gone through, we tracethe round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifseternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoorno more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which theweariest will never weary? Where is the foundlings fatherhidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unweddedmothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity liesin their grave, and we must there to learn it.
And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boatsside into that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:
Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his youngbrides eye!Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thykidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancyoust memory; I look deep down and do believe.
And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up inthat same golden light:
I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takesoaths that he has always been jolly!
CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
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And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds thatcame bearing down before the wind, some few weeks afterAhabs harpoon had been welded.
It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had justwedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down herbursting hatches; and now, in glad holiday apparel, wasjoyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing roundamong the widely-separated ships on the ground, previousto pointing her prow for home.
The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers ofnarrow red bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down; and hanging captivefrom the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of thelast whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks ofall colours were flying from her rigging, on every side.Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops weretwo 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 themost surprising success; all the more wonderful, for thatwhile cruising in the same seas numerous other vesselshad gone entire months without securing a single fish. Notonly had barrels of beef and bread been given away tomake room for the far more valuable sperm, but additionalsupplemental casks had been bartered for, from the ships
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she had met; and these were stowed along the deck, andin the captains and officers state-rooms. Even the cabintable itself had been knocked into kindling-wood; and thecabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil-butt, lasheddown to the floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, thesailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests, andfilled them; it was humorously added, that the cook hadclapped a head on his largest boiler, and filled it; thatthe steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it;that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their ironsand filled them; that indeed everything was filled withsperm, except the captains pantaloons pockets, and thosehe reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacenttestimony of his entire satisfaction.
As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moodyPequod, the barbarian sound of enormous drums camefrom her forecastle; and drawing still nearer, a crowd of hermen were seen standing round her huge try-pots, which,covered with the parchment-like _poke_ or stomach skinof the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every strokeof 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 PolynesianIsles; while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmlysecured aloft between the foremast and mainmast, threeLong Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whaleivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile,others of the ships company were tumultuously busy at
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the masonry of the try-works, from which the huge potshad been removed. You would have almost thought theywere pulling down the cursed Bastille, such wild cries theyraised, as the now useless brick and mortar were beinghurled into the sea.
Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stooderect on the ships elevated quarter-deck, so that the wholerejoicing drama was full before him, and seemed merelycontrived for his own individual diversion.
And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck,shaggy and black, with a stubborn gloom; and as thetwo ships crossed each others wakesone all jubilationsfor things passed, the other all forebodings as to thingsto cometheir two captains in themselves impersonated thewhole striking contrast of the scene.
Come aboard, come aboard! cried the gay Bachelorscommander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air.
Hast seen the White Whale? gritted Ahab in reply.
No; only heard of him; but dont believe in him at all, saidthe other good-humoredly. Come aboard!
Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?
Not enough to speak oftwo islanders, thats all;but comeaboard, old hearty, come along. Ill soon take that black
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from your brow. Come along, will ye (merrys the play); afull ship and homeward-bound.
How wondrous familiar is a fool! muttered Ahab; thenaloud, Thou art a full ship and homeward bound, thousayst; 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 thebreeze, the other stubbornly fought against it; and so thetwo vessels parted; the crew of the Pequod looking withgrave, lingering glances towards the receding Bachelor;but the Bachelors men never heeding their gaze for thelively revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning overthe taffrail, eyed the homeward-bound craft, he tookfrom his pocket a small vial of sand, and then lookingfrom the ship to the vial, seemed thereby bringing tworemote associations together, for that vial was filled withNantucket soundings.
CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.
Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortunesfavourites sail close by us, we, though all adroop before,catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feelour bagging sails fill out. So seemed it with the Pequod.For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor, whaleswere seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab.
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It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearingsof the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovelysunset sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together;then, such a sweetness and such plaintiveness, suchinwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it almostseemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleysof the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonlyturned sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these vesperhymns.
Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab,who had sterned off from the whale, sat intently watchinghis final wanings from the now tranquil boat. For thatstrange spectacle observable in all sperm whales dyingtheturning sunwards of the head, and so expiringthat strangespectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow toAhab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before.
He turns and turns him to it,how slowly, but howsteadfastly, his homage-rendering and invoking brow,with his last dying motions. He too worships fire; mostfaithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!Oh that thesetoo-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights.Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of humanweal or woe; in these most candid and impartial seas;where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets; where for longChinese ages, the billows have still rolled on speechlessand unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the Nigersunknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith;
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but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round thecorpse, and it heads some other way.
Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drownedbones hast builded thy separate throne somewhere inthe 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 aftercalm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dyinghead, and then gone round again, without a lesson to me.
Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, highaspiring, rainbowed jet!that one strivest, this one jettestall in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedingswith yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, butgives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with aprouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglingsfloat beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of onceliving things, exhaled as air, but water now.
Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossingsthe wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckledby the sea; though hill and valley mothered me, ye billowsare 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
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ahead; one astern. These last three were brought alongsideere nightfall; but the windward one could not be reachedtill morning; and the boat that had killed it lay by its sideall night; and that boat was Ahabs.
The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whalesspout-hole; and the lantern hanging from its top, cast atroubled flickering glare upon the black, glossy back, andfar out upon the midnight waves, which gently chafed thewhales broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach.
Ahab and all his boats crew seemed asleep but the Parsee;who crouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, thatspectrally played round the whale, and tapped the lightcedar planks with their tails. A sound like the moaningin squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts ofGomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.
Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw theParsee; and hooped round by the gloom of the night theyseemed the last men in a flooded world. I have dreamed itagain, said he.
Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neitherhearse 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 thisvoyage, two hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea;
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the first not made by mortal hands; and the visible woodof the last one must be grown in America.
Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:a hearse and itsplumes 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 thypilot.
And when thou art so gone beforeif that ever befallthenere I can follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot mestill?Was it not so? Well, then, did I believe all ye say, ohmy pilot! I have here two pledges that I shall yet slay MobyDick and survive it.
Take another pledge, old man, said the Parsee, as his eyeslighted up like fire-flies in the gloomHemp only can killthee.
The gallows, ye mean.I am immortal then, on land and onsea, cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;Immortal on landand on sea!
Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn cameon, and the slumbering crew arose from the boats bottom,and ere noon the dead whale was brought to the ship.
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CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.
The season for the Line at length drew near; and every daywhen Ahab, coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft,the vigilant helmsman would ostentatiously handle hisspokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to the braces,and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed onthe nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point theships prow for the equator. In good time the order came. Itwas hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows ofhis high-hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted dailyobservation of the sun to determine his latitude.
Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are asfreshets of effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanesesun seems the blazing focus of the glassy oceansimmeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks lacquered;clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and thisnakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferablesplendors of Gods throne. Well that Ahabs quadrant wasfurnished with coloured glasses, through which to takesight of that solar fire. So, swinging his seated form tothe roll of the ship, and with his astrological-lookinginstrument placed to his eye, he remained in that posturefor some moments to catch the precise instant when thesun should gain its precise meridian. Meantime while hiswhole attention was absorbed, the Parsee was kneelingbeneath him on the ships deck, and with face thrown uplike Ahabs, was eyeing the same sun with him; only the
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lids of his eyes half hooded their orbs, and his wild facewas subdued to an earthly passionlessness. At length thedesired observation was taken; and with his pencil uponhis ivory leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude mustbe at that precise instant. Then falling into a momentsrevery, he again looked up towards the sun and murmuredto himself: Thou sea-mark! thou high and mighty Pilot!thou tellest me truly where I _am_but canst thou cast theleast hint where I _shall_ be? Or canst thou tell wheresome other thing besides me is this moment living? Whereis Moby Dick? This instant thou must be eyeing him.These eyes of mine look into the very eye that is evennow beholding him; aye, and into the eye that is even nowequally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither sideof thee, thou sun!
Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after theother, its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he ponderedagain, and muttered: Foolish toy! babies plaything ofhaughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains; theworld brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but whatafter all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, wherethou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and thehand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst nottell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will beto-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultestthe sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursedbe all the things that cast mans eyes aloft to that heaven,whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes
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are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level bynature to this earths horizon are the glances of mans eyes;not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meanthim to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!dashing it to the deck, no longer will I guide my earthlyway by thee; the level ships 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 theboat to the deck, thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thingthat feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!
As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampledwith his live and dead feet, a sneering triumph thatseemed meant for Ahab, and a fatalistic despair thatseemed meant for himselfthese passed over the mute,motionless Parsees face. Unobserved he rose and glidedaway; while, awestruck by the aspect of their commander,the seamen clustered together on the forecastle, till Ahab,troubledly pacing the deck, shouted outTo the braces! Uphelm!square in!
In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled upon her heel, her three firm-seated gracefulmasts erectly poised upon her long, ribbed hull, seemed asthe three Horatii pirouetting on one sufficient steed.
Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched thePequods tumultuous way, and Ahabs also, as he wentlurching along the deck.
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I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it allaglow, full of its tormented flaming life; and I have seenit wane at last, down, down, to dumbest dust. Old man ofoceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at lengthremain but one little heap of ashes!
Aye, cried Stubb, but sea-coal ashesmind ye that, Mr.Starbucksea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well;I heard Ahab mutter, Here some one thrusts these cardsinto 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 ofBengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure.Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders:gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tamenorthern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendentJapanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of allstorms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out thatcloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed andsleepy town.
Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of hercanvas, and bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon whichhad struck her directly ahead. When darkness came on, skyand sea roared and split with the thunder, and blazed with
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the lightning, that showed the disabled masts flutteringhere and there with the rags which the first fury of thetempest had left for its after sport.
Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on thequarter-deck; at every flash of the lightning glancingaloft, to see what additional disaster might have befallenthe intricate hamper there; while Stubb and Flask weredirecting the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashingof the boats. But all their pains seemed naught. Thoughlifted to the very top of the cranes, the windward quarterboat (Ahabs) did not escape. A great rolling sea, dashinghigh up against the reeling ships high teetering side, stovein the boats bottom at the stern, and left it again, alldripping through like a sieve.
Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck, said Stubb, regardingthe wreck, but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one,cant fight it. You see, Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a greatlong start before it leaps, all round the world it runs, andthen comes the spring! But as for me, all the start I haveto meet it, is just across the deck here. But never mind; itsall in fun: so the old song says;(_sings_.)
Oh! jolly is the gale, And a joker is the whale, A flourishinhis tail, Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-pokylad, is the Ocean, oh!
The scud all a flyin, Thats his flip only foamin; When he
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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, Atastin 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, andstrike his harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a braveman 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 Itell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, theres no way to stop mysinging in this world but to cut my throat. And when thatsdone, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a wind-up.
Madman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thineown.
What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybodyelse, never mind how foolish?
Here! cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, andpointing his hand towards the weather bow, markest thounot that the gale comes from the eastward, the very courseAhab is to run for Moby Dick? the very course he swungto this day noon? now mark his boat there; where isthat stove? In the stern-sheets, man; where he is wont tostandhis stand-point is stove, man! Now jump overboard,
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and sing away, if thou must!
I dont half understand ye: whats in the wind?
Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest wayto Nantucket, soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless ofStubbs question. The gale that now hammers at us to staveus, we can turn it into a fair wind that will drive us towardshome. Yonder, to windward, all is blackness of doom; butto leeward, homewardI see it lightens up there; but not withthe lightning.
