Herman Melville
MobyDick
or
The Whale
In token
Of my admiration for his genius
This book is inscribed
to
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Etymology
Supplied by a late consumptive Usher to a grammar school
The pale Usher threadbare in coat heart body and brain I see him now He
was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars with a queer handkerchief
mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the
world He loved to dust his old grammars it somehow mildly reminded him of his
mortality
»While you take in hand to school others and to teach them by what name a
whalefish is to be called in our tongue leaving out through ignorance the
letter H which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word you
deliver that which is not true«
Hakluyt
»Whale Sw and Dan hval This animal is named from roundness or rolling
for in Dan hvalt is arched or vaulted«
Websters Dictionary
»Whale It is more immediately from the Dut and Ger Wallen A S
Walwian to roll to wallow«
Richardsons Dictionary
Hebrew
xhtos Greek
Cetus Latin
Whoel AngloSaxon
Hvalt Danish
Wal Dutch
Hwalt Swedish
Whale Icelandic
Whale English
Baleine French
Ballena Spanish
Pekeenueenuee Feegee
Peheenueenuee Erromangoan
Extracts
Supplied by a SubSubLibrarian
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grubworm of a poor
devil of a SubSub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and
streetstalls of the earth picking up whatever random allusions to whales he
could anyways find in any book whatsoever sacred or profane Therefore you must
not in every case at least take the higgledypiggledy whale statements
however authentic in these extracts for veritable gospel cetology Far from
it As touching the ancient authors generally as well as the poets here
appearing these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining as affording a
glancing birdseye view of what has been promiscuously said thought fancied
and sung of Leviathan by many nations and generations including our own
So fare thee well poor devil of a SubSub whose commentator I am Thou
belongest to that hopeless sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever
warm and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosystrong but with whom one
sometimes loves to sit and feel poordevilish too and grow convivial upon
tears and say to them bluntly with full eyes and empty glasses and in not
altogether unpleasant sadness Give it up SubSubs For by how much the more
pains ye take to please the world by so much the more shall ye forever go
thankless Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye
But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royalmast with your hearts for
your friends who have gone before are clearing out the sevenstoried heavens
and making refugees of longpampered Gabriel Michael and Raphael against your
coming Here ye strike but splintered hearts together there ye shall strike
unsplinterable glasses
»And God created great whales«
Genesis
»Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him
One would think the deep to be hoary«
Job
»Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah«
Jonah
»There go the ships there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to
play therein«
Psalms
»In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent even Leviathan that
crooked serpent and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea«
Isaiah
»And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this
monsters mouth be it beast boat or stone down it goes all
incontinently that foul great swallow of his and perisheth in the
bottomless gulf of his paunch«
Hollands Plutarchs Morals
»The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are
among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balæne take up as
much in length as four acres or arpens of land«
Hollands Pliny
»Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea when about sunrise a
great many Whales and other monsters of the sea appeared Among the
former one was of a most monstrous size This came towards
us openmouthed raising the waves on all sides and beating the
sea before him into a foam«
Tookes Lucian The True History
»He visited this country also with a view of catching horsewhales
which had bones of very great value for their teeth of which he
brought some to the king The best whales were catched in his
own country of which some were fortyeight some fifty yards long
He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days«
Other or Octhers verbal narrative taken down from his mouth by King Alfred
AD 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 seagudgeon retires into it
in great security and there sleeps«
Montaignes Apology for Raimond Sebond
»Let us fly let us fly Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan
described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job«
Rabelais
»This whales liver was two cartloads«
Stowes Annals
»The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling
pan«
Lord Bacons Version of the Psalms
»Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
nothing certain They grow exceeding fat insomuch that an
incredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale«
Ibid History of Life and Death
»The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward
bruise«
King Henry
»Very like a whale«
Hamlet
»Which to secure no skill of leachs art
Mote him availle but to returne againe
To his wounds worker that with lowly dart
Dinting his breast had bred his restless paine
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro the maine«
The Fairie Queen
»Immense as whales the motion of whose vast bodies can in a
peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil«
Sir William Davenants Preface to Gondibert
»What spermacetti is men might justly doubt since the learned
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years saith plainly Nescio quid
sit«
Sir T Brownes Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale Vide his VE
»Like Spencers Talus with his modern flail
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail
Their fixed javlins in his side he wears
And on his back a grove of pikes appears«
Wallers Battle of the Summer Islands
»By art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or
State in Latin Civitas which is but an artificial man«
Opening sentence of Hobbess Leviathan
»Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing as if it had been a
sprat in the mouth of a whale«
Pilgrims Progress
»That sea beast
Leviathan which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream«
Paradise Lost
»There Leviathan
Hugest of living creatures in the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims
And seems a moving land and at his gills
Draws in and at his breath spouts out a sea«
Ibid
»The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water and have a sea of
oil swimming in them«
Fullers Profane and Holy State
»So close behind some promontory lie
The huge Leviathans to attend their prey
And give no chace but swallow in the fry
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way«
Drydens Annus Mirabilis
»While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship they cut off
his head and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come
but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water«
Thomas Edges Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen in Purchas
»In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean and in
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents which
nature has placed on their shoulders«
Sir T Herberts Voyages into Asia and Africa Harris Coll
»Here they saw such huge troops of whales that they were forced to
proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their
ship upon them«
Schoutens Sixth Circumnavigation
»We set sail from the Elbe wind NE in the ship called The
JonasintheWhale
Some say the whale cant open his mouth but that is a fable
They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a
whale for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains
I was told of a whale taken near Shetland that had above a barrel
of herrings in his belly
One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in
Spitzbergen that was white all over«
A Voyage to Greenland A D 1671 Harris Coll
»Several whales have come in upon this coast Fife Anno 1652 one
eighty feet in length of the whalebone kind came in which as I
was informed besides a vast quantity of oil did afford 500 weight
of baleen The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of
Pitferren«
Sibbalds Fife and Kinross
»Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
Spermaceti whale for I could never hear of any of that sort that
was killed by any man such is his fierceness and swiftness«
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 more in those
southern seas as I may say by a hundred to one than we have to
the northward of us«
Captain Cowleys Voyage round the Globe A D 1729
» and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with
such an insupportable smell as to bring on a disorder of the
brain«
Ulloas South America
»To fifty chosen sylphs of special note
We trust the important charge the petticoat
Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail
Tho stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale«
Rape of the Lock
»If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude with those that
take up their abode in the deep we shall find they will appear
contemptible in the comparison The whale is doubtless the largest
animal in creation«
Goldsmiths Nat Hist
»If you should write a fable for little fishes you would make them
speak like great whales«
Goldsmith to Johnson
»In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock but it was
found to be a dead whale which some Asiatics had killed and were
then towing ashore They seemed to endeavour to conceal themselves
behind the whale in order to avoid being seen by us«
Cooks Voyages
»The larger whales they seldom venture to attack They stand in so
great dread of some of them that when out at sea they are afraid to
mention even their names and carry dung limestone juniperwood
and some other articles of the same nature in their boats in order
to terrify and prevent their too near approach«
Uno Von Troils Letters on Bankss and Solanders Voyage to Iceland in 1772
»The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois is an active fierce
animal and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen«
Thomas Jeffersons Whale Memorial to the French Minister in 1778
»And pray sir what in the world is equal to it«
Edmund Burkes Reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale Fishery
»Spain a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe«
Edmund Burke Somewhere
»A tenth branch of the kings ordinary revenue said to be grounded
on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from
pirates and robbers is the right to royal fish which are whale and
sturgeon And these when either thrown ashore or caught near the
coast are the property of the king«
Blackstone
»Soon to the sport of death the crews repair
Rodmond unerring oer his head suspends
The barbed steel and every turn attends«
Falconers Shipwreck
»Bright shone the roofs the domes the spires
And rockets blew self driven
To hang their momentary fire
Around the vault of heaven
So fire with water to compare
The ocean serves on high
Upspouted 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 heart at a
stroke with immense velocity«
John Hunters Account of the Dissection of a Whale A smallsized one
»The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of
the waterworks at London Bridge and the water roaring in its
passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the
blood gushing from the whales heart«
Paleys Theology
»The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet«
Baron Cuvier
»In 40 degrees south we saw Spermacetti Whales but did not take
any till the first of May the sea being then covered with them«
Colnetts Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery
»In the free element beneath me swam
Floundered and dived in play in chace in battle
Fishes of every colour form and kind
Which language cannot paint and mariner
Had never seen from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave
Gatherd in shoals immense like floating islands
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies
Whales sharks and monsters armd in front or jaw
With swords saws spiral horns or hooked fangs«
Montgomerys World before the Flood
»Io Pæan Io sing
To the finny peoples king
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is
Not a fatter fish than he
Flounders round the Polar Sea«
Charles Lambs Triumph of the Whale
»In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the
whales spouting and sporting with each other when one observed
there pointing to the sea is a green pasture where our
childrens grandchildren will go for bread«
Obed Macys History of Nantucket
»I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the
form of a Gothic Arch by setting up a whales jaw bones«
Hawthornes TwiceTold Tales
»She came to bespeak a monument for her first love who had been
killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean no less than forty years
ago«
Ibid
»No Sir tis a Right Whale answered Tom I saw his spout he
threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to
look at He s a raal oilbutt that fellow«
Coopers Pilot
»The papers were brought in and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that
whales had been introduced on the stage there«
Eckermanns Conversations with Goethe
»My God Mr Chace what is the matter I answered We have been
stove by a whale«
Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket which was
attacked andfinally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale inthe Pacific Ocean By
Owen Chace of Nantucket first mate of said vessel New York 1821
»A mariner sat in the shrouds one night
The wind was piping free
Now bright now dimmed was the moonlight pale
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale
As it floundered in the sea«
Elizabeth Oakes Smith
»The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats engaged in
the capture of this one whale amounted altogether to 10440 yards
or nearly six English miles
Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air which
cracking like a whip resounds to the distance of three or four
miles«
Scoresby
»Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks the
infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over he rears his enormous
head and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him he
rushes at the boats with his head they are propelled before him
with vast swiftness and sometimes utterly destroyed
It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration
of the habits of so interesting and in a commercial point of view
of so important an animal as the Sperm Whale should have been so
entirely neglected or should have excited so little curiosity among
the numerous and many of them competent observers that of late
years must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient
opportunities of witnessing their habitudes«
Thomas Beales History of the Sperm Whale 1839
»The Cachalot« Sperm Whale »is not only better armed than the True
Whale« Greenland or Right Whale »in possessing a formidable weapon
at either extremity of its body but also more frequently displays a
disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in a manner at
once so artful bold and mischievous as to lead to its being
regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of
the whale tribe«
Frederick Debell Bennetts Whaling Voyage round the Globe 1840
»October 13 There she blows was sung out from the masthead
Where away demanded the captain
Three points off the lee bow sir
Raise up your wheel Steady
Steady sir
Masthead ahoy Do you see that whale now
Ay ay sir A shoal of Sperm Whales There she blows There she
breaches
Sing out sing out every time
Ay ay sir There she blows there there thar she blows
bowes booos
How far off
Two miles and a half
Thunder and lightning so near Call all hands«
J Ross Brownes Etchings of a Whaling Cruise 1846
»The Whaleship Globe on board of which vessel occurred the horrid
transactions we are about to relate belonged to the island of
Nantucket«
Narrative of the Globe Mutiny by Lay and Hussey Survivors A D 1828
»Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded he parried the
assault for some time with a lance but the furious monster at
length rushed on the boat himself and comrades only being preserved
by leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable«
Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett
»Nantucket itself« said Mr Webster »is a very striking and
peculiar portion of the National interest There is a population of
eight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea adding
largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most
persevering industry«
Report of Daniel Websters Speech in the US Senate on the Application for the
Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket 1828
»The whale fell directly over him and probably killed him in a
smoment«
The Whale and his Captors or the Whalemans Adventures and the Whalers
Biography gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore Preble By Rev
Henry T Cheever
»If you make the least damn bit of noise replied Samuel I will
send you to hell«
Life of Samuel Comstock the Mutineer by his Brother William Comstock
Another Version of the Whaleship Globe Narrative
»The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean in
order if possible to discover a passage through it to India
though they failed of their main object laid open the haunts of the
whale«
McCullochs Commercial Dictionary
»These things are reciprocal the ball rebounds only to bound
forward again for now in laying open the haunts of the whale the
whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same
mystic NorthWest Passage«
From »Something« unpublished
»It is impossible to meet a whaleship on the ocean without being
struck by her near appearance The vessel under short sail with
lookouts at the mastheads eagerly scanning the wide expanse
around them has a totally different air from those engaged in a
regular voyage«
Currents and Whaling US Ex Ex
»Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect
having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth either to
form arches over gateways or entrances to alcoves and they may
perhaps have been told that these were the ribs of whales«
Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean
»It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these
whales that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the
savages enrolled among the crew«
Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking of the Whaleship Hobomack
»It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels
American few ever return in the ships on board of which they
departed«
Cruise in a Whale Boat
»Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water and shot up
perpendicularly into the air It was the whale«
Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman
»The Whale is harpooned to be sure but bethink you how you would
manage a powerful unbroken colt with the mere appliance of a rope
tied to the root of his tail«
A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks
»On one occasion I saw two of these monsters whales probably male
and female slowly swimming one after the other within less than a
stones throw of the shore« Tierra del Fuego »over which the
beech tree extended its branches«
Darwins Voyage of a Naturalist
»Stern all exclaimed the mate as upon turning his head he saw the
distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat
threatening it with instant destruction Stern all for your
lives«
Wharton the Whale Killer
»So be cheery my lads let your hearts never fail
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale«
Nantucket Song
»Oh the rare old Whale mid storm and gale
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might where might is right
And King of the boundless sea«
Whale Song
Chapter I
Loomings
Call me Ishmael Some years ago never mind how long precisely having little
or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore I
thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world It is
a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation Whenever
I find myself growing grim about the mouth whenever it is a damp drizzly
November in my soul whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin
warehouses and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet and especially
whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and
methodically knocking peoples hats off then I account it high time to get to
sea as soon as I can This is my substitute for pistol and ball With a
philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword I quietly take to the
ship There is nothing surprising in this If they but knew it almost all men
in their degree some time or other cherish very nearly the same feelings
toward the ocean with me
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes belted round by wharves as
Indian isles by coral reefs commerce surrounds it with her surf Right and
left the streets take you waterward Its extreme downtown is the battery
where that noble mole is washed by waves and cooled by breezes which a few
hours previous were out of sight of land Look at the crowds of watergazers
there
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon Go from Corlears Hook
to Coenties Slip and from thence by Whitehall northward What do you see
Posted like silent sentinels all around the town stand thousands upon thousands
of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries Some leaning against the spiles some
seated upon the pierheads some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China
some high aloft in the rigging as if striving to get a still better seaward
peep But these are all landsmen of week days pent up in lath and plaster
tied to counters nailed to benches clinched to desks How then is this Are
the green fields gone What do they here
But look here come more crowds pacing straight for the water and
seemingly bound for a dive Strange Nothing will content them but the extremest
limit of the land loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not
suffice No They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without
falling in And there they stand miles of them leagues Inlanders all they
come from lanes and alleys streets and avenues north east south and west
Yet here they all unite Tell me does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the
compasses of all those ships attract them thither
Once more Say you are in the country in some high land of lakes Take
almost any path you please and ten to one it carries you down in a dale and
leaves you there by a pool in the stream There is magic in it Let the most
absentminded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries stand that man on his
legs set his feet agoing and he will infallibly lead you to water if water
there be in all that region Should you ever be athirst in the great American
desert try this experiment if your caravan happen to be supplied with a
metaphysical professor Yes as everyone knows meditation and water are wedded
forever
But here is an artist He desires to paint you the dreamiest shadiest
quietest most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the
Saco What is the chief element he employs There stand his trees each with a
hollow trunk as if a hermit and a crucifix were within and here sleeps his
meadow and there sleep his cattle and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy
smoke Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way reaching to overlapping
spurs of mountains bathed in their hillside blue But though the picture lies
thus tranced and though this pinetree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon
this shepherds head yet all were vain unless the shepherds eye were fixed
upon the magic stream before him Go visit the Prairies in June when for scores
on scores of miles you wade kneedeep among tigerlilies what is the one charm
wanting Water there is not a drop of water there Were Niagara but a
cataract of sand would you travel your thousand miles to see it Why did the
poor poet of Tennessee upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver
deliberate whether to buy him a coat which he sadly needed or invest his money
in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach Why is almost every robust healthy boy
with a robust healthy soul in him at some time or other crazy to go to sea Why
upon your first voyage as a passenger did you yourself feel such a mystical
vibration when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy Why did the Greeks give it a
separate deity and own brother of Jove Surely all this is not without meaning
And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus who because he could
not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain plunged into it and
was drowned But that same image we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans It
is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life and this is the key to it all
Now when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to
grow hazy about the eyes and begin to be over conscious of my lungs I do not
mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger For to go as a
passenger you must needs have a purse and a purse is but a rag unless you have
something in it Besides passengers get seasick grow quarrelsome dont
sleep of nights do not enjoy themselves much as a general thing no I
never go as a passenger nor though I am something of a salt do I ever go to
sea as a Commodore or a Captain or a Cook I abandon the glory and distinction
of such offices to those who like them For my part I abominate all honourable
respectable toils trials and tribulations of every kind whatsoever It is
quite as much as I can do to take care of myself without taking care of ships
barques brigs schooners and what not And as for going as cook though I
confess there is considerable glory in that a cook being a sort of officer on
shipboard yet somehow I never fancied broiling fowls though once broiled
judiciously buttered and judgmatically salted and peppered there is no one who
will speak more respectfully not to say reverentially of a broiled fowl than I
will It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis
and roasted river horse that you see the mummies of those creatures in their
huge bakehouses the pyramids
No when I go to sea I go as a simple sailor right before the mast plumb
down into the forecastle aloft there to the royal masthead True they rather
order me about some and make me jump from spar to spar like a grasshopper in a
May meadow And at first this sort of thing is unpleasant enough It touches
ones sense of honour particularly if you come of an old established family in
the land the Van Rensselaers or Randolphs or Hardicanutes And more than all
if just previous to putting your hand into the tarpot you have been lording it
as a country schoolmaster making the tallest boys stand in awe of you The
transition is a keen one I assure you from a schoolmaster to a sailor and
requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and
bear it But even this wears off in time
What of it if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and
sweep down the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I mean in
the scales of the New Testament Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks
anything the less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks
in that particular instance Who aint a slave Tell me that Well then
however the old seacaptains may order me about however they may thump and
punch me about I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right that
everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way either in a
physical or metaphysical point of view that is and so the universal thump is
passed round and all hands should rub each others shoulderblades and be
content
Again I always go to sea as a sailor because they make a point of paying
me for my trouble whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever
heard of On the contrary passengers themselves must pay And there is all the
difference in the world between paying and being paid The act of paying is
perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed
upon us But being paid what will compare with it The urbane activity with
which a man receives money is really marvellous considering that we so
earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills and that on no
account can a monied man enter heaven Ah how cheerfully we consign ourselves
to perdition
Finally I always go to sea as a sailor because of the wholesome exercise
and pure air of the forecastle deck For as in this world headwinds are far
more prevalent than winds from astern that is if you never violate the
Pythagorean maxim so for the most part the commodore on the quarterdeck gets
his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle He thinks he
breathes it first but not so In much the same way do the commonalty lead their
leaders in many other things at the same time that the leaders little suspect
it But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a
merchant sailor I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage
this the invisible policeofficer of the Fates who has the constant
surveillance of me and secretly dogs me and influences me in some
unaccountable way he can better answer than any one else And doubtless my
going on this whaling voyage formed part of the grand programme of Providence
that was drawn up a long time ago It came in as a sort of brief interlude and
solo between more extensive performances I take it that this part of the bill
must have run something like this
»Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States
Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael
BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN«
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers the Fates
put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage when others were set down
for magnificent parts in high tragedies and short and easy parts in genteel
comedies and jolly parts in farces though I cannot tell why this was exactly
yet now that I recall all the circumstances I think I can see a little into
the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various
disguises induced me to set about performing the part I did besides cajoling
me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased
freewill and discriminating judgment
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale
himself Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity Then
the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk the undeliverable
nameless perils of the whale these with all the attending marvels of a
thousand Patagonian sights and sounds helped to sway me to my wish With other
men perhaps such things would not have been inducements but as for me I am
tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote I love to sail forbidden
seas and land on barbarous coasts Not ignoring what is good I am quick to
perceive a horror and could still be social with it would they let me since
it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one
lodges in
By reason of these things then the whaling voyage was welcome the great
floodgates of the wonderworld swung open and in the wild conceits that swayed
me to my purpose two and two there floated into my inmost soul endless
processions of the whale and midmost of them all one grand hooded phantom
like a snow hill in the air
Chapter II
The CarpetBag
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpetbag tucked it under my arm and
started for Cape Horn and the Pacific Quitting the good city of old Manhatto I
duly arrived in New Bedford It was on a Saturday night in December Much was I
disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already
sailed and that no way of reaching that place would offer till the following
Monday
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this
same New Bedford thence to embark on their voyage it may as well be related
that I for one had no idea of so doing For my mind was made up to sail in no
other than a Nantucket craft because there was a fine boisterous something
about everything connected with that famous old island which amazingly pleased
me Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising the
business of whaling and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much
behind her yet Nantucket was her great original the Tyre of this Carthage
the place where the first dead American whale was stranded Where else but from
Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen the Red Men first sally out in canoes
to give chase to the leviathan And where but from Nantucket too did that
first adventurous little sloop put forth partly laden with imported
cobblestones so goes the story to throw at the whales in order to discover
when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit
Now having a night a day and still another night following before me in
New Bedford ere I could embark for my destined port it became a matter of
concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile It was a very
dubiouslooking nay a very dark and dismal night bitingly cold and cheerless
I knew no one in the place With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket and
only brought up a few pieces of silver So wherever you go Ishmael said I
to myself as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag and
comparing the gloom toward the north with the darkness toward the south
wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night my dear
Ishmael be sure to inquire the price and dont be too particular
With halting steps I paced the streets and passed the sign of »The Crossed
Harpoons« but it looked too expensive and jolly there Further on from the
bright red windows of the »SwordFish Inn« there came such fervent rays that
it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house for
everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard asphaltic
pavement rather weary for me when I struck my foot against the flinty
projections because from hard remorseless service the soles of my boots were
in a most miserable plight Too expensive and jolly again thought I pausing
one moment to watch the broad glare in the street and hear the sounds of the
tinkling glasses within But go on Ishmael said I at last dont you hear get
away from before the door your patched boots are stopping the way So on I
went I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward for there
doubtless were the cheapest if not the cheeriest inns
Such dreary streets blocks of blackness not houses on either hand and
here and there a candle like a candle moving about in a tomb At this hour of
the night of the last day of the week that quarter of the town proved all but
deserted But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding from a low wide
building the door of which stood invitingly open It had a careless look as if
it were meant for the uses of the public so entering the first thing I did
was to stumble over an ashbox in the porch Ha thought I ha as the flying
particles almost choked me are these ashes from that destroyed city Gomorrah
But »The Crossed Harpoons« and »The SwordFish« this then must needs be the
sign of »The Trap« However I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice
within pushed on and opened a second interior door