At that moment in one of the intervals of profounddarkness, following the flashes, a voice was heard at hisside; and almost at the same instant a volley of thunderpeals rolled overhead.
Whos there?
Old Thunder! said Ahab, groping his way along thebulwarks to his pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his pathmade plain to him by elbowed lances of fire.
Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intendedto carry off the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindredrod which at sea some ships carry to each mast, is intendedto conduct it into the water. But as this conductor mustdescend to considerable depth, that its end may avoid allcontact with the hull; and as moreover, if kept constantlytowing there, it would be liable to many mishaps, besides
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interfering not a little with some of the rigging, and moreor less impeding the vessels way in the water; because ofall this, the lower parts of a ships lightning-rods are notalways overboard; but are generally made in long slenderlinks, so as to be the more readily hauled up into the chainsoutside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion mayrequire.
The rods! the rods! cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenlyadmonished to vigilance by the vivid lightning that hadjust been darting flambeaux, to light Ahab to his post. Arethey overboard? drop them over, fore and aft. Quick!
Avast! cried Ahab; lets have fair play here, though webe the weaker side. Yet Ill contribute to raise rods on theHimmalehs and Andes, that all the world may be secured;but out on privileges! Let them be, sir.
Look aloft! cried Starbuck. The corpusants! thecorpusants!
All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; andtouched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with threetapering white flames, each of the three tall masts wassilently burning in that sulphurous air, like three giganticwax tapers before an altar.
Blast the boat! let it go! cried Stubb at this instant, as aswashing sea heaved up under his own little craft, so thatits gunwale violently jammed his hand, as he was passing
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a lashing. Blast it!but slipping backward on the deck, hisuplifted eyes caught the flames; and immediately shiftinghis tone he criedThe corpusants have mercy on us all!
To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear inthe 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 allmy voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath whenGods burning finger has been laid on the ship; when HisMene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin has been woven into theshrouds and the cordage.
While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words wereheard from the enchanted crew; who in one thick clusterstood on the forecastle, all their eyes gleaming in that palephosphorescence, 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 seemedthe black cloud from which the thunder had come. Theparted mouth of Tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth,which strangely gleamed as if they too had been tippedby corpusants; while lit up by the preternatural light,Queequegs tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames onhis body.
The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft;and once more the Pequod and every soul on her deckswere wrapped in a pall. A moment or two passed, when
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Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one. It wasStubb. What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry; it wasnot the same in the song.
No, no, it wasnt; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all;and I hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy onlong faces?have they no bowels for a laugh? And look ye,Mr. Starbuckbut its too dark to look. Hear me, then: I takethat mast-head flame we saw for a sign of good luck; forthose masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be chocka block with sperm-oil, dye see; and so, all that sperm willwork up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our threemasts will yet be as three spermaceti candlesthats the goodpromise we saw.
At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubbsface slowly beginning to glimmer into sight. Glancingupwards, he cried: See! see! and once more the hightapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubledsupernaturalness in their pallor.
The corpusants have mercy on us all, cried Stubb, again.
At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon andthe flame, the Parsee was kneeling in Ahabs front, but withhis head bowed away from him; while near by, from thearched and overhanging rigging, where they had just beenengaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen, arrestedby the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous,
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like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchardtwig. In various enchanted attitudes, like the standing,or stepping, or running skeletons in Herculaneum, othersremained rooted to the deck; but all their eyes upcast.
Aye, aye, men! cried Ahab. Look up at it; mark it well; thewhite flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Handme those mainmast links there; I would fain feel this pulse,and let mine beat against it; blood against fire! So.
Then turningthe last link held fast in his left hand, he puthis foot upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, andhigh-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 Ias Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act soburned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I nowknow thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy rightworship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wiltthou be kind; and een for hate thou canst but kill; andall are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thyspeechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of myearthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegralmastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal,a personality stands here. Though but a point at best;whencesoeer I came; wheresoeer I go; yet while I earthlylive, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels herroyal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy
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lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; butat thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and thoughthou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, theres thatin here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit,of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, Ibreathe it back to thee.
[_Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flamesleap lengthwise to thrice their previous height; Ahab, withthe rest, closes his eyes, his right hand pressed hard uponthem._]
I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Norwas it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thoucanst blind; but I can then grope. Thou canst consume;but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these pooreyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightningflashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache;my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rollingon some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet willI talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out ofdarkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leapingout of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not?There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now Ido glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fieryfather; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! whathast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thineis greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callestthyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning,
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hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, whichthou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. Thereis some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit,to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativenessmechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorchedeyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermitimmemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thyunparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I readmy sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; Iburn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyinglyI worship thee!
The boat! the boat! cried Starbuck, look at thy boat, oldman!
Ahabs harpoon, the one forged at Perths fire, remainedfirmly lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projectedbeyond his whale-boats bow; but the sea that had stove itsbottom had caused the loose leather sheath to drop off; andfrom the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flameof pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there likea serpents tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the armGod,God is against thee, old man; forbear! tis an ill voyage!ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while wemay, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, togo on a better voyage than this.
Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantlyran to the bracesthough not a sail was left aloft. For
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the moment all the aghast mates thoughts seemed theirs;they raised a half mutinous cry. But dashing the rattlinglightning links to the deck, and snatching the burningharpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearingto transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a ropesend. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking fromthe fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, andAhab again spoke:
All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding asmine; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahabis bound. And that ye may know to what tune this heartbeats; look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear! And withone blast of his breath he extinguished the flame.
As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly theneighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose veryheight and strength but render it so much the more unsafe,because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so atthose last words of Ahabs many of the mariners did runfrom him in a terror of dismay.
CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the FirstNight Watch.
_Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him._
We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The bandis working loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall Istrike it, sir?
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Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, Id sway themup now.
Sir!in Gods name!sir?
Well.
The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?
Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. Thewind rises, but it has not got up to my table-lands yet.Quick, and see to it.By masts and keels! he takes me forthe hunch-backed skipper of some coasting smack. Senddown my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest truckswere made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of minenow sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh,none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempesttime. What a hooroosh aloft there! I would een take it forsublime, 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 passingadditional lashings over the anchors there hanging._
No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as youplease, but you will never pound into me what you werejust now saying. And how long ago is it since you saidthe very contrary? Didnt you once say that whatever ship
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Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on itsinsurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powderbarrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didntyou say so?
Well, suppose I did? What then? Ive part changed my fleshsince 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 drenchingspray here? Why, my little man, you have pretty redhair, but you couldnt get afire now. Shake yourself; youreAquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask; might fill pitchersat your coat collar. Dont you see, then, that for theseextra risks the Marine Insurance companies have extraguarantees? Here are hydrants, Flask. But hark, again, andIll answer ye the other thing. First take your leg off fromthe crown of the anchor here, though, so I can pass therope; now listen. Whats the mighty difference betweenholding a masts lightning-rod in the storm, and standingclose by a mast that hasnt got any lightning-rod at all ina storm? Dont you see, you timber-head, that no harmcan come to the holder of the rod, unless the mast is firststruck? What are you talking about, then? Not one shipin a hundred carries rods, and Ahab,aye, man, and allof us,were in no more danger then, in my poor opinion,than all the crews in ten thousand ships now sailing theseas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose you would haveevery man in the world go about with a small lightning-
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rod running up the corner of his hat, like a militia officersskewered feather, and trailing behind like his sash. Whydont ye be sensible, Flask? its easy to be sensible; whydont ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible.
I dont know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard.
Yes, when a fellows soaked through, its hard to be sensible,thats a fact. And I am about drenched with this spray.Never mind; catch the turn there, and pass it. Seems to mewe are lashing down these anchors now as if they werenever going to be used again. Tying these two anchorshere, Flask, seems like tying a mans hands behind him.And what big generous hands they are, to be sure. Theseare your iron fists, hey? What a hold they have, too! Iwonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; ifshe is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though.There, hammer that knot down, and weve done. So; nextto 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 longtailed coat ought always to be worn in all storms afloat.The tails tapering down that way, serve to carry off thewater, dye see. Same with cocked hats; the cocks formgable-end eave-troughs, Flask. No more monkey-jacketsand tarpaulins for me; I must mount a swallow-tail, anddrive down a beaver; so. Halloa! whew! there goes mytarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord, that the winds that come
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from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nastynight, lad.
CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.Thunder and Lightning.
_The main-top-sail yard_._Tashtego passing new lashingsaround it_.
Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunderup here. Whats the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We dontwant 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 manat the Pequods jaw-bone tiller had several times beenreelingly hurled to the deck by its spasmodic motions,even though preventer tackles had been attached to itforthey were slackbecause some play to the tiller wasindispensable.
In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossedshuttlecock to the blast, it is by no means uncommon tosee the needles in the compasses, at intervals, go roundand round. It was thus with the Pequods; at almost everyshock the helmsman had not failed to notice the whirlingvelocity with which they revolved upon the cards; it is asight that hardly anyone can behold without some sort ofunwonted emotion.
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Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much,that through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck andStubbone engaged forward and the other aftthe shiveredremnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails were cutadrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward,like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are castto the winds when that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.
The three corresponding new sails were now bent andreefed, and a storm-trysail was set further aft; so that theship soon went through the water with some precisionagain; and the coursefor the present, East-south-eastwhichhe was to steer, if practicable, was once more given to thehelmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he had onlysteered according to its vicissitudes. But as he was nowbringing the ship as near her course as possible, watchingthe compass meanwhile, lo! a good sign! the wind seemedcoming 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 singingfor joy, that so promising an event should so soon havefalsified the evil portents preceding it.
In compliance with the standing order of his commandertoreport immediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided change in the affairs ofthe deck,Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards
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to the breezehowever reluctantly and gloomily,than hemechanically went below to apprise Captain Ahab of thecircumstance.
Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily pausedbefore it a moment. The cabin lamptaking long swingsthis way and thatwas burning fitfully, and casting fitfulshadows upon the old mans bolted door,a thin one, withfixed blinds inserted, in place of upper panels. The isolatedsubterraneousness of the cabin made a certain hummingsilence to reign there, though it was hooped round by allthe roar of the elements. The loaded muskets in the rackwere shiningly revealed, as they stood upright against theforward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright man;but out of Starbucks heart, at that instant when he saw themuskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but soblent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for theinstant he hardly knew it for itself.
He would have shot me once, he murmured, yes, theresthe very musket that he pointed at me;that one with thestudded stock; let me touch itlift it. Strange, that I, whohave handled so many deadly lances, strange, that I shouldshake so now. Loaded? I must see. Aye, aye; and powderin the pan;thats not good. Best spill it?wait. Ill cure myselfof this. Ill hold the musket boldly while I think.I cometo report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for deathand doom,_thats_ fair for Moby Dick. Its a fair wind thats
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only fair for that accursed fish.The very tube he pointed atme!the very one; _this_ oneI hold it here; he would havekilled me with the very thing I handle now.Aye and hewould fain kill all his crew. Does he not say he will notstrike his spars to any gale? Has he not dashed his heavenlyquadrant? and in these same perilous seas, gropes he nothis way by mere dead reckoning of the error-aboundinglog? and in this very Typhoon, did he not swear that hewould have no lightning-rods? But shall this crazed oldman be tamely suffered to drag a whole ships companydown to doom with him?Yes, it would make him thewilful murderer of thirty men and more, if this ship cometo any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my soulswears this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, hewere this instantput aside, that crime would not be his.Ha! is he muttering in his sleep? Yes, just there,in there,hes sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awakeagain. I cant withstand thee, then, old man. Not reasoning;not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all thisthou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands,this is all thou breathest. Aye, and sayst the men have vowdthy vow; sayst all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!But isthere no other way? no lawful way?Make him a prisoner tobe taken home? What! hope to wrest this old mans livingpower from his own living hands? Only a fool would try it.Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes andhawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; hewould be more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I could
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not endure the sight; could not possibly fly his howlings;all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason would leaveme on the long intolerable voyage. What, then, remains?The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japanthe nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with twooceans and a whole continent between me and law.Aye,aye, tis so.Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikesa would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skintogether?And would I be a murderer, then, ifand slowly,stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loadedmuskets end against the door.
On this level, Ahabs hammock swings within; his headthis way. A touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug hiswife and child again.Oh Mary! Mary!boy! boy! boy!Butif I wake thee not to death, old man, who can tell to whatunsounded deeps Starbucks 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 foreand 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 theold mans tormented sleep, as if Starbucks voice had causedthe long dumb dream to speak.
The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkards armagainst the panel; Starbuck seemed wrestling with an
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angel; but turning from the door, he placed the death-tubein its rack, and left the place.
Hes too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wakehim, and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou knowstwhat to say.
CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in longslow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequodsgurgling track, pushed her on like giants palms outspread.The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that skyand air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole worldboomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morninglight, the invisible sun was only known by the spreadintensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved onin stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kingsand queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as acrucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with lightand heat.
Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart;and every time the tetering ship loweringly pitched downher bowsprit, he turned to eye the bright suns raysproduced ahead; and when she profoundly settled by thestern, he turned behind, and saw the suns rearward place,and how the same yellow rays were blending with hisundeviating wake.
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Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for thesea-chariot of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before myprow, 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, hehurried towards the helm, huskily demanding how the shipwas heading.
East-sou-east, sir, said the frightened steersman.
Thou liest! smiting him with his clenched fist. HeadingEast at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?
Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenonjust then observed by Ahab had unaccountably escapedevery one else; but its very blinding palpableness musthave been the cause.
Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caughtone glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowlyfell; for a moment he almost seemed to stagger. Standingbehind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compassespointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among thecrew, the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, I have it!It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last nights thunderturned our compassesthats all. Thou hast before now heardof such a thing, I take it.
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Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir, said thepale mate, gloomily.
Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this havein more than one case occurred to ships in violent storms.The magnetic energy, as developed in the mariners needle,is, as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheldin heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled at, thatsuch things should be. Instances where the lightning hasactually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some ofthe spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has attimes been still more fatal; all its loadstone virtue beingannihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of nomore use than an old wifes knitting needle. But in eithercase, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the originalvirtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compassesbe affected, the same fate reaches all the others that maybe in the ship; even were the lowermost one inserted intothe kelson.
Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing thetranspointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp ofhis extended hand, now took the precise bearing of thesun, and satisfied that the needles were exactly inverted,shouted out his orders for the ships course to be changedaccordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more thePequod thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind,for the supposed fair one had only been juggling her.
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Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts,Starbuck said nothing, but quietly he issued all requisiteorders; while Stubb and Flaskwho in some smalldegree seemed then to be sharing his feelingslikewiseunmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though someof them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greaterthan their fear of Fate. But as ever before, the paganharpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed; or ifimpressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot intotheir congenial hearts from inflexible Ahabs.
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries.But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushedcopper sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day beforedashed to the deck.
Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and suns pilot! yesterdayI wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would fainhave wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab is lord over the levelloadstone yet. Mr. Starbucka lance without a pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-makers needles. Quick!
Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing hewas now about to do, were certain prudential motives,whose object might have been to revive the spirits ofhis crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a matter sowondrous as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, theold man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles,though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed
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over by superstitious sailors, without some shudderingsand evil portents.
Men, said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the matehanded him the things he had demanded, my men, thethunder turned old Ahabs needles; but out of this bit ofsteel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as trueas any.
Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged bythe sailors, as this was said; and with fascinated eyesthey awaited whatever magic might follow. But Starbucklooked away.
With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steelhead of the lance, and then handing to the mate the longiron rod remaining, bade him hold it upright, without itstouching the deck. Then, with the maul, after repeatedlysmiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed theblunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less stronglyhammered that, several times, the mate still holding therod as before. Then going through some small strangemotions with itwhether indispensable to the magnetizingof the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of thecrew, is uncertainhe called for linen thread; and moving tothe 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 wentround and round, quivering and vibrating at either end;
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but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab, who hadbeen intently watching for this result, stepped frankly backfrom the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towardsit, exclaimed,Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lordof the level loadstone! The sun is East, and that compassswears it!
One after another they peered in, for nothing but their owneyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one afteranother they slunk away.
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahabin all his fatal pride.
CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.
While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat thisvoyage, the log and line had but very seldom been inuse. Owing to a confident reliance upon other means ofdetermining the vessels place, some merchantmen, andmany whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglectto heave the log; though at the same time, and frequentlymore for forms sake than anything else, regularly puttingdown upon the customary slate the course steered by theship, as well as the presumed average rate of progressionevery hour. It had been thus with the Pequod. The woodenreel and angular log attached hung, long untouched, justbeneath the railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and sprayhad damped it; sun and wind had warped it; all the
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elements had combined to rot a thing that hung so idly. Butheedless of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he happenedto glance upon the reel, not many hours after the magnetscene, 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 rolledin riots.
Forward, there! Heave the log!
Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and thegrizzly Manxman. Take the reel, one of ye, Ill heave.
They went towards the extreme stern, on the ships lee side,where the deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, wasnow almost dipping into the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.
The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, bythe projecting handle-ends of the spindle, round whichthe spool of line revolved, so stood with the angular loghanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to him.
Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding somethirty or forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil totoss overboard, when the old Manxman, who was intentlyeyeing both him and the line, made bold to speak.
Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wethave spoiled it.
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Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have theyspoiled thee? Thou seemst to hold. Or, truer perhaps, lifeholds thee; not thou it.
I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With thesegrey hairs of mine tis not worth while disputing, speciallywith a superior, wholl neer confess.
Whats that? There nows a patched professor in QueenNatures granite-founded College; but methinks hes toosubservient. Where wert thou born?
In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.
Excellent! Thoust hit the world by that.
I know not, sir, but I was born there.
In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, its good.Heres a man from Man; a man born in once independentMan, and now unmanned of Man; which is sucked inbywhat? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall butts allinquiring heads at last. Up with it! So.
The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightenedout in a long dragging line astern, and then, instantly, thereel began to whirl. In turn, jerkingly raised and loweredby the rolling billows, the towing resistance of the logcaused the old reelman to stagger strangely.
Hold hard!
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Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one longfestoon; the tugging log was gone.
I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, andnow the mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mendall. Haul in here, Tahitian; reel up, Manxman. And lookye, let the carpenter make another log, and mend thou theline. See to it.
There he goes now; to him nothings happened; but tome, the skewer seems loosening out of the middle of theworld. 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.Pips missing. Lets see now if ye havent fished him uphere, fisherman. It drags hard; I guess hes holding on. Jerkhim, Tahiti! Jerk him off; we haul in no cowards here. Ho!theres his arm just breaking water. A hatchet! a hatchet!cut it offwe haul in no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir,sir! heres Pip, trying to get on board again.
Peace, thou crazy loon, cried the Manxman, seizing himby the arm. Away from the quarter-deck!
The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser, muttered Ahab,advancing. Hands off from that holiness! Where sayestthou Pip was, boy?
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Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!
And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacantpupils of thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing forimmortal souls to sieve through! Who art thou, boy?
Bell-boy, sir; ships-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip!One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feethighlooks cowardlyquickest known by that! Ding, dong,ding! Whos seen Pip the coward?
There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozenheavens! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child,and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy;Ahabs cabin shall be Pips home henceforth, while Ahablives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied tome by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, lets down.
Whats this? heres velvet shark-skin, intently gazing atAhabs hand, and feeling it. Ah, now, had poor Pip but feltso kind a thing as this, perhaps he had neer been lost! Thisseems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak soulsmay hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet thesetwo hands together; the black one with the white, for I willnot let this go.
Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag theeto worse horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin.Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo
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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! Ifeel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than thoughI grasped an Emperors!
There go two daft ones now, muttered the old Manxman.One daft with strength, the other daft with weakness. Butheres the end of the rotten lineall dripping, too. Mend it,eh? I think we had best have a new line altogether. Ill seeMr. Stubb about it.
CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.
Steering now south-eastward by Ahabs levelled steel,and her progress solely determined by Ahabs levellog and line; the Pequod held on her path towardsthe Equator. Making so long a passage through suchunfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long,sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over wavesmonotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calmthings preluding some riotous and desperate scene.
At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as itwere, of the Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deepdarkness that goes before the dawn, was sailing by acluster of rocky islets; the watchthen headed by Flaskwasstartled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthlylike half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herods murdered
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Innocentsthat one and all, they started from their reveries,and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leanedall transfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave,while that wild cry remained within hearing. The Christianor civilized part of the crew said it was mermaids,and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers remainedunappalled. Yet the grey Manxmanthe oldest mariner ofalldeclared 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 greydawn, when he came to the deck; it was then recountedto him by Flask, not unaccompanied with hinted darkmeanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus explained thewonder.
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort ofgreat numbers of seals, and some young seals that had losttheir dams, or some dams that had lost their cubs, musthave risen nigh the ship and kept company with her, cryingand sobbing with their human sort of wail. But this onlythe more affected some of them, because most marinerscherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arisingnot only from their peculiar tones when in distress, butalso from the human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising from the wateralongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances, sealshave more than once been mistaken for men.
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But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a mostplausible confirmation in the fate of one of their numberthat morning. At sun-rise this man went from his hammockto his mast-head at the fore; and whether it was that he wasnot yet half waked from his sleep (for sailors sometimesgo aloft in a transition state), whether it was thus with theman, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may, he hadnot been long at his perch, when a cry was hearda cry anda rushingand looking up, they saw a falling phantom in theair; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubblesin the blue of the sea.
The life-buoya long slender caskwas dropped from thestern, where it always hung obedient to a cunning spring;but no hand rose to seize it, and the sun having long beatupon this cask it had shrunken, so that it slowly filled, andthat parched wood also filled at its every pore; and thestudded 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 mastto look out for the White Whale, on the White Whales ownpeculiar ground; that man was swallowed up in the deep.But few, perhaps, thought of that at the time. Indeed, insome sort, they were not grieved at this event, at least asa portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing ofevil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil alreadypresaged. They declared that now they knew the reason
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of those wild shrieks they had heard the night before. Butagain the old Manxman said nay.
The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuckwas directed to see to it; but as no cask of sufficientlightness could be found, and as in the feverish eagernessof what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage, allhands were impatient of any toil but what was directlyconnected with its final end, whatever that might proveto be; therefore, they were going to leave the ships sternunprovided with a buoy, when by certain strange signs andinuendoes 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 carpenterhere can arrange it easily.
Bring it up; theres nothing else for it, said Starbuck, aftera melancholy pause. Rig it, carpenter; do not look at mesothe coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it.
And shall I nail down the lid, sir? moving his hand as witha hammer.
Aye.
And shall I caulk the seams, sir? moving his hand as witha caulking-iron.
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Aye.