It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet A hundred black
faces turned round in their rows to peer and beyond a black Angel of Doom was
beating a book in a pulpit It was a negro church and the preachers text was
about the blackness of darkness and the weeping and wailing and teethgnashing
there Ha Ishmael muttered I backing out Wretched entertainment at the sign
of »The Trap«
Moving on I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks and
heard a forlorn creaking in the air and looking up saw a swinging sign over
the door with a white painting upon it faintly representing a tall straight jet
of misty spray and these words underneath »The SpouterInn Peter Coffin«
Coffin Spouter Rather ominous in that particular connection thought
I But it is a common name in Nantucket they say and I suppose this Peter here
is an emigrant from there As the light looked so dim and the place for the
time looked quiet enough and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked
as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district and
as the swinging sign had a povertystricken sort of creak to it I thought that
here was the very spot for cheap lodgings and the best of peacoffee
It was a queer sort of place a gableended old house one side palsied as
it were and leaning over sadly It stood on a sharp bleak corner where that
tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor
Pauls tossed craft Euroclydon nevertheless is a mighty pleasant zephyr to
anyone indoors with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed »In judging
of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon« says an old writer of whose works
I possess the only copy extant »it maketh a marvellous difference whether
thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the
outside or whether thou observest it from that sashless window where the frost
is on both sides and of which the wight Death is the only glazier« True
enough thought I as this passage occurred to my mind old blackletter thou
reasonest well Yes these eyes are windows and this body of mine is the house
What a pity they didnt stop up the chinks and the crannies though and thrust
in a little lint here and there But it s too late to make any improvements
now The universe is finished the copestone is on and the chips were carted
off a million years ago Poor Lazarus there chattering his teeth against the
curbstone for his pillow and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings he
might plug up both ears with rags and put a corncob into his mouth and yet
that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon Euroclydon says old Dives
in his red silken wrapper he had a redder one afterward pooh pooh What a
fine frosty night how Orion glitters what northern lights Let them talk of
their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories give me the
privilege of making my own summer with my own coals
But what thinks Lazarus Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to
the grand northern lights Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here
Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator
yea ye gods go down to the fiery pit itself in order to keep out this frost
Now that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door
of Dives this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of
the Moluccas Yet Dives himself he too lives like a Czar in an icepalace made
of frozen sighs and being a president of a temperance society he only drinks
the tepid tears of orphans
But no more of this blubbering now we are going awhaling and there is
plenty of that yet to come Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet and see
what sort of a place this »Spouter« may be
Chapter III
The SpouterInn
Entering that gableended SpouterInn you found yourself in a wide low
straggling entry with oldfashioned wainscots reminding one of the bulwarks of
some condemned old craft On one side hung a very large oilpainting so
thoroughly besmoked and every way defaced that in the unequal crosslights by
which you viewed it it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic
visits to it and careful inquiry of the neighbours that you could any way
arrive at an understanding of its purpose Such unaccountable masses of shades
and shadows that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist in
the time of the New England hags had endeavoured to delineate chaos bewitched
But by dint of much and earnest contemplation and oftrepeated ponderings and
especially by throwing open the little window toward the back of the entry you
at last come to the conclusion that such an idea however wild might not be
altogether unwarranted
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long limber portentous
black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue
dim perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast A boggy soggy squitchy
picture truly enough to drive a nervous man distracted Yet there was a sort of
indefinite halfattained unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you
to it till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that
marvellous painting meant Ever and anon a bright but alas deceptive idea
would dart you through It s the Black Sea in a midnight gale It s the
unnatural combat of the four primal elements It s a blasted heath It s a
Hyperborean winter scene It s the breakingup of the icebound stream of
Time But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in
the pictures midst That once found out and all the rest were plain But stop
does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish even the great
leviathan himself
In fact the artists design seemed this a final theory of my own partly
based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed
upon the subject The picture represents a CapeHorner in a great hurricane the
halffoundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone
visible and an exasperated whale purposing to spring clean over the craft is
in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mastheads
The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of
monstrous clubs and spears Some were thickly set with glittering teeth
resembling ivory saws others were tufted with knots of human hair and one was
sickleshaped with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the
newmown grass by a longarmed mower You shuddered as you gazed and wondered
what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a deathharvesting with
such a hacking horrifying implement Mixed with these were rusty old
whalinglances and harpoons all broken and deformed Some were storied weapons
With this once long lance now wildly elbowed fifty years ago did Nathan Swain
kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset And that harpoon so like a
corkscrew now was flung in Javan seas and run away with by a whale years
afterward slain off the Cape of Blanco The original iron entered nigh the tail
and like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man travelled full
forty feet and at last was found imbedded in the hump
Crossing this dusky entry and on through yon lowarched way cut through
what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fireplaces all
round you enter the public room A still duskier place is this with such low
ponderous beams above and such old wrinkled planks beneath that you would
almost fancy you trod some old crafts cockpits especially of such a howling
night when this corneranchored old ark rocked so furiously On one side stood
a long low shelflike table covered with cracked glass cases filled with
dusty rarities gathered from this wide worlds remotest nooks Projecting from
the further angle of the room stands a darklooking den the bar a rude
attempt at a right whales head Be that how it may there stands the vast
arched bone of the whales jaw so wide a coach might almost drive beneath it
Within are shabby shelves ranged round with old decanters bottles flasks and
in those jaws of swift destruction like another cursed Jonah by which name
indeed they called him bustles a little withered old man who for their
money dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death
Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison Though true
cylinders without within the villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully
tapered downward to a cheating bottom Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the
glass surround these footpads goblets Fill to this mark and your charge is
but a penny to this a penny more and so on to the full glass the Cape Horn
measure which you may gulp down for a shilling
Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a
table examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander I sought the
landlord and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room received for
answer that his house was full not a bed unoccupied »But avast« he added
tapping his forehead »you haint no objections to sharin a harpooneers
blanket have ye I spose you are goin awhalin so you d better get used to
that sort of thing«
I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed that if I should ever
do so it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be and that if he the
landlord really had no other place for me and the harpooneer was not decidedly
objectionable why rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter
a night I would put up with the half of any decent mans blanket
»I thought so All right take a seat Supper you want supper Supper ll
be ready directly«
I sat down on an old wooden settle carved all over like a bench on the
Battery At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his
jackknife stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his
legs He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail but he didnt make much
headway I thought
At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining
room It was cold as Iceland no fire at all the landlord said he couldnt
afford it Nothing but two dismal tallow candles each in a winding sheet We
were fain to button up our monkeyjackets and hold to our lips cups of scalding
tea with our halffrozen fingers But the fare was of the most substantial kind
not only meat and potatoes but dumplings good heavens dumplings for supper
One young fellow in a green boxcoat addressed himself to these dumplings in a
most direful manner
»My boy« said the landlord »you ll have the nightmare to a dead
sartainty«
»Landlord« I whispered »that aint the harpooneer is it«
»Oh no« said he looking a sort of diabolically funny »the harpooneer is
a darkcomplexioned chap He never eats dumplings he dont he eats nothing
but steaks and likes em rare«
»The devil he does« says I »Where is that harpooneer Is he here«
»He ll be here afore long« was the answer
I could not help it but I began to feel suspicious of this
darkcomplexioned harpooneer At any rate I made up my mind that if it so
turned out that we should sleep together he must undress and get into bed
before I did
Supper over the company went back to the bar when knowing not what else
to do with myself I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a lookeron
Presently a rioting noise was heard without Starting up the landlord
cried »That s the Grampuss crew I seed her reported in the offing this
morning a three years voyage and a full ship Hurrah boys now we ll have
the latest news from the Feegees«
A tramping of seaboots was heard in the entry the door was flung open and
in rolled a wild set of mariners enough Enveloped in their shaggy watchcoats
and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters all bedarned and ragged
and their beards stiff with icicles they seemed an eruption of bears from
Labrador They had just landed from their boat and this was the first house
they entered No wonder then that they made a straight wake for the whales
mouth the bar when the wrinkled little old Jonah there officiating soon
poured them out brimmers all round One complained of a bad cold in his head
upon which Jonah mixed him a pitchlike potion of gin and molasses which he
swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever never mind of
how long standing or whether caught off the coast of Labrador or on the
weatherside of an iceisland
The liquor soon mounted into their heads as it generally does even with the
arrantest topers newly landed from sea and they began capering about most
obstreperously
I observed however that one of them held somewhat aloof and though he
seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober
face yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest
This man interested me at once and since the seagods had ordained that he
should soon become my shipmate though but a sleepingpartner one so far as
this narrative is concerned I will here venture upon a little description of
him He stood full six feet in height with noble shoulders and a chest like a
cofferdam I have seldom seen such brawn in a man His face was deeply brown
and burnt making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast while in the deep
shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him
much joy His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner and from his
fine stature I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the
Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia When the revelry of his companions had mounted to
its height this man slipped away unobserved and I saw no more of him till he
became my comrade on the sea In a few minutes however he was missed by his
shipmates and being it seems for some reason a huge favourite with them they
raised a cry of »Bulkington Bulkington where s Bulkington« and darted out of
the house in pursuit of him
It was now about nine oclock and the room seeming almost supernaturally
quiet after these orgies I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that
had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen
No man prefers to sleep two in a bed In fact you would a good deal rather
not sleep with your own brother I dont know how it is but people like to be
private when they are sleeping And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown
stranger in a strange inn in a strange town and that stranger a harpooneer
then your objections indefinitely multiply Nor was there any earthly reason why
I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed more than anybody else for sailors no
more sleep two in a bed at sea than bachelor kings do ashore To be sure they
all sleep together in one apartment but you have your own hammock and cover
yourself with your own blanket and sleep in your own skin
The more I pondered over this harpooneer the more I abominated the thought
of sleeping with him It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer his linen
or woollen as the case might be would not be of the tidiest certainly none of
the finest I began to twitch all over Besides it was getting late and my
decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedward Suppose now he should
tumble in upon me at midnight how could I tell from what vile hole he had been
coming
»Landlord Ive changed my mind about that harpooneer I shant sleep with
him I ll try the bench here«
»Just as you please I m sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a
mattress and it s a plaguy rough board here« feeling of the knots and
notches »But wait a bit Skrimshander Ive got a carpenters plane there in
the bar wait I say and I ll make ye snug enough« So saying he procured the
plane and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench vigorously
set to planing away at my bed the while grinning like an ape The shavings flew
right and left till at last the planeiron came bump against an indestructible
knot The landlord was near spraining his wrist and I told him for heavens
sake to quit the bed was soft enough to suit me and I did not know how all
the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank So gathering up
the shavings with another grin and throwing them into the great stove in the
middle of the room he went about his business and left me in a brown study
I now took the measure of the bench and found that it was a foot too short
but that could be mended with a chair But it was a foot too narrow and the
other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one so
there was no yoking them I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the
only clear space against the wall leaving a little interval between for my
back to settle down in But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold
air over me from under the sill of the window that this plan would never do at
all especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the
window and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate
vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night
The devil fetch that harpooneer thought I but stop couldnt I steal a
march on him bolt his door inside and jump into his bed not to be wakened by
the most violent knockings It seemed no bad idea but upon second thoughts I
dismissed it For who could tell but what the next morning so soon as I popped
out of the room the harpooneer might be standing in the entry all ready to
knock me down
Still looking round me again and seeing no possible chance of spending a
sufferable night unless in some other persons bed I began to think that after
all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown
harpooneer Thinks I I ll wait awhile he must be dropping in before long I
ll have a good look at him then and perhaps we may become jolly good
bedfellows after all there s no telling
But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones twos and threes and
going to bed yet no sign of my harpooneer
»Landlord« said I »what sort of a chap is he does he always keep such
late hours« It was now hard upon twelve oclock