And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir? movinghis hand as with a pitch-pot.
Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of thecoffin, and no more.Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forwardwith me.
He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at theparts he baulks. Now I dont like this. I make a leg forCaptain Ahab, and he wears it like a gentleman; but I makea bandbox for Queequeg, and he wont put his head intoit. Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin?And now Im ordered to make a life-buoy of it. Its liketurning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the otherside now. I dont like this cobbling sort of businessI dontlike it at all; its undignified; its not my place. Let tinkersbrats do tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take inhand none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematicaljobs, something that regularly begins at the beginning, andis at the middle when midway, and comes to an end atthe conclusion; not a cobblers job, thats at an end in themiddle, and at the beginning at the end. Its the old womanstricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affectionall old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman ofsixty-five who ran away with a bald-headed young tinkeronce. And thats the reason I never would work for lonelywidow old women ashore, when I kept my job-shop in
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the Vineyard; they might have taken it into their lonelyold heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are nocaps at sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid;caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten themdown tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the shipsstern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin?Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied upin the rigging, ere they would do the job. But Im madeof knotty Aroostook hemlock; I dont budge. Crupperedwith a coffin! Sailing about with a grave-yard tray! Butnever mind. We workers in woods make bridal-bedsteadsand card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We workby the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for usto ask the why and wherefore of our work, unless it betoo confounded cobbling, and then we stash it if we can.Hem! Ill do the job, now, tenderly. Ill have melets seehowmany in the ships company, all told? But Ive forgotten.Any way, Ill have me thirty separate, Turks-headed life-lines, each three feet long hanging all round to the coffin.Then, if the hull go down, therell be thirty lively fellowsall fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very oftenbeneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot,and marling-spike! Lets to it.
CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
_The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open hatchway; the Carpenter caulking itsseams; the string of twisted oakum slowly unwinding from
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a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock.Ahabcomes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pipfollowing him._
Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Notthis hand complies with my humor more genially than thatboy.Middle aisle of a church! Whats here?
Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbucks orders. Oh, look, sir! Bewarethe 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 comefrom 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 forQueequeg; but theyve set me now to turning it intosomething else.
Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping,intermeddling, monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to beone day making legs, and the next day coffins to clap themin, and yet again life-buoys out of those same coffins?Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a
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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 workingabout a coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatcheswhen 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, Im indifferent enough, sir, forthat; but the reason why the grave-digger made music musthave been because there was none in his spade, sir. But thecaulking mallet is full of it. Hark to it.
Aye, and thats because the lid theres a sounding-board; andwhat in all things makes the sounding-board is thistheresnaught beneath. And yet, a coffin with a body in it ringspretty much the same, Carpenter. Hast thou ever helpedcarry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against thechurchyard gate, going in?
Faith, sir, Ive
Faith? Whats that?
Why, faith, sir, its only a sort of exclamation-likethats all,sir.
Um, um; go on.
I was about to say, sir, that
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Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud outof thyself? Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get thesetraps out of sight.
He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls comesudden in hot latitudes. Ive heard that the Isle ofAlbemarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut by the Equatorright in the middle. Seems to me some sort of Equator cutsyon old man, too, right in his middle. Hes always under theLinefiery hot, I tell ye! Hes looking this waycome, oakum;quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork,and Im the professor of musical glassestap, tap!
(_Ahab to himself_.)
Theres a sight! Theres a sound! The greyheadedwoodpecker tapping the hollow tree! Blind and dumbmight 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 mans seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are allmaterials! What things real are there, but imponderablethoughts? Here nows the very dreaded symbol of grimdeath, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the helpand hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin!Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense thecoffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! Ill think ofthat. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, thatits other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertaintwilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with
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that accursed sound? I go below; let me not see that thinghere when I return again. Now, then, Pip, well talk thisover; I do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee!Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds mustempty into thee!
CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearingdirectly down upon the Pequod, all her spars thicklyclustering with men. At the time the Pequod was makinggood speed through the water; but as the broad-wingedwindward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails allfell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all lifefled from the smitten hull.
Bad news; she brings bad news, muttered the oldManxman. But ere her commander, who, with trumpet tomouth, stood up in his boat; ere he could hopefully hail,Ahabs voice was heard.
Hast seen the White Whale?
Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?
Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered thisunexpected question; and would then have fain boardedthe stranger, when the stranger captain himself, havingstopped his vessels way, was seen descending her side.A few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched
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the Pequods main-chains, and he sprang to the deck.Immediately he was recognised by Ahab for a Nantucketerhe knew. But no formal salutation was exchanged.
Where was he?not killed!not killed! cried Ahab, closelyadvancing. How was it?
It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the dayprevious, while three of the strangers boats were engagedwith a shoal of whales, which had led them some four orfive miles from the ship; and while they were yet in swiftchase to windward, the white hump and head of MobyDick had suddenly loomed up out of the water, not very farto leeward; whereupon, the fourth rigged boata reservedonehad been instantly lowered in chase. After a keen sailbefore the wind, this fourth boatthe swiftest keeled ofallseemed to have succeeded in fasteningat least, as wellas the man at the mast-head could tell anything about it.In the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat; andthen a swift gleam of bubbling white water; and after thatnothing more; whence it was concluded that the strickenwhale must have indefinitely run away with his pursuers,as often happens. There was some apprehension, but nopositive alarm, as yet. The recall signals were placed in therigging; darkness came on; and forced to pick up her threefar to windward boatsere going in quest of the fourth one inthe precisely opposite directionthe ship had not only beennecessitated to leave that boat to its fate till near midnight,but, for the time, to increase her distance from it. But the
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rest of her crew being at last safe aboard, she crowded allsailstunsail on stunsailafter the missing boat; kindling afire in her try-pots for a beacon; and every other man alofton the look-out. But though when she had thus sailed asufficient distance to gain the presumed place of the absentones when last seen; though she then paused to lower herspare 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; yetnot the least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.
The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went onto reveal his object in boarding the Pequod. He desired thatship to unite with his own in the search; by sailing over thesea some four or five miles apart, on parallel lines, and sosweeping 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 Captainsbest coat; mayhap, his watchhes so cursed anxious to getit back. Who ever heard of two pious whale-ships cruisingafter one missing whale-boat in the height of the whalingseason? See, Flask, only see how pale he lookspale in thevery buttons of his eyeslookit wasnt the coatit must havebeen the
My boy, my own boy is among them. For Gods sakeI beg, Iconjurehere exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, whothus far had but icily received his petition. For eight-and-
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forty hours let me charter your shipI will gladly pay forit, and roundly pay for itif there be no other wayfor eight-and-forty hours onlyonly thatyou must, oh, you must, andyou _shall_ do this thing.
His son! cried Stubb, oh, its his son hes lost! I take back thecoat and watchwhat says Ahab? We must save that boy.
Hes drowned with the rest on em, last night, said the oldManx sailor standing behind them; I heard; all of ye heardtheir spirits.
Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident ofthe Rachels the more melancholy, was the circumstance,that not only was one of the Captains sons among thenumber of the missing boats crew; but among the numberof the other boats crews, at the same time, but on the otherhand, separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudesof the chase, there had been still another son; as that for atime, the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of thecruellest perplexity; which was only solved for him by hischief mates instinctively adopting the ordinary procedureof a whale-ship in such emergencies, that is, when placedbetween jeopardized but divided boats, always to pickup the majority first. But the captain, for some unknownconstitutional reason, had refrained from mentioning allthis, and not till forced to it by Ahabs iciness did he alludeto his one yet missing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old,whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood
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of a Nantucketers paternal love, had thus early soughtto initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocationalmost immemorially the destiny of all his race. Nor doesit unfrequently occur, that Nantucket captains will send ason of such tender age away from them, for a protractedthree or four years voyage in some other ship than theirown; so that their first knowledge of a whalemans careershall be unenervated by any chance display of a fathersnatural but untimely partiality, or undue apprehensivenessand concern.
Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poorboon of Ahab; and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receivingevery shock, but without the least quivering of his own.
I will not go, said the stranger, till you say _aye_ to me. Doto me as you would have me do to you in the like case. For_you_ too have a boy, Captain Ahabthough but a child, andnestling safely at home nowa child of your old age tooYes,yes, you relent; I see itrun, run, men, now, and stand by tosquare in the yards.
Avast, cried Ahabtouch not a rope-yarn; then in a voicethat prolongingly moulded every wordCaptain Gardiner, Iwill not do it. Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye.God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I mustgo. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch, and in threeminutes from this present instant warn off all strangers:then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before.
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Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended intohis cabin, leaving the strange captain transfixed at thisunconditional and utter rejection of his so earnest suit. Butstarting from his enchantment, Gardiner silently hurried tothe side; more fell than stepped into his boat, and returnedto his ship.
Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as thestrange vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hitherand thither at every dark spot, however small, on the sea.This way and that her yards were swung round; starboardand larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat againsta head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while allthe while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered withmen, as three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherryingamong the boughs.
But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way,you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, stillremained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping forher children, because they were not.
CHAPTER 129. The Cabin.
(_Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the handto follow._)
Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. Thehour is coming when Ahab would not scare thee from him,
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yet would not have thee by him. There is that in thee, poorlad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like;and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desiredhealth. Do thou abide below here, where they shall servethee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit herein my own screwed chair; another screw to it, thou mustbe.
No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but usepoor me for your one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; Iask no more, so I remain a part of ye.
Oh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot inthe fadeless fidelity of man!and a black! and crazy!butmethinks like-cures-like applies to him too; he grows sosane again.
They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor littlePip, whose drowned bones now show white, for all theblackness 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, Ahabs purposekeels 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 Ahabtoo is mad. Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivoryfoot upon the deck, and still know that I am there. And
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now I quit thee. Thy hand!Met! True art thou, lad, as thecircumference to its centre. So: God for ever bless thee;and if it come to that,God for ever save thee, let what willbefall.
(_Ahab goes; Pip steps one step forward._)
Here he this instant stood; I stand in his air,but Im alone.Now were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but hesmissing. Pip! Pip! Ding, dong, ding! Whos seen Pip? Hemust be up here; lets try the door. What? neither lock,nor bolt, nor bar; and yet theres no opening it. It must bethe spell; he told me to stay here: Aye, and told me thisscrewed chair was mine. Here, then, Ill seat me, againstthe transom, in the ships full middle, all her keel and herthree masts before me. Here, our old sailors say, in theirblack seventy-fours great admirals sometimes sit at table,and lord it over rows of captains and lieutenants. Ha! whatsthis? 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 boys host to whitemen with gold lace upon their coats!Monsieurs, have yeseen one Pip?a little negro lad, five feet high, hang-doglook, and cowardly! Jumped from a whale-boat once;seenhim? No! Well then, fill up again, captains, and letsdrink shame upon all cowards! I name no names. Shameupon them! Put one foot upon the table. Shame upon allcowards.Hist! above there, I hear ivoryOh, master! master!I am indeed down-hearted when you walk over me. But
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here Ill stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they bulgethrough; and oysters come to join me.
CHAPTER 130. The Hat.
And now that at the proper time and place, after so longand wide a preliminary cruise, Ahab,all other whalingwaters sweptseemed to have chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely there; now, that hefound himself hard by the very latitude and longitudewhere his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now thata vessel had been spoken which on the very day precedinghad actually encountered Moby Dick;and now that allhis successive meetings with various ships contrastinglyconcurred to show the demoniac indifference with whichthe white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinnedagainst; now it was that there lurked a something in theold mans eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeblesouls to see. As the unsetting polar star, which throughthe livelong, arctic, six months night sustains its piercing,steady, central gaze; so Ahabs purpose now fixedlygleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomycrew. It domineered above them so, that all their bodings,doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath theirsouls, and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf.
In this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced ornatural, vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile;Starbuck no more strove to check one. Alike, joy and
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sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, andpowdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of Ahabsiron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about thedeck, ever conscious that the old mans despot eye was onthem.
But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidentialhours; when he thought no glance but one was on him;then you would have seen that even as Ahabs eyes soawed the crews, the inscrutable Parsees glance awed his;or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affectedit. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to investthe thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shookhim; 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 bysome unseen beings body. And that shadow was alwayshovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah evercertainly been known to slumber, or go below. He wouldstand still for hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan butwondrous eyes did plainly sayWe two watchmen neverrest.
Nor, at any time, by night or day could the marinersnow step upon the deck, unless Ahab was before them;either standing in his pivot-hole, or exactly pacing theplanks between two undeviating limits,the main-mast andthe mizen; or else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle,his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step;
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his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that howevermotionless he stood, however the days and nights wereadded on, that he had not swung in his hammock; yethidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never tellunerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closedat times; or whether he was still intently scanning them;no matter, though he stood so in the scuttle for a wholehour on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp gatheredin beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. Theclothes that the night had wet, the next days sunshine driedupon him; and so, day after day, and night after night;he went no more beneath the planks; whatever he wantedfrom the cabin that thing he sent for.
He ate in the same open air; that is, his two onlymeals,breakfast and dinner: supper he never touched;nor reaped his beard; which darkly grew all gnarled, asunearthed roots of trees blown over, which still grow idlyon at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure.But though his whole life was now become one watch ondeck; and though the Parsees mystic watch was withoutintermission as his own; yet these two never seemed tospeakone man to the otherunless at long intervals somepassing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Thoughsuch 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 theslightest verbal interchange. At times, for longest hours,
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without a single hail, they stood far parted in the starlight;Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; butstill fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the ParseeAhab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee hisabandoned substance.
And yet, somehow, did Ahabin his own proper self, asdaily, hourly, and every instant, commandingly revealedto his subordinates,Ahab seemed an independent lord;the Parsee but his slave. Still again both seemed yokedtogether, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean shadesiding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all riband keel was solid Ahab.
At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voicewas heard from aft,Man the mast-heads!and all throughthe day, till after sunset and after twilight, the same voiceevery hour, at the striking of the helmsmans bell, washeardWhat dye see?sharp! sharp!
But when three or four days had slided by, after meetingthe children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet beenseen; the monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of hiscrews fidelity; at least, of nearly all except the Paganharpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether Stubb andFlask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought.But if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciouslyrefrained from verbally expressing them, however hisactions might seem to hint them.
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I will have the first sight of the whale myself,he said. Aye!Ahab must have the doubloon! and with his own hands herigged a nest of basketed bowlines; and sending a handaloft, 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 pinfor 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 theother; pausing his glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg,Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then settling his firmrelying eye upon the chief mate, said,Take the rope, sirIgive it into thy hands, Starbuck. Then arranging his personin the basket, he gave the word for them to hoist him tohis perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the ropeat last; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with onehand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroadupon the sea for miles and miles,ahead, astern, this side,and that,within the wide expanded circle commanded atso great a height.
When in working with his hands at some lofty almostisolated place in the rigging, which chances to afford nofoothold, the sailor at sea is hoisted up to that spot, andsustained there by the rope; under these circumstances,its fastened end on deck is always given in strict chargeto some one man who has the special watch of it.Because in such a wilderness of running rigging, whose
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various different relations aloft cannot always be infalliblydiscerned by what is seen of them at the deck; and whenthe deck-ends of these ropes are being every few minutescast down from the fastenings, it would be but a naturalfatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, thehoisted sailor should by some carelessness of the crewbe cast adrift and fall all swooping to the sea. So Ahabsproceedings in this matter were not unusual; the onlystrange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck,almost the one only man who had ever ventured to opposehim with anything in the slightest degree approaching todecisionone of those too, whose faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt somewhat;it was strange, thatthis was the very man he should select for his watchman;freely giving his whole life into such an otherwisedistrusted persons hands.
Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he hadbeen there ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly incommodiously close round themanned mast-heads of whalemen in these latitudes; one ofthese birds came wheeling and screaming round his headin a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darteda thousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralizeddownwards, 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
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no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the leastheedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaningin almost every sight.
Your hat, your hat, sir! suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman,who being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directlybehind Ahab, though somewhat lower than his level, andwith a deep gulf of air dividing them.
But already the sable wing was before the old mans eyes;the long hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the blackhawk darted away with his prize.
An eagle flew thrice round Tarquins head, removinghis cap to replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife,declared that Tarquin would be king of Rome. But onlyby the replacing of the cap was that omen accountedgood. Ahabs hat was never restored; the wild hawk flewon and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at lastdisappeared; while from the point of that disappearance, aminute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from thatvast height into the sea.
CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves anddays went by; the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; andanother ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight, wasdescried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon herbroad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships,
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cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet;serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.
Upon the strangers shears were beheld the shattered, whiteribs, and some few splintered planks, of what had oncebeen 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 roundedhammock on the deck, whose gathered sides somenoiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.
Not forged! and snatching Perths levelled iron from thecrotch, Ahab held it out, exclaimingLook ye, Nantucketer;here in this hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood,and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear totemper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, wherethe White Whale most feels his accursed life!
Then God keep thee, old manseest thou thatpointing tothe hammockI bury but one of five stout men, who were
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alive only yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only _that_one I bury; the rest were buried before they died; you sailupon their tomb. Then turning to his crewAre ye readythere? place the plank then on the rail, and lift the body;so, thenOh! Godadvancing towards the hammock withuplifted handsmay the resurrection and the life
Brace forward! Up helm! cried Ahab like lightning to hismen.
But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough toescape the sound of the splash that the corpse soon madeas it struck the sea; not so quick, indeed, but that some ofthe flying bubbles might have sprinkled her hull with theirghostly baptism.
As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, thestrange life-buoy hanging at the Pequods stern came intoconspicuous relief.
Ha! yonder! look yonder, men! cried a foreboding voice inher 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 seawere hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, thepensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a womanslook, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long,
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strong, lingering swells, as Samsons chest in his sleep.
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wingsof small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughtsof the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down inthe bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish,and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderousthinkings of the masculine sea.
But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was onlyin shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; itwas only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed givingthis gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride togroom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft andtremulous motionmost seen here at the equatordenoted thefond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which thepoor 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 stoodforth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splinteredhelmet of a brow to the fair girls forehead of heaven.
Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure!Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round us! Sweetchildhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of oldAhabs close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam
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and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambolaround their old sire; sporting with the circle of singedlocks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater ofhis brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leanedover the side and watched how his shadow in the watersank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more thathe strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromasin that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for amoment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happyair, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him;the step-mother world, so long cruelforbiddingnow threwaffectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem tojoyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilfuland erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and tobless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tearinto the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth asthat one wee drop.
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leanedover the side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heartthe measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of theserenity around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticedby him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.
Ahab turned.
Starbuck!
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Sir.
Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild lookingsky. On such a dayvery much such a sweetness asthisI struck my first whalea boy-harpooneer of eighteen!Fortyfortyforty years ago!ago! Forty years of continualwhaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years hasAhab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to makewar 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 desolationof solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of aCaptains exclusiveness, which admits but small entranceto any sympathy from the green country withoutoh,weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitarycommand!when I think of all this; only half-suspected,not so keenly known to me beforeand how for forty yearsI have fed upon dry salted farefit emblem of the drynourishment of my soil!when the poorest landsman hashad fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the worldsfresh bread to my mouldy crustsaway, whole oceans away,from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailedfor Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent inmy marriage pillowwife? wife?rather a widow with herhusband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when Imarried her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy,the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for
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a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foaminglychased his preymore a demon than a man!aye, aye! what aforty years foolfoolold fool, has old Ahab been! Why thisstrife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at theoar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or betteris Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, thatwith this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have beensnatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside;it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did nevergrow 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 beneaththe piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!crackmy heart!stave my brain!mockery! mockery! bitter, bitingmockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye;and seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand closeto me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is betterthan to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is themagic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye.No, no; stay on board, on board!lower not when I do; whenbranded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shallnot be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see inthat 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 Starbuckswife and child of his
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brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, arethe wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age!Away! let us away!this instant let me alter the course! Howcheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowlon our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, theyhave some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.
They have, they have. I have seen themsome summerdays in the morning. About this timeyes, it is his noonnap nowthe boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; andhis mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me; how I amabroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to dance himagain.
Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy,every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch thefirst glimpse of his fathers sail! Yes, yes! no more! it isdone! we head for Nantucket! Come, my Captain, studyout the course, and let us away! See, see! the boys facefrom the window! the boys hand on the hill!
But Ahabs glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree heshook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.
What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thingis it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel,remorseless emperor commands me; that against allnatural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, andcrowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
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making me ready to do what in my own proper, naturalheart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is itI, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sunmove not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven;nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisiblepower; how then can this one small heart beat; this onesmall 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, likeyonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all thetime, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look!see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fangthat flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Whos todoom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? Butit is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the airsmells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; theyhave been making hay somewhere under the slopes of theAndes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among thenew-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, weall sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amidgreenness; as last years scythes flung down, and left in thehalf-cut swathsStarbuck!
But blanched to a corpses hue with despair, the Mate hadstolen 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.
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CHAPTER 133. The ChaseFirst Day.
That night, in the mid-watch, when the old manas hiswont at intervalsstepped forth from the scuttle in whichhe leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrustout his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagaciousships dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle.He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiarodor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by theliving sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor wasany mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass,and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precisebearing of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidlyordered the ships course to be slightly altered, and the sailto be shortened.
The acute policy dictating these movements wassufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a longsleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smoothas oil, and resembling in the pleated watery wrinklesbordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of someswift 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 onthe forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with suchjudgment claps that they seemed to exhale from the scuttle,so instantaneously did they appear with their clothes in
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their hands.
What dye see? cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
Nothing, nothing sir! was the sound hailing down in reply.
Tgallant sails!stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!
All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reservedfor swaying him to the main royal-mast head; and in afew moments they were hoisting him thither, when, whilebut two thirds of the way aloft, and while peering aheadthrough the horizontal vacancy between the main-top-sailand 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 upby the three look-outs, the men on deck rushed to therigging to behold the famous whale they had so long beenpursuing. Ahab had now gained his final perch, some feetabove the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just beneathhim on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indianshead was almost on a level with Ahabs heel. From thisheight the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, atevery roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump,and regularly jetting his silent spout into the air. To thecredulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout theyhad so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and IndianOceans.
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And did none of ye see it before? cried Ahab, hailing theperched men all around him.
I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahabdid, and I cried out, said Tashtego.
Not the same instant; not the sameno, the doubloon ismine, Fate reserved the doubloon for me. _I_ only; noneof ye could have raised the White Whale first. There sheblows!there she blows!there she blows! There again!thereagain! he cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic tones,attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whales visiblejets. Hes going to sound! In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stayon board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a point!So; steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; onlyblack water! All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by!Lower me, Mr. Starbuck; lower, lower,quick, quicker! andhe slid through the air to the deck.