The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle and seemed to be mightily
tickled at something beyond my comprehension »No« he answered »generally he
s an early bird airley to bed and airley to rise yes he s the bird what
catches the worm But tonight he went out apeddling you see and I dont
see what on airth keeps him so late unless maybe he cant sell his head«
»Cant sell his head What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are
telling me« getting into a towering rage »Do you pretend to say landlord
that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night or rather
Sunday morning in peddling his head around this town«
»That s precisely it« said the landlord »and I told him he couldnt sell
it here the markets overstocked«
»With what« shouted I
»With heads to be sure aint there too many heads in the world«
»I tell you what it is landlord« said I quite calmly »you d better stop
spinning that yarn to me I m not green«
»Maybe not« taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick »but I rayther
guess you ll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you aslanderin his
head«
»I ll break it for him« said I now flying into a passion again at this
unaccountable farrago of the landlords
»It s broke aready« said he
»Broke« said I »broke do you mean«
»Sartain and that s the very reason he cant sell it I guess«
»Landlord« said I going up to him as cool as Mt Hecla in a snowstorm
»landlord stop whittling You and I must understand one another and that too
without delay I come to your house and want a bed you tell me you can only
give me half a one that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer And
about this harpooneer whom I have not yet seen you persist in telling me the
most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an
uncomfortable feeling toward the man whom you design for my bedfellow a sort
of connection landlord which is an intimate and confidential one in the
highest degree I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this
harpooneer is and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night
with him And in the first place you will be so good as to unsay that story
about selling his head which if true I take to be good evidence that this
harpooneer is stark mad and Ive no idea of sleeping with a madman and you
sir you I mean landlord you sir by trying to induce me to do so knowingly
would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution«
»Wall« said the landlord fetching a long breath »that s a purty long
sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then But be easy be easy this
here harpooneer I have been tellin you of has just arrived from the South Seas
where he bought up a lot of balmed New Zealand heads great curios you know
and he s sold all on em but one and that one he s tryin to sell tonight
cause tomorrows Sunday and it would not do to be sellin human heads about the
streets when folks is goin to churches He wanted to last Sunday but I
stopped him just as he was goin out of the door with four heads strung on a
string for all the airth like a string of inions«
This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery and showed that
the landlord after all had had no idea of fooling me but at the same time
what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night clean into
the holy Sabbath engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of
dead idolaters
»Depend upon it landlord that harpooneer is a dangerous man«
»He pays reglar« was the rejoinder »But come it s getting dreadful
late you had better be turning flukes it s a nice bed Sall and me slept in
that ere bed the night we were spliced There s plenty room for two to kick
about in that bed it s an almighty big bed that Why afore we give it up Sal
used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it But I got adreaming
and sprawling about one night and somehow Sam got pitched on the floor and
came near breaking his arm Arter that Sal said it wouldnt do Come along
here I ll give ye a glim in a jiffy« and so saying he lighted a candle and
held it toward me offering to lead the way But I stood irresolute when
looking at a clock in the corner he exclaimed »I vum it s Sunday you wont
see that harpooneer tonight he s come to anchor somewhere come along then
do come wont ye come«
I considered the matter a moment and then upstairs we went and I was
ushered into a small room cold as a clam and furnished sure enough with a
prodigious bed almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep
abreast
»There« said the landlord placing the candle on a crazy old seachest that
did double duty as a washstand and centre table »there make yourself
comfortable now and good night to ye« I turned round from eyeing the bed but
he had disappeared
Folding back the counterpane I stooped over the bed Though none of the
most elegant it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well I then glanced round the
room and besides the bedstead and centre table could see no other furniture
belonging to the place but a rude shelf the four walls and a papered
fireboard representing a man striking a whale Of things not properly belonging
to the room there was a hammock lashed up and thrown upon the floor in one
corner also a large seamans bag containing the harpooneers wardrobe no
doubt in lieu of a land trunk Likewise there was a parcel of outlandish bone
fishhooks on the shelf over the fireplace and a tall harpoon standing at the
head of the bed
But what is this on the chest I took it up and held it close to the light
and felt it and smelt it and tried every way possible to arrive at some
satisfactory conclusion concerning it I can compare it to nothing but a large
doormat ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the
stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin There was a hole or slit in
the middle of this mat as you see the same in South American ponchos But could
it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a doormat and parade
the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise I put it on to try it
and it weighed me down like a hamper being uncommonly shaggy and thick and I
thought a little damp as though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it
of a rainy day I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall and I
never saw such a sight in my life I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that
I gave myself a kink in the neck
I sat down on the side of the bed and commenced thinking about this
headpeddling harpooneer and his doormat After thinking some time on the
bedside I got up and took off my monkeyjacket and then stood in the middle of
the room thinking I then took off my coat and thought a little more in my
shirtsleeves But beginning to feel very cold now half undressed as I was and
remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneers not coming home at all
that night it being so very late I made no more ado but jumped out of my
pantaloons and boots and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed and
commended myself to the care of heaven
Whether that mattress was stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery there
is no telling but I rolled about a good deal and could not sleep for a long
time At last I slid off into a light doze and had pretty nearly made a good
offing toward the land of Nod when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage and
saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door
Lord save me thinks I that must be the harpooneer the infernal
headpeddler But I lay perfectly still and resolved not to say a word till
spoken to Holding a light in one hand and that identical New Zealand head in
the other the stranger entered the room and without looking toward the bed
placed his candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner and then
began working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as
being in the room I was all eagerness to see his face but he kept it averted
for some time while employed in unlacing the bags mouth This accomplished
however he turned round when good heavens what a sight Such a face It was
of a dark purplish yellow colour here and there stuck over with large
blackishlooking squares Yes it s just as I thought he s a terrible
bedfellow he s been in a fight got dreadfully cut and here he is just from
the surgeon But at that moment he chanced to turn his face so toward the light
that I plainly saw they could not be stickingplasters at all those black
squares on his cheeks They were stains of some sort or other At first I knew
not what to make of this but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me I
remembered a story of a white man a whaleman too who falling among the
cannibals had been tattooed by them I concluded that this harpooneer in the
course of his distant voyages must have met with a similar adventure And what
is it thought I after all It s only his outside a man can be honest in any
sort of skin But then what to make of his unearthly complexion that part of
it I mean lying round about and completely independent of the squares of
tattooing To be sure it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning
but I never heard of a hot suns tanning a white man into a purplishyellow one
However I had never been in the South Seas and perhaps the sun there produced
these extraordinary effects upon the skin Now while all these ideas were
passing through me like lightning this harpooneer never noticed me at all But
after some difficulty having opened his bag he commenced fumbling in it and
presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk and a sealskin wallet with the hair on
Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room he then took the New
Zealand head a ghastly thing enough and crammed it down into the bag He now
took off his hat a new beaver hat when I came nigh singing out with fresh
surprise There was no hair on his head none to speak of at least nothing
but a small scalpknot twisted up on his forehead His bald purplish head now
looked for all the world like a mildewed skull Had not the stranger stood
between me and the door I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I
bolted a dinner
Even as it was I thought something of slipping out of the window but it
was the second floor back I am no coward but what to make of this
headpeddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension Ignorance is the
parent of fear and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the
stranger I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil
himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night In fact I was so
afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him and demand a
satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him
Meanwhile he continued the business of undressing and at last showed his
chest and arms As I live these covered parts of him were checkered with the
same squares as his face his back too was all over the same dark squares he
seemed to have been in a Thirty Years War and just escaped from it with a
stickingplaster shirt Still more his very legs were marked as if a parcel of
dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms It was now quite
plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a
whaleman in the South Seas and so landed in this Christian country I quaked to
think of it A peddler of heads too perhaps the heads of his own brothers He
might take a fancy to mine heavens look at that tomahawk
But there was no time for shuddering for now the savage went about
something that completely fascinated my attention and convinced me that he must
indeed be a heathen Going to his heavy grego or wrapall or dreadnaught which
he had previously hung on a chair he fumbled in the pockets and produced at
length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back and exactly the
colour of a threedaysold Congo baby Remembering the embalmed head at first I
almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar
manner But seeing that it was not at all limber and that it glistened a good
deal like polished ebony I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol
which indeed it proved to be For now the savage goes up to the empty
fireplace and removing the papered fireboard sets up this little hunchbacked
image like a tenpin between the andirons The chimney jambs and all the
bricks inside were very sooty so that I thought this fireplace made a very
appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol
I now screwed my eyes hard toward the halfhidden image feeling but ill at
ease meantime to see what was next to follow First he takes about a double
handful of shavings out of his grego pocket and places them carefully before
the idol then laying a bit of shipbiscuit on top and applying the flame from
the lamp he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze Presently after
many hasty snatches into the fire and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers
whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly he at last succeeded in drawing
out the biscuit then blowing off the heat and ashes a little he made a polite
offer of it to the little negro But the little devil did not seem to fancy such
dry sort of fare at all he never moved his lips All these strange antics were
accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee who seemed to be
praying in a singsong or else singing some pagan psalmody or other during
which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner At last
extinguishing the fire he took the idol up very unceremoniously and bagged it
again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead
woodcock
All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness and seeing him
now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations and
jumping into bed with me I thought it was high time now or never before the
light was put out to break the spell in which I had so long been bound
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say was a fatal one Taking
up his tomahawk from the table he examined the head of it for an instant and
then holding it to the light with his mouth at the handle he puffed out great
clouds of tobacco smoke The next moment the light was extinguished and this
wild cannibal tomahawk between his teeth sprang into bed with me I sang out
I could not help it now and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began
feeling me
Stammering out something I knew not what I rolled away from him against
the wall and then conjured him whoever or whatever he might be to keep quiet
and let me get up and light the lamp again But his guttural responses satisfied
me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning
»Whoe debel you« he at last said »you no speake damme I kille« And
so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark
»Landlord for Gods sake Peter Coffin« shouted I »Landlord Watch
Coffin Angels save me«
»Speake tellee me whoee be or damme I kille« again growled the
cannibal while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot
tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire But thank
heaven at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand and
leaping from the bed I ran up to him
»Dont be afraid now« said he grinning again »Queequeg here wouldnt harm
a hair of your head«
»Stop your grinning« shouted I »and why didnt you tell me that that
infernal harpooneer was a cannibal«
»I thought ye knowd it didnt I tell ye he was apeddlin heads around
town but turn flukes again and go to sleep Queequeg look here you sabbee
me I sabbee you this man sleepe you you sabbee«
»Me sabbee plenty« grunted Queequeg puffing away at his pipe and sitting
up in bed
»You gettee in« he added motioning to me with his tomahawk and throwing
the clothes to one side He really did this in not only a civil but a really
kind and charitable way I stood looking at him a moment For all his tattooings
he was on the whole a clean comelylooking cannibal What s all this fuss I
have been making about thought I to myself the mans a human being just as I
am he has just as much reason to fear me as I have to be afraid of him Better
sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian
»Landlord« said I »tell him to stash his tomahawk there or pipe or
whatever you call it tell him to stop smoking in short and I will turn in
with him But I dont fancy having a man smoking in bed with me It s
dangerous Besides I aint insured«
This being told to Queequeg he at once complied and again politely
motioned me to get into bed rolling over to one side as much as to say I
wont touch a leg of ye
»Good night landlord« said I »you may go«
I turned in and never slept better in my life
Chapter IV
The Counterpane
Upon waking next morning about daylight I found Queequegs arm thrown over me
in the most loving and affectionate manner You had almost thought I had been
his wife The counterpane was of patchwork full of odd little particoloured
squares and triangles and this arm of his tattooed all over with an
interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure no two parts of which were of one
precise shade owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically
in sun and shade his shirtsleeves irregularly rolled up at various times
this same arm of his I say looked for all the world like a strip of that same
patchwork quilt Indeed partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke I
could hardly tell it from the quilt they so blended their hues together and it
was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was
hugging me
My sensations were strange Let me try to explain them When I was a child
I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me whether it was a
reality or a dream I never could entirely settle The circumstance was this I
had been cutting up some caper or other I think it was trying to crawl up the