He is heading straight to leeward, sir, cried Stubb, rightaway from us; cannot have seen the ship yet.
Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down thehelm!brace up! Shiver her!shiver her!So; well that! Boats,boats!
Soon all the boats but Starbucks were dropped; allthe boat-sails setall the paddles plying; with ripplingswiftness, shooting to leeward; and Ahab heading the
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onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up Fedallahs sunken eyes;a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.
Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows spedthrough 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 breathlesshunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, thathis entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, slidingalong the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually setin a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. Hesaw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly projectinghead beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening white shadow fromhis broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfullyaccompanying the shade; and behind, the blue watersinterchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of hissteady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose anddanced by his side. But these were broken again by thelight toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering thesea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall butshattered pole of a recent lance projected from the whitewhales back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toedfowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopyover the fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, thelong tail feathers streaming like pennons.
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A gentle joyousnessa mighty mildness of repose inswiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bullJupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging tohis graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intentupon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, ripplingstraight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not thatgreat majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified WhiteWhale as he so divinely swam.
On each soft sidecoincident with the parted swell, that butonce leaving him, then flowed so wide awayon each brightside, the whale shed off enticings. No wonder there hadbeen some among the hunters who namelessly transportedand allured by all this serenity, had ventured to assailit; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture oftornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glideston, to all who for the first time eye thee, no matter howmany in that same way thou mayst have bejuggled anddestroyed before.
And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropicalsea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspendedby exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, stillwithholding from sight the full terrors of his submergedtrunk, 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 higharch, like Virginias Natural Bridge, and warningly waving
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his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealedhimself, sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringlyhalting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowlslongingly lingered over the agitated pool that he left.
With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sailsadrift, the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting MobyDicks reappearance.
An hour, said Ahab, standing rooted in his boats stern;and he gazed beyond the whales place, towards the dimblue spaces and wide wooing vacancies to leeward. It wasonly an instant; for again his eyes seemed whirling roundin his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze nowfreshened; the sea began to swell.
The birds!the birds! cried Tashtego.
In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, thewhite birds were now all flying towards Ahabs boat; andwhen within a few yards began fluttering over the waterthere, wheeling round and round, with joyous, expectantcries. Their vision was keener than mans; Ahab coulddiscover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peereddown and down into its depths, he profoundly saw awhite living spot no bigger than a white weasel, withwonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose,till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed twolong crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up
823
from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dicks openmouth and scrolled jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk still halfblending with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouthyawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marbletomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steeringoar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendousapparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to change placeswith him, went forward to the bows, and seizing Perthsharpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars andstand by to stern.
Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat uponits axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to face thewhales head while yet under water. But as if perceiving thisstratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligenceascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were,in an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneaththe boat.
Through and through; through every plank and each rib,it thrilled for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on hisback, in the manner of a biting shark, slowly and feelinglytaking its bows full within his mouth, so that the long,narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the openair, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluishpearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches ofAhabs head, and reached higher than that. In this attitudethe White Whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildlycruel cat her mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedallah
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gazed, and crossed his arms; but the tiger-yellow crewwere tumbling over each others heads to gain the uttermoststern.
And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing inand out, as the whale dallied with the doomed craft in thisdevilish way; and from his body being submerged beneaththe boat, he could not be darted at from the bows, for thebows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while theother boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisisimpossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniacAhab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe,which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws hehated; frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone withhis naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from itsgripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped fromhim; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, asboth jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bitthe craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fastagain in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks.These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew atthe stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving tohold fast to the oars to lash them across.
At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped,Ahab, the first to perceive the whales intent, by the craftyupraising of his head, a movement that loosed his holdfor the time; at that moment his hand had made one finaleffort to push the boat out of the bite. But only slipping
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further into the whales mouth, and tilting over sidewaysas 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 hefell flat-faced upon the sea.
Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick nowlay at a little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong whitehead up and down in the billows; and at the same timeslowly revolving his whole spindled body; so that when hisvast wrinkled forehead rosesome twenty or more feet outof the waterthe now rising swells, with all their confluentwaves, dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossingtheir shivered spray still higher into the air.* So, in a gale,the but half baffled Channel billows only recoil from thebase of the Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summitwith their scud.
*This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receivesits designation (pitchpoling) from its being likened to thatpreliminary up-and-down poise of the whale-lance, in theexercise called pitchpoling, previously described. By thismotion the whale must best and most comprehensivelyview whatever objects may be encircling him.
But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dickswam swiftly round and round the wrecked crew;sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as iflashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault.The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as
826
the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochusselephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahabhalf smothered in the foam of the whales insolent tail,and too much of a cripple to swim,though he could stillkeep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool asthat; helpless Ahabs head was seen, like a tossed bubblewhich the least chance shock might burst. From the boatsfragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eyedhim; the clinging crew, at the other drifting end, couldnot succor him; more than enough was it for them tolook to themselves. For so revolvingly appalling was theWhite Whales aspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed horizontallyswooping upon them. And though the other boats,unharmed, still hovered hard by; still they dared not pullinto the eddy to strike, lest that should be the signal for theinstant destruction of the jeopardized castaways, Ahab andall; nor in that case could they themselves hope to escape.With straining eyes, then, they remained on the outer edgeof the direful zone, whose centre had now become the oldmans head.
Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descriedfrom the ships mast heads; and squaring her yards, she hadborne down upon the scene; and was now so nigh, thatAhab in the water hailed her!Sail on thebut that momenta breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, andwhelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again,
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and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,Sailon the whale!Drive him off!
The Pequods prows were pointed; and breaking up thecharmed circle, she effectually parted the white whalefrom his victim. As he sullenly swam off, the boats flewto the rescue.
Dragged into Stubbs boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes,the white brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension ofAhabs bodily strength did crack, and helplessly he yieldedto his bodys doom: for a time, lying all crushed in thebottom of Stubbs boat, like one trodden under foot of herdsof elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him,as desolate sounds from out ravines.
But this intensity of his physical prostration did but somuch the more abbreviate it. In an instants compass,great hearts sometimes condense to one deep pang, thesum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused throughfeebler mens whole lives. And so, such hearts, thoughsummary in each one suffering; still, if the gods decreeit, in their life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, whollymade up of instantaneous intensities; for even in theirpointless centres, those noble natures contain the entirecircumferences of inferior souls.
The harpoon, said Ahab, half way rising, and dragginglyleaning on one bended armis it safe?
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Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it, said Stubb, showingit.
Lay it before me;any missing men?
One, two, three, four, five;there were five oars, sir, and hereare five men.
Thats good.Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I seehim! there! there! going to leeward still; what a leapingspout!Hands off from me! The eternal sap runs up inAhabs 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 thatsecond boat; and the chase is thus continued with whatis called double-banked oars. It was thus now. But theadded power of the boat did not equal the added power ofthe whale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his everyfin; swimming with a velocity which plainly showed, thatif now, under these circumstances, pushed on, the chasewould prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopelessone; nor could any crew endure for so long a period,such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thingbarely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. Theship itself, then, as it sometimes happens, offered the mostpromising intermediate means of overtaking the chase.Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were soonswayed up to their cranesthe two parts of the wrecked boat
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having been previously secured by herand then hoistingeverything to her side, and stacking her canvas high up,and sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like thedouble-jointed wings of an albatross; the Pequod boredown in the leeward wake of Moby-Dick. At the wellknown, methodic intervals, the whales glittering spout wasregularly announced from the manned mast-heads; andwhen he would be reported as just gone down, Ahab wouldtake the time, and then pacing the deck, binnacle-watchin hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted hourexpired, his voice was heard.Whose is the doubloon now?Dye see him? and if the reply was, No, sir! straightwayhe commanded them to lift him to his perch. In this waythe day wore on; Ahab, now aloft and motionless; anon,unrestingly pacing the planks.
As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hailthe men aloft, or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or tospread one to a still greater breadththus to and fro pacing,beneath his slouched hat, at every turn he passed his ownwrecked 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 sailacross, so over the old mans face there now stole some suchadded gloom as this.
Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly,though, to evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus
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keep up a valiant place in his Captains mind, he advanced,and eyeing the wreck exclaimedThe 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 (andas mechanical) I could swear thou wert a poltroon. Groannor laugh should be heard before a wreck.
Aye, sir, said Starbuck drawing near, tis a solemn sight; anomen, and an ill one.
Omen? omen?the dictionary! If the gods think to speakoutright to man, they will honorably speak outright;not shake their heads, and give an old wives darklinghint.Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing;Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; andye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone amongthe millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men hisneighbors! Cold, coldI shiver!How now? Aloft there! Dyesee him? Sing out for every spout, though he spout tentimes a second!
The day was nearly done; only the hem of his golden robewas rustling. Soon, it was almost dark, but the look-outmen still remained unset.
Cant see the spout now, sir;too darkcried a voice from theair.
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How heading when last seen?
As before, sir,straight to leeward.
Good! he will travel slower now tis night. Down royalsand top-gallant stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not runover him before morning; hes making a passage now, andmay heave-to a while. Helm there! keep her full before thewind!Aloft! come down!Mr. Stubb, send a fresh hand tothe fore-mast head, and see it manned till morning.Thenadvancing towards the doubloon in the main-mastMen,this gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide heretill the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of yefirst raises him, upon the day he shall be killed, this gold isthat mans; and if on that day I shall again raise him, then,ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye! Awaynow!the deck is thine, sir!
And so saying, he placed himself half way within thescuttle, and slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, exceptwhen at intervals rousing himself to see how the night woreon.
CHAPTER 134. The ChaseSecond Day.
At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctuallymanned afresh.
Dye see him? cried Ahab after allowing a little space forthe light to spread.
832
See nothing, sir.
Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster thanI thought for;the top-gallant sails!aye, they should havebeen kept on her all night. But no mattertis but resting forthe rush.
Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of oneparticular whale, continued through day into night,and through night into day, is a thing by no meansunprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such is thewonderful skill, prescience of experience, and invincibleconfidence acquired by some great natural geniusesamong the Nantucket commanders; that from the simpleobservation of a whale when last descried, they will, undercertain given circumstances, pretty accurately foretell boththe direction in which he will continue to swim for atime, while out of sight, as well as his probable rateof 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 hedesires shortly to return to again, but at some furtherpoint; like as this pilot stands by his compass, and takesthe precise bearing of the cape at present visible, inorder the more certainly to hit aright the remote, unseenheadland, 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 creatures future
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wake through the darkness is almost as established to thesagacious mind of the hunter, as the pilots coast is tohim. So that to this hunters wondrous skill, the proverbialevanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to alldesired purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfastland. And as the mighty iron Leviathan of the modernrailway is so familiarly known in its every pace, that, withwatches in their hands, men time his rate as doctors thatof a babys pulse; and lightly say of it, the up train orthe down train will reach such or such a spot, at such orsuch an hour; even so, almost, there are occasions whenthese Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep,according to the observed humor of his speed; and sayto themselves, so many hours hence this whale will havegone two hundred miles, will have about reached this orthat degree of latitude or longitude. But to render thisacuteness at all successful in the end, the wind and the seamust be the whalemans allies; for of what present availto the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill thatassures him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarterfrom his port? Inferable from these statements, are manycollateral subtile matters touching the chase of whales.
The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as whena cannon-ball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turnsup the level field.
By salt and hemp! cried Stubb, but this swift motion ofthe deck creeps up ones legs and tingles at the heart. This
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ship and I are two brave fellows!Ha, ha! Some one takeme up, and launch me, spine-wise, on the sea,for by live-oaks! my spines a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait that leavesno dust behind!
There she blowsshe blows!she blows!right ahead! wasnow the mast-head cry.
Aye, aye! cried Stubb, I knew itye cant escapeblow on andsplit your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is afterye! blow your trumpblister your lungs!Ahab will dam offyour 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 thembubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever palefears and forebodings some of them might have felt before;these were not only now kept out of sight through thegrowing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and onall sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter beforethe bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched alltheir souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous day;the rack of the past nights suspense; the fixed, unfearing,blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plungingtowards its flying mark; by all these things, their heartswere bowled along. The wind that made great bellies oftheir sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible asirresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agencywhich so enslaved them to the race.
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They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship thatheld them all; though it was put together of all contrastingthingsoak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, andhempyet all these ran into each other in the one concretehull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed bythe long central keel; even so, all the individualities of thecrew, this mans valor, that mans fear; guilt and guiltiness,all varieties were welded into oneness, and were alldirected to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord andkeel did point to.
The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tallpalms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs.Clinging to a spar with one hand, some reached forth theother with impatient wavings; others, shading their eyesfrom the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards;all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe fortheir fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infiniteblueness 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 beendeceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd jet that way, andthen disappears.
It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men hadmistaken some other thing for the whale-spout, as theevent itself soon proved; for hardly had Ahab reached his
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perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its pin on deck,when he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that madethe air vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles.The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard,asmuch nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginaryjet, less than a mile aheadMoby Dick bodily burst intoview! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not bythe peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, didthe White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the farmore wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with hisutmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whalethus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, andpiling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place tothe distance of seven miles and more. In those moments,the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; insome cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.
There she breaches! there she breaches! was the cry, asin his immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossedhimself salmon-like to Heaven. So suddenly seen in theblue plain of the sea, and relieved against the still bluermargin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment,intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and stoodthere gradually fading and fading away from its firstsparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancingshower 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
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ye, but one man at the fore. The boats!stand by!
Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, themen, like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolatedbackstays and halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, butstill rapidly was dropped from his perch.
Lower away, he cried, so soon as he had reached his boataspare one, rigged the afternoon previous. Mr. Starbuck, theship is thinekeep away from the boats, but keep near them.Lower, all!
As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this timebeing the first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned,and was now coming for the three crews. Ahabs boat wascentral; and cheering his men, he told them he wouldtake the whale head-and-head,that is, pull straight up tohis forehead,a not uncommon thing; for when within acertain limit, such a course excludes the coming onsetfrom the whales sidelong vision. But ere that close limitwas gained, and while yet all three boats were plain as theships three masts to his eye; the White Whale churninghimself 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 theirons darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent onannihilating each separate plank of which those boats weremade. But skilfully manuvred, incessantly wheeling liketrained chargers in the field; the boats for a while eluded
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him; though, at times, but by a planks breadth; while allthe time, Ahabs unearthly slogan tore every other cry buthis to shreds.
But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the WhiteWhale so crossed and recrossed, and in a thousand waysentangled the slack of the three lines now fast to him,that they foreshortened, and, of themselves, warped thedevoted boats towards the planted irons in him; thoughnow for a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to rallyfor a more tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity,Ahab first paid out more line: and then was rapidlyhauling and jerking in upon it againhoping that way todisencumber it of some snarlswhen lo!a sight more savagethan the embattled teeth of sharks!
Caught and twistedcorkscrewed in the mazes of theline, loose harpoons and lances, with all their bristlingbarbs and points, came flashing and dripping up to thechocks in the bows of Ahabs boat. Only one thing couldbe done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reachedwithinthroughand then, withoutthe rays of steel; draggedin the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman,and then, twice sundering the rope near the chocksdroppedthe intercepted fagot of steel into the sea; and was allfast again. That instant, the White Whale made a suddenrush among the remaining tangles of the other lines; byso doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boatsof Stubb and Flask towards his flukes; dashed them
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together like two rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach, andthen, diving down into the sea, disappeared in a boilingmaelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chipsof the wrecks danced round and round, like the gratednutmeg 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 otherfloating furniture, while aslope little Flask bobbed up anddown like an empty vial, twitching his legs upwards toescape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was lustilysinging out for some one to ladle him up; and whilethe old mans linenow partingadmitted of his pulling intothe creamy pool to rescue whom he could;in that wildsimultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils,Ahabsyet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards Heaven byinvisible wires,as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularlyfrom the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad foreheadagainst its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, intothe air; till it fell againgunwale downwardsand Ahab andhis men struggled out from under it, like seals from a sea-side cave.
The first uprising momentum of the whalemodifying itsdirection as he struck the surfaceinvoluntarily launchedhim along it, to a little distance from the centre of thedestruction he had made; and with his back to it, he nowlay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from sideto side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip
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or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drewback, and came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as ifsatisfied that his work for that time was done, he pushedhis pleated forehead through the ocean, and trailing afterhim the intertangled lines, continued his leeward way at atravellers methodic pace.
As before, the attentive ship having descried the wholefight, again came bearing down to the rescue, and droppinga boat, picked up the floating mariners, tubs, oars, andwhatever else could be caught at, and safely landedthem on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, andankles; 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 seemedto have befallen any one. As with Fedallah the day before,so Ahab was now found grimly clinging to his boatsbroken half, which afforded a comparatively easy float;nor did it so exhaust him as the previous days mishap.
But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastenedupon him; as instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of Starbuck, who had thus far beenthe foremost to assist him. His ivory leg had been snappedoff, leaving but one short sharp splinter.
Aye, aye, Starbuck, tis sweet to lean sometimes, be theleaner who he will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftenerthan he has.
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The ferrule has not stood, sir, said the carpenter, nowcoming up; I put good work into that leg.
But no bones broken, sir, I hope, said Stubb with trueconcern.
Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!dye see it.But evenwith a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I accountno living bone of mine one jot more me, than this deadone thats lost. Nor white whale, nor man, nor fiend, can somuch as graze old Ahab in his own proper and inaccessiblebeing. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrapeyonder roof?Aloft there! which way?
Dead to leeward, sir.
Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! downthe rest of the spare boats and rig themMr. Starbuck away,and muster the boats 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 havesuch a craven mate!
Sir?
My body, man, not thee. Give me something for acanethere, that shivered lance will do. Muster the men.Surely I have not seen him yet. By heaven it cannot
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be!missing?quick! call them all.
The old mans hinted thought was true. Upon mustering thecompany, the Parsee was not there.
The Parsee! cried Stubbhe must have been caught in
The black vomit wrench thee!run all of ye above, alow,cabin, forecastlefind himnot gonenot gone!
But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that theParsee was nowhere to be found.
Aye, sir, said Stubbcaught among the tangles of your lineIthought I saw him dragging under.
_My_ line! _my_ line? Gone?gone? What means thatlittle word?What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahabshakes as if he were the belfry. The harpoon, too!toss overthe litter there,dye see it?the forged iron, men, the whitewhalesno, no, no,blistered fool! this hand did dart it!tisin the fish!Aloft there! Keep him nailedQuick!all handsto the rigging of the boatscollect the oarsharpooneers! theirons, the irons!hoist the royals highera pull on all thesheets!helm there! steady, steady for your life! Ill ten timesgirdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight throughit, but Ill slay him yet!
Great God! but for one single instant show thyself, criedStarbuck; never, never wilt thou capture him, old manIn
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Jesus name no more of this, thats worse than devilsmadness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters;thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thyevil shadow goneall good angels mobbing thee withwarnings:what more wouldst thou have?Shall we keepchasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man?Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shallwe be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,Impietyand blasphemy to hunt him more!
Starbuck, of late Ive felt strangely moved to thee; eversince that hour we both sawthou knowst what, in oneanothers eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be thefront of thy face to me as the palm of this handa lipless,unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This wholeacts immutably decreed. Twas rehearsed by thee and me abillion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fateslieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! thatthou obeyest mine.Stand round me, men. Ye see an oldman cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance;propped up on a lonely foot. Tis Ahabhis bodys part; butAhabs souls a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs.I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismastedfrigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, yellhear me crack; and till ye hear _that_, know that Ahabshawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the thingscalled omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For erethey drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface;then rise again, to sink for evermore. So with Moby
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Dicktwo days hes floatedtomorrow will be the third. Aye,men, hell rise once more,but only to spout his last! Dyefeel brave men, brave?
As fearless fire, cried Stubb.
And as mechanical, muttered Ahab. Then as the men wentforward, he muttered on: The things called omens! Andyesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerningmy broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek to drive out ofothers hearts whats clinched so fast in mine!The ParseetheParsee!gone, gone? and he was to go before:but still was tobe seen again ere I could perishHows that?Theres a riddlenow might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts ofthe whole line of judges:like a hawks beak it pecks mybrain. _Ill_, _Ill_ solve it, though!
When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight toleeward.
So once more the sail was shortened, and everythingpassed nearly as on the previous night; only, the soundof hammers, and the hum of the grindstone was heardtill nearly daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns inthe complete and careful rigging of the spare boats andsharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime,of the broken keel of Ahabs wrecked craft the carpentermade him another leg; while still as on the night before,slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle; his hid,
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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, andonce more the solitary night-man at the fore-mast-headwas relieved by crowds of the daylight look-outs, whodotted every mast and almost every spar.
Dye see him? cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet insight.
In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, thatsall. Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going.What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, andmade for a summer-house to the angels, and this morningthe first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day couldnot dawn upon that world. Heres food for thought, hadAhab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels,feels, feels; _thats_ tingling enough for mortal man! tothinks 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 toomuch for that. And yet, Ive sometimes thought my brainwas very calmfrozen calm, this old skull cracks so, likea 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, its like that sort of common
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grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy cleftsof Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild windsblow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of splitsails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind thathas no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors andcells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and nowcomes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out uponit!its tainted. Were I the wind, Id blow no more on such awicked, miserable world. Id crawl somewhere to a cave,and slink there. And yet, tis a noble and heroic thing, thewind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the lastand bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run throughit. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but willnot stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braverthinga nobler thing than _that_. Would now the wind buthad a body; but all the things that most exasperate andoutrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but onlybodiless as objects, not as agents. Theres a most special,a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! Andyet, I say again, and swear it now, that theres somethingall glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm TradeWinds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on,in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer notfrom their mark, however the baser currents of the seamay turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the landswift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. Andby the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directlyblow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like
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themsomething so unchangeable, and full as strong, blowmy keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there! What dye see?
Nothing, sir.
Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging!See the sun! Aye, aye, it must be so. Ive oversailed him.How, got the start? Aye, hes chasing _me_ now; not I,_him_thats bad; I might have known it, too. Fool! thelinesthe harpoons hes towing. Aye, aye, I have run him bylast night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but theregular look outs! Man the braces!
Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhaton the Pequods quarter, so that now being pointed in thereverse direction, the braced ship sailed hard upon thebreeze 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 alreadymy bones feel damp within me, and from the inside wetmy flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeyinghim!