chimney as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous and my stepmother
who somehow or other was all the time whipping me or sending me to bed
supperless my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me
off to bed though it was only two oclock in the afternoon of the 21st June
the longest day in the year in our hemisphere I felt dreadfully But there was
no help for it so upstairs I went to my little room in the third floor
undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time and with a bitter
sigh got between the sheets
I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse
before I could hope for a resurrection Sixteen hours in bed the small of my
back ached to think of it And it was so light too the sun shining in at the
window and a great rattling of coaches in the streets and the sound of gay
voices all over the house I felt worse and worse at last I got up dressed
and softly going down in my stockinged feet sought out my stepmother and
suddenly threw myself at her feet beseeching her as a particular favour to give
me a good slippering for my misbehaviour anything indeed but condemning me to
lie abed such an unendurable length of time But she was the best and most
conscientious of stepmothers and back I had to go to my room For several hours
I lay there broad awake feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since
even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes At last I must have fallen into a
troubled nightmare of a doze and slowly waking from it half steeped in dreams
I opened my eyes and the before sunlit room was now wrapped in outer
darkness Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame nothing was to
be seen and nothing was to be heard but a supernatural hand seemed placed in
mine My arm hung over the counterpane and the nameless unimaginable silent
form or phantom to which the hand belonged seemed closely seated by my
bedside For what seemed ages piled on ages I lay there frozen with the most
awful fears not daring to drag away my hand yet ever thinking that if I could
but stir it one single inch the horrid spell would be broken I knew not how
this consciousness at last glided away from me but waking in the morning I
shudderingly remembered it all and for days and weeks and months afterward I
lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery Nay to this very
hour I often puzzle myself with it
Now take away the awful fear and my sensations at feeling the supernatural
hand in mine were very similar in their strangeness to those which I
experienced on waking up and seeing 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 to the comical predicament For though I
tried to move his arm unlock his bridegroom clasp yet sleeping as he was
he still hugged me tightly as though naught but death should part us twain I
now strove to rouse him »Queequeg« but his only answer was a snore I then
rolled over my neck feeling as if it were in a horsecollar and suddenly felt
a slight scratch Throwing aside the counterpane there lay the tomahawk
sleeping by the savages side as if it were a hatchetfaced baby A pretty
pickle truly thought I abed here in a strange house in the broad day with a
cannibal and a tomahawk »Queequeg in the name of goodness Queequeg wake«
At length by dint of much wriggling and loud and incessant expostulations upon
the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellowmale in that matrimonial sort of
style I succeeded in extracting a grunt and presently he drew back his arm
shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water and sat up
in bed stiff as a pikestaff looking at me and rubbing his eyes as if he did
not altogether remember how I came to be there though a dim consciousness of
knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him Meanwhile I lay
quietly eyeing him having no serious misgivings now and bent upon narrowly
observing so curious a creature When at last his mind seemed made up touching
the character of his bedfellow and he became as it were reconciled to the
fact he jumped out upon the floor and by certain signs and sounds gave me to
understand that if it pleased me he would dress first and then leave me to
dress afterward leaving the whole apartment to myself Thinks I Queequeg
under the circumstances this is a very civilised overture but the truth is
these savages have an innate sense of delicacy say what you will it is
marvellous how essentially polite they are I pay this particular compliment to
Queequeg because he treated me with so much civility and consideration while I
was guilty of great rudeness staring at him from the bed and watching all his
toilet motions for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding
Nevertheless a man like Queequeg you dont see every day he and his ways were
well worth unusual regarding
He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat a very tall one by
the by and then still minus his trowsers he hunted up his boots What under
the heavens he did it for I cannot tell but his next movement was to crush
himself boots in hand and hat on under the bed when from sundry violent
gaspings and strainings I inferred he was hard at work booting himself though
by no law of propriety that I ever heard of is any man required to be private
when putting on his boots But Queequeg do you see was a creature in the
transition state neither caterpillar nor butterfly He was just enough
civilised to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manner His
education was not yet completed He was an undergraduate If he had not been a
small degree civilised he very probably would not have troubled himself with
boots at all but then if he had not been still a savage he never would have
dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on At last he emerged with his hat
very much dented and crushed down over his eyes and began creaking and limping
about the room as if not being much accustomed to boots his pair of damp
wrinkled cowhide ones probably not made to order either rather pinched and
tormented him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning
Seeing now that there were no curtains to the window and that the street
being very narrow the house opposite commanded a plain view into the room and
observing more and more the indecorous figure that Queequeg made staving about
with little else but his hat and boots on I begged him as well as I could to
accelerate his toilet somewhat and particularly to get into his pantaloons as
soon as possible He complied and then proceeded to wash himself At that time
in the morning any Christian would have washed his face but Queequeg to my
amazement contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest arms
and hands He then donned his waistcoat and taking up a piece of hard soap on
the washstand centre table dipped it into water and commenced lathering his
face I was watching to see where he kept his razor when lo and behold he
takes the harpoon from the bed corner slips out the long wooden stock
unsheathes the head whets it a little on his boot and striding up to the bit
of mirror against the wall begins a vigorous scraping or rather harpooning of
his cheeks Thinks I Queequeg this is using Rogerss best cutlery with a
vengeance Afterward I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know
of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made and how exceedingly sharp the
long straight edges are always kept
The rest of his toilet was soon achieved and he proudly marched out of the
room wrapped up in his great pilot monkeyjacket and sporting his harpoon like
a marshals baton
Chapter V
Breakfast
I quickly followed suit and descending into the barroom accosted the grinning
landlord very pleasantly I cherished no malice toward him though he had been
skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my bedfellow
However a good laugh is a mighty good thing and rather too scarce a good
thing the more s the pity So if any one man in his own proper person
afford stuff for a good joke to anybody let him not be backward but let him
cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way And the man that has
anything bountifully laughable about him be sure there is more in that man than
you perhaps think for
The barroom was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the night
previous and whom I had not as yet had a good look at They were nearly all
whalemen chief mates and second mates and third mates and seacarpenters
and seacoopers and seablacksmiths and harpooneers and shipkeepers a brown
and brawny company with bosky beards an unshorn shaggy set all wearing
monkeyjackets for morning gowns
You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore This young
fellows healthy cheek is like a suntoasted pear in hue and would seem to
smell almost as musky he cannot have been three days landed from his Indian
voyage That man next him looks a few shades lighter you might say a touch of
satinwood is in him In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn
but slightly bleached withal he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore But
who could show a cheek like Queequeg which barred with various tints seemed
like the Andes western slope to show forth in one array contrasting climates
zone by zone
»Grub ho« now cried the landlord flinging open a door and in we went to
breakfast
They say that men who have seen the world thereby become quite at ease in
manner quite selfpossessed in company Not always though Ledyard the great
New England traveller and Mungo Park the Scotch one of all men they
possessed the least assurance in the parlour But perhaps the mere crossing of
Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did or the taking a long solitary
walk on an empty stomach in the negro heart of Africa which was the sum of
poor Mungos performances this kind of travel I say may not be the very best
mode of attaining a high social polish Still for the most part that sort of
thing is to be had anywhere
These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that after we
were all seated at the table and I was preparing to hear some good stories
about whaling to my no small surprise nearly every man maintained a profound
silence And not only that but they looked embarrassed Yes here were a set of
seadogs many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great
whales on the high seas entire strangers to them and duelled them dead
without winking and yet here they sat at a social breakfast table all of the
same calling all of kindred tastes looking round as sheepishly at each other
as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green
Mountains A curious sight these bashful bears these timid warrior whalemen
But as for Queequeg why Queequeg sat there among them at the head of
the table too it so chanced as cool as an icicle To be sure I cannot say
much for his breeding His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified
his bringing his harpoon in to breakfast with him and using it there without
ceremony reaching over the table with it to the imminent jeopardy of many
heads and grappling the beefsteaks toward him But that was certainly very
coolly done by him and everyone knows that in most peoples estimation to do
anything coolly is to do it genteelly
We will not speak of all Queequegs peculiarities here how he eschewed
coffee and hot rolls and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks done
rare Enough that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the
public room lighted his tomahawkpipe and was sitting there quietly digesting
and smoking with his inseparable hat on when I sallied out for a stroll
Chapter VI
The Street
If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an
individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilised town
that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the
streets of New Bedford
In thoroughfares nigh the docks any considerable seaport will frequently
offer to view the queerestlooking nondescripts from foreign parts Even in
Broadway and Chestnut Streets Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the
affrighted ladies Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays and at
Bombay in the Apollo Green live Yankees have often scared the natives But New
Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping In these lastmentioned haunts you
see only sailors but in New Bedford actual cannibals stand chatting at street
corners savages outright many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh
It makes a stranger stare
But besides the Feegeeans Tongatabooarrs Erromanggoans Pannangians and
Brighggians and besides the wild specimens of the whalingcraft which unheeded
reel about the streets you will see other sights still more curious certainly
more comical There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and
New Hampshire men all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery They are
mostly young of stalwart frames fellows who have felled forests and now seek
to drop the axe and snatch the whalelance Many are as green as the Green
Mountains whence they came In some things you would think them but a few hours
old Look there that chap strutting round the corner He wears a beaver hat and
swallowtailed coat girdled with a sailorbelt and a sheathknife Here comes
another with a souwester and a bombazine cloak
No townbred dandy will compare with a countrybred one I mean a downright
bumpkin dandy a fellow that in the dogdays will mow his two acres in
buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands Now when a country dandy like
this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation and joins the
great whalefishery you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the
seaport In bespeaking his seaoutfit he orders bellbuttons to his waistcoats
straps to his canvas trowsers Ah poor HaySeed how bitterly will burst those
straps in the first howling gale when thou art driven straps buttons and
all down the throat of the tempest
But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers cannibals and
bumpkins to show her visitors Not at all Still New Bedford is a queer place
Had it not been for us whalemen that tract of land would this day perhaps have
been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador As it is parts of her
back country are enough to frighten one they look so bony The town itself is
perhaps the dearest place to live in in all New England It is a land of oil
true enough but not like Caanan a land also of corn and wine The streets do
not run with milk nor in the springtime do they pave them with fresh eggs
Yet in spite of this nowhere in all America will you find more patricianlike
houses parks and gardens more opulent than in New Bedford Whence came they
how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country
Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion
and your question will be answered Yes all these brave houses and flowery
gardens came from the Atlantic Pacific and Indian oceans One and all they
were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea Can Herr
Alexander perform a feat like that
In New Bedford fathers they say give whales for dowers to their
daughters and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises apiece You must go
to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding for they say they have reservoirs
of oil in every house and every night recklessly burn their lengths in
spermaceti candles
In summer time the town is sweet to see full of fine maples long avenues
of green and gold And in August high in air the beautiful and bountiful
horsechestnuts candelabrawise proffer the passerby their tapering upright
cones of congregated blossoms So omnipotent is art which in many a district of
New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse
rocks thrown aside at Creations final day
And the women of New Bedford they bloom like their own red roses But roses
only bloom in summer whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as
sunlight in the seventh heavens Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs ye
cannot save in Salem where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk
their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore as though they were drawing
nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands
Chapter VII
The Chapel
In this same New Bedford there stands a Whalemans Chapel and few are the moody
fishermen shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific who fail to make a
Sunday visit to the spot I am sure that I did not
Returning from my first morning stroll I again sallied out upon this
special errand The sky had changed from clear sunny cold to driving sleet and
mist Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin I fought
my way against the stubborn storm Entering I found a small scattered
congregation of sailors and sailors wives and widows A muffled silence
reigned only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm Each silent
worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other as if each silent
grief were insular and incommunicable The chaplain had not yet arrived and
there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several
marble tablets with black borders masoned into the wall on either side the
pulpit Three of them ran something like the following but I do not pretend to
quote
Sacred
To the Memory
of
JOHN TALBOT
Who at the age of eighteen was lost overboard
Near the Isle of Desolation off Patagonia
November 1st 1836
This tablet
Is erected to his Memory
By his sister
Sacred
To the Memory
of
ROBERT LONG WILLIS ELLERY
NATHAN COLEMAN WALTER CANNY SETH MACY
AND SAMUEL GLEIG
Forming one of the boats crews
of
The ship Eliza
Who were towed out of sight by a Whale
On the Offshore Ground in the
Pacific
December 31st 1839
This marble
Is here placed by their surviving
Shipmates
Sacred
To the Memory
of
The late
CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY
Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a
Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan
August 3d 1833
This tablet
Is erected to his Memory
by
His widow
Shaking on the sleet from my iceglazed hat and jacket I seated myself near the
door and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me Affected by
the solemnity of the scene there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity
in his countenance This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice
my entrance because he was the only one who could not read and therefore was
not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall Whether any of the relatives
of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation I knew
not but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery and so plainly did
several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some
unceasing grief that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those in
whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused
the old wounds to bleed afresh
Oh ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass who standing among
flowers can say here here lies my beloved ye know not the desolation that
broods in bosoms like these What bitter blanks in those blackbordered marbles
which cover no ashes What despair in those immovable inscriptions What deadly
voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith
and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a
grave As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here
In what census of living creatures the dead of mankind are included why it
is that a universal proverb says of them that they tell no tales though
containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands how it is that to his name who
yesterday departed for the other world we prefix so significant and infidel a
word and yet do not thus entitle him if he but embarks for the remotest Indies
of this living earth why the Life Insurance Companies pay death upon
immortals in what eternal unstirring paralysis and deadly hopeless trance
yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago how it is that we
still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling
in unspeakable bliss why all the living so strive to hush all the dead
wherefore but the rumour of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city All
these things are not without their meanings
But Faith like a jackal feeds among the tombs and even from these dead
doubts she gathers her most vital hope
It needs scarcely to be told with what feelings on the eve of a Nantucket
voyage I regarded those marble tablets and by the murky light of that
darkened doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me Yes
Ishmael the same fate may be thine But somehow I grew merry again Delightful
inducements to embark fine chance for promotion it seems ay a stove boat
will make me an immortal by brevet Yes there is death in this business of
whaling a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity But what
then Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death Methinks
that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance Methinks that
in looking at things spiritual we are too much like oysters observing the sun
through the water and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air Methinks
my body is but the lees of my better being In fact take my body who will take
it I say it is not me And therefore three cheers for Nantucket and come a
stove boat and stove body when they will for stave my soul Jove himself
cannot
Chapter VIII
The Pulpit
I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness
entered immediately as the stormpelted door flew back upon admitting him a
quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation sufficiently attested that
this fine old man was the chaplain Yes it was the famous Father Mapple so
called by the whalemen among whom he was a very great favourite He had been a
sailor and a harpooneer in his youth but for many years past had dedicated his
life to the ministry At the time I now write of Father Mapple was in the hardy
winter of a healthy old age that sort of old age which seems merging into a
second flowering youth for among all the fissures of his wrinkles there shone
certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom the spring verdure peeping
forth even beneath Februarys snow No one having previously heard his history
could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest
because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him imputable
to that adventurous maritime life he had led When he entered I observed that he
carried no umbrella and certainly had not come in his carriage for his
tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet and his great pilotcloth jacket
seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had
absorbed However hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed and hung
up in a little space in an adjacent corner when arrayed in a decent suit he
quietly approached the pulpit
Like most oldfashioned pulpits it was a very lofty one and since a
regular stairs to such a height would by its long angle with the floor
seriously contract the already small area of the chapel the architect it
seemed had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple and finished the pulpit
without a stairs substituting a perpendicular side ladder like those used in
mounting a ship from a boat at sea The wife of a whalingcaptain had provided
the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted manropes for this ladder which
being itself nicely headed and stained with a mahogany colour the whole
contrivance considering what manner of chapel it was seemed by no means in bad
taste Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder and with both hands
grasping the ornamental knobs of the manropes Father Mapple cast a look
upward and then with a truly sailorlike but still reverential dexterity hand
over hand mounted the steps as if ascending the maintop of his vessel
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder as is usually the case with
swinging ones were of clothcovered rope only the rounds were of wood so that
at every step there was a joint At my first glimpse of the pulpit it had not
escaped me that however convenient for a ship these joints in the present
instance seemed unnecessary For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after
gaining the height slowly turn round and stooping over the pulpit
deliberately drag up the ladder step by step till the whole was deposited
within leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec
I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this Father
Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity that I could
not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage No
thought I there must be some sober reason for this thing furthermore it must
symbolise something unseen Can it be then that by that act of physical
isolation he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time from all outward
worldly ties and connections Yes for replenished with the meat and wine of the
word to the faithful man of God this pulpit I see is a selfcontaining
stronghold a lofty Ehrenbreitstein with a perennial well of water within the
walls
But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place borrowed
from the chaplains former seafarings Between the marble cenotaphs on either
hand of the pulpit the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large
painting representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee
coast of black rocks and snowy breakers But high above the flying scud and
darkrolling clouds there floated a little isle of sunlight from which beamed
forth an angels face and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance
upon the ships tossed deck something like that silver plate now inserted into
the Victorys plank where Nelson fell »Ah noble ship« the angel seemed to
say »beat on beat on thou noble ship and bear a hardy helm for lo the sun
is breaking through the clouds are rolling off serenest azure is at hand«
Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same seataste that had
achieved the ladder and the picture Its panelled front was in the likeness of a
ships bluff bows and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll
work fashioned after a ships fiddleheaded beak
What could be more full of meaning for the pulpit is ever this earths
foremost part all the rest comes in its rear the pulpit leads the world From
thence it is the storm of Gods quick wrath is first descried and the bow must
bear the earliest brunt From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is
first invoked for favourable winds Yes the worlds a ship on its passage out
and not voyage complete and the pulpit is its prow
Chapter IX
The Sermon
Father Mapple rose and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the
scattered people to condense »Starboard gangway there side away to larboard
larboard gangway to starboard Midships midships«
There was a low rumbling of heavy seaboots among the benches 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 pulpit s bows folded his large
brown hands across his chest uplifted his closed eyes and offered a prayer so
deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea
This ended in prolonged solemn tones like the continual tolling of a bell
in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog in such tones he commenced
reading the following hymn but changing his manner toward the concluding
stanzas burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy
»The ribs and terrors in the whale
Arched over me a dismal gloom
While all Gods sunlit waves rolled by
And lift me deepening down to doom
I saw the opening maw of hell
With endless pains and sorrows there
Which none but they that feel can tell
Oh I was plunging to despair
In black distress I called my God
When I could scarce believe him mine
He bowed his ear to my complaints
No more the whale did me confine
With speed he flew to my relief
As on a radiant dolphin borne
Awful yet bright as lightning shone
The face of my Deliverer God
My song for ever shall record
That terrible that joyful hour
I give the glory to my God
His all the mercy and the power«
Nearly all joined in singing this hymn which swelled high above the howling of
the storm A brief pause ensued the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of
the Bible and at last folding his hand down upon the proper page said
»Beloved shipmates clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah And
God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah
Shipmates this book containing only four chapters four yarns is one of
the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures Yet what depths of
the soul does Jonahs deep sealine sound what a pregnant lesson to us is this
prophet What a noble thing is that canticle in the fishs belly How
billowlike and boisterously grand We feel the floods surging over us we sound
with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters seaweed and all the slime of the
sea is about us But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches
Shipmates it is a twostranded lesson a lesson to us all as sinful men and a
lesson to me as a pilot of the living God As sinful men it is a lesson to us
all because it is a story of the sin hardheartedness suddenly awakened
fears the swift punishment repentance prayers and finally the deliverance
and joy of Jonah As with all sinners among men the sin of this son of Amittai
was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God never mind now what that
command was or how conveyed which he found a hard command But all the things
that God would have us do are hard for us to do remember that and hence He
oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade And if we obey God we must
disobey ourselves and it is in this disobeying ourselves wherein the hardness
of obeying God consists
With this sin of disobedience in him Jonah still further flouts at God by
seeking to flee from Him He thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into
countries where God does not reign but only the captains of this earth He
skulks about the wharves of Joppa and seeks a ship that s bound for Tarshish
There lurks perhaps a hitherto unheeded meaning here By all accounts Tarshish
could have been no other city than the modern Cadiz That s the opinion of
learned men And where is Cadiz shipmates Cadiz is in Spain as far by water
from Joppa as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days when the
Atlantic was an almost unknown sea Because Joppa the modern Jaffa shipmates
is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean the Syrian and Tarshish or
Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that just outside the
Straits of Gibraltar See ye not then shipmates that Jonah sought to flee
worldwide from God Miserable man Oh most contemptible and worthy of all
scorn with slouched hat and guilty eye skulking from his God prowling among
the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas So disordered
self is his look that had there been policemen in those days Jonah on the
mere suspicion of something wrong had been arrested ere he touched a deck How
plainly he s a fugitive no baggage not a hatbox valise or carpetbag no
friends accompany him to the wharf with their adieux At last after much
dodging search he finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her
cargo and as he steps on board to see its captain in the cabin all the sailors
for the moment desist from hoisting in the goods to mark the strangers evil
eye Jonah sees this but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence in
vain essays his wretched smile Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners
he can be no innocent In their gamesome but still serious way one whispers to
the other Jack he s robbed a widow or Joe do you mark him he s a
bigamist or Harry lad I guess he s the adulterer that broke jail in old
Gomorrah or belike one of the missing murderers from Sodom Another runs to
read the bill that s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship
is moored offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide
and containing a description of his person He reads and looks from Jonah to
the bill while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah prepared to
lay their hands upon him Frighted Jonah trembles and summoning all his
boldness to his face only looks so much the more a coward He will not confess
himself suspected but that itself is strong suspicion So he makes the best of
it and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised they let
him pass and he descends into the cabin
Who s there cries the captain at his busy desk hurriedly making out his
papers for the Customs Whos there Oh how that harmless question mangles
Jonah For the instant he almost turns to flee again But he rallies I seek a
passage in this ship to Tarshish how soon sail ye sir Thus far the busy
captain had not looked up to Jonah though the man now stands before him but no
sooner does he hear that hollow voice than he darts a scrutinising glance We
sail with the next coming tide at last he slowly answered still intently
eyeing him No sooner sir Soon enough for any honest man that goes a
passenger Ha Jonah that s another stab But he swiftly calls away the
captain from that scent I ll sail with ye he says the passage money how
much is that I ll pay now For it is particularly written shipmates as if
it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history that he paid the fare
thereof ere the craft did sail And taken with the context this is full of
meaning
Now Jonahs captain shipmates was one whose discernment detects crime in
any but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless In this world
shipmates sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport
whereas Virtue if a pauper is stopped at all frontiers So Jonahs captain
prepares to test the length of Jonahs purse ere he judge him openly He
charges him thrice the usual sum and it s assented to Then the captain knows
that Jonah is a fugitive but at the same time resolves to help a flight that
paves its rear with gold Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse prudent
suspicions still molest the captain He rings every coin to find a counterfeit
Not a forger anyway he mutters and Jonah is put down for his passage Point
out my stateroom sir says Jonah now I m travelweary I need sleep Thou
lookst like it says the captain there s thy room Jonah enters and would
lock the door but the lock contains no key Hearing him foolishly fumbling
there the captain laughs lowly to himself and mutters something about the
doors of convicts cells being never allowed to be locked within All dressed
and dusty as he is Jonah throws himself into his berth and finds the little
stateroom ceiling almost resting on his forehead The air is close and Jonah
gasps Then in that contracted hole sunk too beneath the ships waterline
Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour when the whale
shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels wards
Screwed at its axis against the side a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in
Jonahs room and the ship heeling over toward the wharf with the weight of the
last bales received the lamp flame and all though in slight motion still
maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room though in truth
infallibly straight itself it but made obvious the false lying levels among
which it hung The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah as lying in his berth his
tormented eyes roll round the place and this thus far successful fugitive finds
no refuge for his restless glance But that contradiction in the lamp more and
more appals him The floor the ceiling and the side are all awry Oh so my
conscience hangs in me he groans straight upward so it burns but the
chambers of my soul are all in crookedness
Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed still
reeling but with conscience yet pricking him as the plungings of the Roman
racehorse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him as one who in
that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish praying God for
annihilation until the fit be passed and at last amid the whirl of woe he
feels a deep stupor steals over him as over the man who bleeds to death for
conscience is the wound and there s naught to staunch it so after sore
wrestlings in his berth Jonahs prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning
down to sleep
And now the time of tide has come the ship casts off her cables and from
the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish all careening glides to
sea That ship my friends was the first of recorded smugglers the contraband
was Jonah But the sea rebels he will not bear the wicked burden A dreadful
storm comes on the ship is like to break But now when the boatswain calls all
hands to lighten her when boxes bales and jars are clattering overboard when
the wind is shrieking and the men are yelling and every plank thunders with
trampling feet right over Jonahs head in all this raging tumult Jonah sleeps
his hideous sleep He sees no black sky and raging sea feels not the reeling
timbers and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale which
even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him Ay shipmates Jonah
was gone down into the sides of the ship a berth in the cabin as I have taken
it and was fast asleep But the frightened master comes to him and shrieks in
his dead ear What meanest thou O sleeper arise Startled from his lethargy by
that direful cry Jonah staggers to his feet and stumbling to the deck grasps
a shroud to look out upon the sea But at that moment he is sprung upon by a
panther billow leaping over the bulwarks Wave after wave thus leaps into the
ship and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft till the mariners
come nigh to drowning while yet afloat And ever as the white moon shows her
affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead aghast Jonah
sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward but soon beat downward again
toward the tormented deep
Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul In all his cringing
attitudes the Godfugitive is now too plainly known The sailors mark him more
and more certain grow their suspicions of him and at last fully to test the
truth by referring the whole matter to high Heaven they fall to casting lots
to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them The lot is Jonahs
that discovered then how furiously they mob him with their questions What is
thine occupation Whence comest thou Thy country What people But mark now my
shipmates the behaviour of poor Jonah The eager mariners but ask him who he
is and where from whereas they not only receive an answer to those questions
but likewise another answer to a question not put by them but the unsolicited
answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him
I am a Hebrew he cries and then I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who
hath made the sea and the dry land Fear him O Jonah Ay well mightest thou
fear the Lord God then Straightway he now goes on to make a full confession
whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled but still are pitiful For
when Jonah not yet supplicating God for mercy since he but too well knew the
darkness of his deserts when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and
cast him forth into the sea for he knew that for his sake this great tempest
was upon them they mercifully turn from him and seek by other means to save
the ship But all in vain the indignant gale howls louder then with one hand
raised invokingly to God with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of
Jonah
And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea when
instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east and the sea is still as
Jonah carries down the gale with him leaving smooth water behind He goes down
in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the
moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him and the whale
shootsto all his ivory teeth like so many white bolts upon his prison Then
Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fishs belly But observe his prayer and
learn a weighty lesson For sinful as he is Jonah does not weep and wail for
direct deliverance He feels that his dreadful punishment is just He leaves all
his deliverance to God contenting himself with this that spite of all his
pains and pangs he will still look toward His holy temple And here shipmates
is true and faithful repentance not clamorous for pardon but grateful for
punishment And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah is shown in the
eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale Shipmates I do not
place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you
as a model for repentance Sin not but if you do take heed to repent of it
like Jonah«
While he was speaking these words the howling of the shrieking slanting
storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher who when describing
Jonahs seastorm seemed tossed by a storm himself His deep chest heaved as
with a groundswell his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work and
the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow and the light leaping
from his eye made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was
strange to them
There now came a lull in his look as he silently turned over the leaves of
the Book once more and at last standing motionless with closed eyes for the
moment seemed communing with God and himself
But again he leaned over toward the people and bowing his head lowly with
an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility he spake these words
»Shipmates God has laid but one hand upon you both his hands press upon
me I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches
to all sinners and therefore to ye and still more to me for I am a greater
sinner than ye And now how gladly would I come down from this masthead and sit
on the hatches there where you sit and listen as you listen while some one of
you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me as a
pilot of the living God How being an anointed pilotprophet or speaker of true
things and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a
wicked Nineveh Jonah appalled at the hostility he should raise fled from his
mission and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa But
God is everywhere Tarshish he never reached As we have seen God came upon him
in the whale and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom and with swift
slantings tore him along into the midst of the seas where the eddying depths
sucked him ten thousand fathoms down and the weeds were wrapped about his head
and all the watery world of woe bowled over him Yet even then beyond the reach
of any plummet out of the belly of hell when the whale grounded upon the
oceans utmost bones even then God heard the engulphed repenting prophet when
he cried Then God spake unto the fish and from the shuddering cold and
blackness of the sea the whale came breaching up toward the warm and pleasant
sun and all the delights of air and earth and vomited out Jonah upon the dry
land when the word of the Lord came a second time and Jonah bruised and
beaten his ears like two seashells still multitudinously murmuring of the
ocean Jonah did 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 that pilot of the
living God who slights it Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty
Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a
gale Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal Woe to him whose good
name is more to him than goodness Woe to him who in this world courts not
dishonour Woe to him who would not be true even though to be false were
salvation Yea woe to him who as the great Pilot Paul has it while preaching
to others is himself a castaway«
He drooped and fell away from himself for a moment then lifting his face to
them again showed a deep joy in his eyes as he cried out with a heavenly
enthusiasm »But oh shipmates on the starboard hand of every woe there is a
sure delight and higher the top of that delight than the bottom of the woe is
deep Is not the maintruck higher than the kelson is low Delight is to him a
far far upward and inward delight who against the proud gods and commodores
of this earth ever stands forth his own inexorable self Delight is to him
whose strong arms yet support him when the ship of this base treacherous world
has gone down beneath him Delight is to him who gives no quarter in the truth
and kills burns and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the
robes of Senators and Judges Delight topgallant delight is to him who
acknowledges no law or lord but the Lord his God and is only a patriot to
heaven Delight is to him whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the
boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages And eternal
delight and deliciousness will be his who coming to lay him down can say with
his final breath O Father chiefly known to me by Thy rod mortal or
immortal here I die I have striven to be Thine more than to be this worlds
or mine own Yet this is nothing I leave eternity to Thee for what is man that
he should live out the lifetime of his God«
He said no more but slowly waving a benediction covered his face with his
hands and so remained kneeling till all the people had departed and he was
left alone in the place
Chapter X
A Bosom Friend
Returning to the SpouterInn from the Chapel I found Queequeg there quite
alone he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time He was
sitting on a bench before the fire with his feet on the stove hearth and in
one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his peering
hard into its face and with a jackknife gently whittling away at its nose
meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way
But being now interrupted he put up the image and pretty soon going to
the table took up a large book there and placing it on his lap began counting
the pages with deliberate regularity at every fiftieth page as I fancied
stopping a moment looking vacantly around him and giving utterance to a
longdrawn gurgling whistle of astonishment He would then begin again at the
next fifty seeming to commence at number one each time as though he could not
count more than fifty and it was only by such a large number of fifties being
found together that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited
With much interest I sat watching him Savage though he was and hideously
marred about the face at least to my taste his countenance yet had a
something in it which was by no means disagreeable You cannot hide the soul
Through all his unearthly tattooings I thought I saw the traces of a simple
honest heart and in his large deep eyes fiery black and bold there seemed
tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils And besides all this
there was a certain lofty bearing about the pagan which even his uncouthness
could not altogether maim He looked like a man who had never cringed and never
had had a creditor Whether it was too that his head being shaved his
forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief and looked more expansive
than it otherwise would this I will not venture to decide but certain it was
his head was phrenologically an excellent one It may seem ridiculous but it
reminded me of General Washingtons head as seen in the popular busts of him
It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows
which were likewise very projecting like two long promontories thickly wooded
on top Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed
Whilst I was thus closely scanning him half pretending meanwhile to be
looking out at the storm from the casement he never heeded my presence never
troubled himself with so much as a single glance but appeared wholly occupied
with counting the pages of the marvellous book Considering how sociably we had
been sleeping together the night previous and especially considering the
affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning I
thought this indifference of his very strange But savages are strange beings
at times you do not know exactly how to take them At first they are overawing
their calm selfcollectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom I had
noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all or but very little with the
other seamen in the inn He made no advances whatever appeared to have no
desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances All this struck me as mighty
singular yet upon second thoughts there was something almost sublime in it
Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home by the way of Cape Horn
that is which was the only way he could get there thrown among people as
strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter and yet he seemed
entirely at his ease preserving the utmost serenity content with his own
companionship always equal to himself Surely this was a touch of fine
philosophy though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that
But perhaps to be true philosophers we mortals should not be conscious of so
living or so striving So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself
out for a philosopher I conclude that like the dyspeptic old woman he must
have broken his digester
As I sat there in that now lonely room the fire burning low in that mild
stage when after its first intensity has warmed the air it then only glows to
be looked at the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements and
peering in upon us silent solitary twain the storm booming without in solemn
swells I began to be sensible of strange feelings I felt a melting in me No
more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish
world This soothing savage had redeemed it There he sat his very indifference
speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilised hypocrisies and bland
deceits Wild he was a very sight of sights to see yet I began to feel myself
mysteriously drawn toward him And those same things that would have repelled
most others they were the very magnets that thus drew me I ll try a pagan
friend thought I since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy I
drew my bench near him and made some friendly signs and hints doing my best to
talk with him meanwhile At first he little noticed these advances but
presently upon my referring to his last nights hospitalities he made out to
ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows I told him yes whereat I thought
he looked pleased perhaps a little complimented
We then turned over the book together and I endeavoured to explain to him
the purpose of the printing and the meaning of the few pictures that were in
it Thus I soon engaged his interest and from that we went to jabbering the
best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town
Soon I proposed a social smoke and producing his pouch and tomahawk he
quietly offered me a puff And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe
of his and keeping it regularly passing between us
If there yet lurked any ice of indifference toward me in the pagans breast
this pleasant genial smoke we had soon thawed it out and left us cronies He
seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him and when our
smoke was over he pressed his forehead against mine clasped me round the
waist and said that henceforth we were married meaning in his countrys
phrase that we were bosom friends he would gladly die for me if need should
be In a countryman this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too
premature a thing to be much distrusted but in this simple savage those old
rules would not apply
After supper and another social chat and smoke we went to our room
together He made me a present of his embalmed head took out his enormous
tobacco wallet and groping under the tobacco drew out some thirty dollars in
silver then spreading them on the table and mechanically dividing them into
two equal portions pushed one of them toward me and said it was mine I was
going to remonstrate but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers
pockets I let them stay He then went about his evening prayers took out his
idol and removed the paper fireboard By certain signs and symptoms I thought
he seemed anxious for me to join him but well knowing what was to follow I
deliberated a moment whether in case he invited me I would comply or
otherwise
I was a good Christian born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church How then could I unite with this wild idolater in
worshipping his piece of wood But what is worship thought I Do you suppose
now Ishmael that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth pagans and all
included can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood
Impossible But what is worship to do the will of God that is worship And
what is the will of God to do to my fellowman what I would have my
fellowman to do to me that is the will of God Now Queequeg is my
fellowman And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me Why unite
with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship Consequently I must then
unite with him in his ergo I must turn idolater So I kindled the shavings
helped prop up the innocent little idol offered him burnt biscuit with
Queequeg salaamed before him twice or thrice kissed his nose and that done