Stand by to sway me up! cried Ahab, advancing to thehempen basket. We should meet him soon.
Aye, aye, sir, and straightway Starbuck did Ahabs bidding,and once more Ahab swung on high.
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A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Timeitself now held long breaths with keen suspense. But atlast, some three points off the weather bow, Ahab descriedthe spout again, and instantly from the three mast-headsthree shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voicedit.
Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, MobyDick! On deck there!brace sharper up; crowd her into thewinds eye. Hes too far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. Thesails shake! Stand over that helmsman with a top-maul!So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But let me haveone more good round look aloft here at the sea; theres timefor 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!thesame to Noah as to me. Theres a soft shower to leeward.Such lovely leewardings! They must lead somewheretosomething else than common land, more palmy than thepalms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look towindward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But goodbye, good bye, old mast-head! Whats this?green? aye, tinymosses in these warped cracks. No such green weatherstains on Ahabs head! Theres the difference now betweenmans old age and matters. But aye, old mast, we both growold together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, myship? Aye, minus a leg, thats all. By heaven this dead woodhas the better of my live flesh every way. I cant compare
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with it; and Ive known some ships made of dead treesoutlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff ofvital fathers. Whats that he said? he should still go beforeme, my pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? WillI have eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing I descendthose endless stairs? and all night Ive been sailing fromhim, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many morethou toldst direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but,Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-headkeepa good eye upon the whale, the while Im gone. Well talkto-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white whale lies downthere, tied by head and tail.
He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadilylowered through the cloven blue air to the deck.
In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in hisshallops stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of thedescent, he waved to the mate,who held one of the tackle-ropes on deckand bade him pause.
Starbuck!
Sir?
For the third time my souls ship starts upon this voyage,Starbuck.
Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so.
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Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards aremissing, Starbuck!
Truth, sir: saddest truth.
Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at thefull of the flood;and I feel now like a billow thats all onecrested comb, Starbuck. I am old;shake hands with me,man.
Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbucks tears theglue.
Oh, my captain, my captain!noble heartgo notgo not!see,its a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of thepersuasion then!
Lower away!cried Ahab, tossing the mates arm from him.Stand by the crew!
In an instant the boat was pulling round close under thestern.
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-liftedthen; and the boat leaped on.
Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from theship, when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out
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the dark waters beneath the hull, maliciously snapped atthe blades of the oars, every time they dipped in the water;and in this way accompanied the boat with their bites. Itis a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boatsin those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparentlyfollowing them in the same prescient way that vultureshover over the banners of marching regiments in the east.But these were the first sharks that had been observed bythe Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried;and whether it was that Ahabs crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more muskyto the senses of the sharksa matter sometimes well knownto affect them,however it was, they seemed to follow thatone boat without molesting the others.
Heart of wrought steel! murmured Starbuck gazing overthe side, and following with his eyes the recedingboatcanst thou yet ring boldly to that sight?lowering thykeel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?Forwhen three days flow together in one continuous intensepursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second thenoon, and the third the evening and the end of that thingbethat end what it may. Oh! my God! what is this thatshoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yetexpectant,fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swimbefore me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the pastis somehow grown dim. Mary, girl! thou fadest in paleglories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown
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wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing;but clouds sweep betweenIs my journeys end coming?My legs feel faint; like his who has footed it all day.Feel thy heart,beats it yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck!stave itoffmove, move! speak aloud!Mast-head there! See ye myboys hand on the hill?Crazed;aloft there!keep thy keenesteye upon the boats:mark well the whale!Ho! again!driveoff that hawk! see! he peckshe tears the vanepointing tothe red flag flying at the main-truckHa! he soars awaywith it!Wheres the old man now? seest thou that sight, ohAhab!shudder, shudder!
The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal fromthe mast-headsa downward pointed arm, Ahab knew thatthe whale had sounded; but intending to be near him at thenext rising, he held on his way a little sideways from thevessel; the becharmed crew maintaining the profoundestsilence, as the head-beat waves hammered and hammeredagainst the opposing bow.
Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermostheads drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; andno coffin and no hearse can be mine:and hemp only cankill me! Ha! ha!
Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broadcircles; then quickly upheaved, as if sideways slidingfrom a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to thesurface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a subterraneous
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hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled withtrailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shotlengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in athin drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a moment inthe rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back into thedeep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed foran instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in ashower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed likenew milk round the marble trunk of the whale.
Give way! cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boatsdarted forward to the attack; but maddened by yesterdaysfresh irons that corroded in him, Moby Dick seemedcombinedly possessed by all the angels that fell fromheaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreadinghis broad white forehead, beneath the transparent skin,looked knitted together; as head on, he came churning histail 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, butleaving Ahabs almost without a scar.
While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strainedplanks; and as the whale swimming out from them, turned,and showed one entire flank as he shot by them again; atthat moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round and roundto the fishs back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which,during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutionsof the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee
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was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distendedeyes turned full upon old Ahab.
The harpoon dropped from his hand.
Befooled, befooled!drawing in a long lean breathAye,Parsee! I see thee again.Aye, and thou goest before; andthis, _this_ then is the hearse that thou didst promise. But Ihold thee to the last letter of thy word. Where is the secondhearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those boats are uselessnow; repair them if ye can in time, and return to me; ifnot, Ahab is enough to dieDown, men! the first thing thatbut offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing Iharpoon. Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs;and so obey me.Wheres the whale? gone down again?
But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent uponescaping with the corpse he bore, and as if the particularplace of the last encounter had been but a stage inhis leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadilyswimming forward; and had almost passed the ship,whichthus far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him,though for the present her headway had been stopped. Heseemed swimming with his utmost velocity, and now onlyintent upon pursuing his own straight path in the sea.
Oh! Ahab, cried Starbuck, not too late is it, even now, thethird day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It isthou, thou, that madly seekest him!
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Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftlyimpelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at lastwhen Ahab was sliding by the vessel, so near as plainlyto distinguish Starbucks face as he leaned over the rail, hehailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow him, nottoo swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, hesaw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mountingto the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking inthe two staved boats which had but just been hoisted to theside, and were busily at work in repairing them. One afterthe other, through the port-holes, as he sped, he also caughtflying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves ondeck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he sawall this; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; farother hammers seemed driving a nail into his heart. But herallied. And now marking that the vane or flag was gonefrom the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, whohad just gained that perch, to descend again for anotherflag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.
Whether fagged by the three days running chase, and theresistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore;or whether it was some latent deceitfulness and malicein him: whichever was true, the White Whales way nowbegan to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidlynearing him once more; though indeed the whales last starthad not been so long a one as before. And still as Ahabglided over the waves the unpitying sharks accompanied
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him; and so pertinaciously stuck to the boat; and socontinually bit at the plying oars, that the blades becamejagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea, atalmost every dip.
Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to youroars. Pull on! tis the better rest, the sharks jaw than theyielding water.
But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller andsmaller!
They will last long enough! pull on!But who can tellhemutteredwhether these sharks swim to feast on the whaleor on Ahab?But pull on! Aye, all alive, nowwe near him.The helm! take the helm! let me pass,and so saying twoof the oarsmen helped him forward to the bows of the stillflying boat.
At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran rangingalong with the White Whales flank, he seemed strangelyoblivious of its advanceas the whale sometimes willandAhab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which,thrown off from the whales 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 farfiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and cursesank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby
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Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nighflank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it,so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been forthe elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung,Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea. Asit was, three of the oarsmenwho foreknew not the preciseinstant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for itseffectsthese were flung out; but so fell, that, in an instanttwo of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising toits level on a combing wave, hurled themselves bodilyinboard again; the third man helplessly dropping astern,but still afloat and swimming.
Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition ofungraduated, instantaneous swiftness, the White Whaledarted through the weltering sea. But when Ahab criedout to the steersman to take new turns with the line, andhold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on theirseats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment thetreacherous line felt that double strain and tug, it snappedin 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, thewhale wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay;but in that evolution, catching sight of the nearing blackhull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it the source of all
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his persecutions; bethinking itit may bea larger and noblerfoe; 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.Ist night?
The whale! The ship! cried the cringing oarsmen.
Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ereit be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last timeupon 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 thesledge-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 thewaves; its half-wading, splashing crew, trying hard to stopthe gap and bale out the pouring water.
Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtegosmast-head hammer remained suspended in his hand; andthe red flag, half-wrapping him as with a plaid, thenstreamed itself straight out from him, as his own forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing uponthe bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-comingmonster just as soon as he.
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The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweetpowers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, ifdie he must, in a womans fainting fit. Up helm, I sayyefools, the jaw! the jaw! Is this the end of all my burstingprayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo,thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helmagain! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable browdrives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannotdepart. My God, stand by me now!
Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you arethat will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grinat thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, orkept Stubb awake, but Stubbs own unwinking eye? Andnow poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is alltoo soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin atthee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars!I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted uphis ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye,would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinningwhale, but therell be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly yenot, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubbdie in his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death,though;cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one redcherry ere we die!
Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh,Stubb, I hope my poor mothers drawn my part-pay ere this;
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if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage isup.
From the ships bows, nearly all the seamen now hunginactive; hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons,mechanically retained in their hands, just as they haddarted from their various employments; all their enchantedeyes intent upon the whale, which from side to sidestrangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broadband of overspreading semicircular foam before him as herushed. Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice werein his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man coulddo, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the shipsstarboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flatupon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of theharpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Throughthe breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountaintorrents down a flume.
The ship! The hearse!the second hearse! cried Ahab fromthe boat; its wood could only be American!
Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quiveringalong its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to thesurface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yardsof Ahabs 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
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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 prideof meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death onlonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies inmy 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 theeI roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to thelast I grapple with thee; from hells heart I stab at thee; forhates sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins andall hearses to one common pool! and since neither can bemine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee,though tied to thee, thou damned whale! _Thus_, I give upthe spear!
The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward;with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;ranfoul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but theflying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly asTurkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out ofthe boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant,the heavy eye-splice in the ropes final end flew out of thestark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smitingthe sea, disappeared in its depths.
For an instant, the tranced boats crew stood still; thenturned. The ship? Great God, where is the ship? Soon
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they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelongfading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only theuppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation,or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the paganharpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts onthe sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boatitself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and everylance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all roundand round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of thePequod out of sight.
But as the last whelmings intermixingly pouredthemselves over the sunken head of the Indian at themainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yetvisible, together with long streaming yards of the flag,which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, overthe destroying billows they almost touched;at that instant,a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly upliftedin the open air, in the act of nailing the flag fasterand yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk thattauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards fromits natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, andincommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced tointercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammerand the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherialthrill, 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 thrustupwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of
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Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, wouldnot sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heavenalong with her, and helmeted herself with it.
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawninggulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; thenall collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on asit rolled five thousand years ago.
Epilogue
AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEEJob.
The dramas done. Why then here does any one stepforth?Because one did survive the wreck.
It so chanced, that after the Parsees disappearance, I washe whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahabsbowsman, when that bowsman assumed the vacant post;the same, who, when on the last day the three men weretossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern.So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and infull sight of it, when the halfspent suction of the sunkship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towardsthe closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to acreamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contractingtowards the button-like black bubble at the axis of thatslowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve.Till, gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward
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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, fellover, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin,for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a softand dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glidedby as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, asail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was thedevious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search afterher missing children, only found another orphan.
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