we undressed and went to bed at peace with our own consciences and all the
world But we did not go to sleep without some little chat
How it is I know not but there is no place like a bed for confidential
disclosures between friends Man and wife they say there open the very bottom
of their souls to each other and some old couples often lie and chat over old
times till nearly morning Thus then in our hearts honeymoon lay I and
Queequeg a cosy loving pair
Chapter XI
Nightgown
We had lain thus in bed chatting and napping at short intervals and Queequeg
now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine and then
drawing them back so entirely sociable and free and easy were we when at
last by reason of our confabulations what little nappishness remained in us
altogether departed and we felt like getting up again though daybreak was yet
some way down the future
Yes we became very wakeful so much so that our recumbent position began to
grow wearisome and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up the
clothes well tucked around us leaning against the headboard with our four
knees drawn up close together and our two noses bending over them as if our
kneepans were warmingpans We felt very nice and snug the more so since it
was so chilly out of doors indeed out of bedclothes too seeing that there was
no fire in the room The more so I say because truly to enjoy bodily warmth
some small part of you must be cold for there is no quality in this world that
is not what it is merely by contrast Nothing exists in itself If you flatter
yourself that you are all over comfortable and have been so a long time then
you cannot be said to be comfortable any more But if like Queequeg and me in
the bed the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled why
then indeed in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and
unmistakably warm For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be
furnished with a fire which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich
For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket
between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air Then there you lie
like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal
We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time when all at once
I thought I would open my eyes for when between sheets whether by day or by
night and whether asleep or awake I have a way of always keeping my eyes shut
in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed Because no man
can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed as if darkness
were indeed the proper element of our essences though light be more congenial
to our clayey part Upon opening my eyes then and coming out of my own pleasant
and selfcreated darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the
unilluminated twelveoclockatnight I experienced a disagreeable revulsion
Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to
strike a light seeing that we were so wide awake and besides he felt a strong
desire to have a few quiet puffs from his tomahawk Be it said that though I
had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before
yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them
For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me even in bed
because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then I no more felt
unduly concerned for the landlords policy of insurance I was only alive to the
condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a
real friend With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders we now passed
the tomahawk from one to the other till slowly there grew over us a blue
hanging tester of smoke illuminated by the flame of the newlit lamp
Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far
distant scenes I know not but he now spoke of his native island and eager to
hear his history I begged him to go on and tell it He gladly complied Though
at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words yet subsequent
disclosures when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology now
enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I
give
Chapter XII
Biographical
Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko an island far away to the west and south It
is not down in any map true places never are
When a newhatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass
clout followed by the nibbling goats as if he were a green sapling even then
in Queequegs ambitious soul lurked a strong desire to see something more of
Christendom than a specimen whaler or two His father was a High Chief a King
his uncle a High Priest and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the
wives of unconquerable warriors There was excellent blood in his veins royal
stuff though sadly vitiated I fear by the cannibal propensity he nourished in
his untutored youth
A Sag Harbour ship visited his fathers bay and Queequeg sought a passage
to Christian lands But the ship having her full complement of seamen spurned
his suit and not all the King his fathers influence could prevail But
Queequeg vowed a vow Alone in his canoe he paddled off to a distant strait
which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island On one
side was a coral reef on the other a low tongue of land covered with mangrove
thickets that grew out into the water Hiding his canoe still afloat among
these thickets with its prow seaward he sat down in the stern paddle low in
hand and when the ship was gliding by like a flash he darted out gained her
side with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe climbed up
the chains and throwing himself at full length upon the deck grappled a
ringbolt there and swore not to let it go though hacked in pieces
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard suspended a cutlass
over his naked wrists Queequeg was the son of a King and Queequeg budged not
Struck by his desperate dauntlessness and his wild desire to visit Christendom
the captain at last relented and told him he might make himself at home But
this fine young savage this sea Prince of Wales never saw the captains
cabin They put him down among the sailors and made a whaleman of him But like
Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities Queequeg
disdained no seeming ignominy if thereby he might happily gain the power of
enlightening his untutored countrymen For at bottom so he told me he was
actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians the arts whereby to
make his people still happier than they were and more than that still better
than they were But alas the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that
even Christians could be both miserable and wicked infinitely more so than all
his fathers heathens Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour and seeing what the
sailors did there and then going on to Nantucket and seeing how they spent
their wages in that place also poor Queequeg gave it up for lost Thought he
it s a wicked world in all meridians I ll die a pagan
And thus an old idolater at heart he yet lived among these Christians wore
their clothes and tried to talk their gibberish Hence the queer ways about
him though now some time from home
By hints I asked him whether he did not propose going back and having a
coronation since he might now consider his father dead and gone he being very
old and feeble at the last accounts He answered no not yet and added that he
was fearful Christianity or rather Christians had unfitted him for ascending
the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan kings before him But by and by
he said he would return as soon as he felt himself baptized again For the
nonce however he proposed to sail about and sow his wild oats in all four
oceans They had made a harpooneer of him and that barbed iron was in lieu of a
sceptre now
I asked him what might be his immediate purpose touching his future
movements He answered to go to sea again in his old vocation Upon this I
told him that whaling was my own design and informed him of my intention to
sail out of Nantucket as being the most promising port for an adventurous
whaleman to embark from He at once resolved to accompany me to that island
ship aboard the same vessel get into the same watch the same boat the same
mess with me in short to share my every hap with both my hands in his boldly
dip into the Potluck of both worlds To all this I joyously assented for
besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg he was an experienced harpooneer
and as such could not fail to be of great usefulness to one who like me was
wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling though well acquainted with the sea
as known to merchant seamen
His story being ended with his pipes last dying puff Queequeg embraced me
pressed his forehead against mine and blowing out the light we rolled over
from each other this way and that and very soon were sleeping
Chapter XIII
Wheelbarrow
Next morning Monday after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber for a
block I settled my own and comrades bill using however my comrades money
The grinning landlord as well as the boarders seemed amazingly tickled at the
sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg especially as
Peter Coffins cockandbull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me
concerning the very person whom I now companied with
We borrowed a wheelbarrow and embarking our things including my own poor
carpetbag and Queequegs canvas sack and hammock away we went down to the
Moss the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf As we were going
along the people stared not at Queequeg so much for they were used to seeing
cannibals like him in their streets but at seeing him and me upon such
confidential terms But we heeded them not going along wheeling the barrow by
turns and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon
barbs I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore and
whether all whalingships did not find their own harpoons To this in
substance he replied that though what I hinted was true enough yet he had a
particular affection for his own harpoon because it was of assured stuff well
tried in many a mortal combat and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales In
short like many inland reapers and mowers who go into the farmers meadows
armed with their own scythes though in no wise obliged to furnish them even
so Queequeg for his own private reasons preferred his own harpoon
Shifting the barrow from my hand to his he told me a funny story about the
first wheelbarrow he had ever seen It was in Sag Harbour The owners of his
ship it seems had lent him one in which to carry his heavy chest to his
boardinghouse Not to seem ignorant about the thing though in truth he was
entirely so concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow Queequeg
puts his chest upon it lashes it fast and then shoulders the barrow and
marches up the wharf »Why« said I »Queequeg you might have known better than
that one would think Didnt the people laugh«
Upon this he told me another story The people of his island of Rokovoko
it seems at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts
into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl and this punchbowl always
forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held Now
a certain grand merchant ship once touched at Rokovoko and its commander from
all accounts a very stately punctilious gentleman at least for a seacaptain
this commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequegs sister a pretty
young princess just turned of ten Well when all the wedding guests were
assembled at the brides bamboo cottage this captain marches in and being
assigned the post of honour placed himself over against the punchbowl and
between the High Priest and his majesty the King Queequegs father Grace being
said for those people have their grace as well as we though Queequeg told
me that unlike us who at such times look downward to our platters they on the
contrary copying the ducks glance upward to the great Giver of all feasts
Grace I say being said the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial
ceremony of the island that is dipping his consecrated and consecrating
fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates Seeing himself
placed next the Priest and noting the ceremony and thinking himself being
captain of a ship as having plain precedence over a mere island King
especially in the Kings own house the captain coolly proceeds to wash his
hands in the punchbowl taking it I suppose for a huge fingerglass »Now«
said Queequeg »what you tink now Didnt our people laugh«
At last passage paid and luggage safe we stood on board the schooner
Hoisting sail it glided down the Acushnet river On one side New Bedford rose
in terraces of streets their icecovered trees all glittering in the clear
cold air Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her
wharves and side by side the worldwandering whaleships lay silent and safely
moored at last while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers with
blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch all betokening that new
cruises were on the start that one most perilous and long voyage ended only
begins a second and a second ended only begins a third and so on forever and
for aye Such is the endlessness yea the intolerableness of all earthly
effort
Gaining the more open water the bracing breeze waxed fresh the little Moss
tossed the quick foam from her bows as a young colt his snortings How I
snuffed that Tartar air how I spurned that turnpike earth that common
highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs and turned me
to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records
At the same foamfountain Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me His
dusky nostrils swelled apart he showed his filed and pointed teeth On on we
flew and our offing gained the Moss did homage to the blast ducked and dived
her brows as a slave before the Sultan Sideways leaning we sideways darted
every ropeyarn tingling like a wire the two tall masts buckling like Indian
canes in land tornadoes So full of this reeling scene were we as we stood by
the plunging bowsprit that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances
of the passengers a lubberlike assembly who marvelled that two fellowbeings
should be so companionable as though a white man were anything more dignified
than a whitewashed negro But there were some boobies and bumpkins there who
by their intense greenness must have come from the heart and centre of all
verdure Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind his
back I thought the bumpkins hour of doom was come Dropping his harpoon the
brawny savage caught him in his arms and by an almost miraculous dexterity and
strength sent him high up bodily into the air then slightly tapping his stern
in midsomerset the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet while
Queequeg turning his back upon him lighted his tomahawkpipe and passed it to
me for a puff
»Capting capting« yelled the bumpkin running toward that officer
»Capting capting here s the devil«
»Halloa you sir« cried the captain a gaunt rib of the sea stalking up to
Queequeg »what in thunder do you mean by that 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 kille that man there« pointing to
the still shivering greenhorn
»Kille« cried Queequeg twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly
expression of disdain »ah him bevy smalle fishe Queequeg nokille so
smalle fishe Queequeg kille big whale«
»Look you« roared the captain »I ll kille you you cannibal if you try
any more of your tricks aboard here so mind your eye«
But it so happened just then that it was high time for the captain to mind
his own eye The prodigious strain upon the mainsail had parted the
weathersheet and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to side
completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck The poor fellow whom
Queequeg had handled so roughly was swept overboard all hands were in a panic
and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it seemed madness It flew from
right to left and back again almost in one ticking of a watch and every
instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters Nothing was done and
nothing seemed capable of being done those on deck rushed toward the bows and
stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale In
the midst of this consternation Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees and
crawling under the path of the boom whipped hold of a rope secured one end to
the bulwarks and then flinging the other like a lasso caught it round the boom
as it swept over his head and at the next jerk the spar was that way trapped
and all was safe The schooner was run into the wind and while the hands were
clearing away the stern boat Queequeg stripped to the waist darted from the
side with a long living arc of a leap For three minutes or more he was seen
swimming like a dog throwing his long arms straight out before him and by
turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam I looked at the
grand and glorious fellow but saw no one to be saved The greenhorn had gone
down Shooting himself perpendicularly from the water Queequeg now took an
instants glance around him and seeming to see just how matters were dived
down and disappeared A few minutes more and he rose again one arm still
striking out and with the other dragging a lifeless form The boat soon picked
them up The poor bumpkin was restored All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump
the captain begged his pardon From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a
barnacle yea till poor Queequeg took his last long dive
Was there ever such unconsciousness He did not seem to think that he at all
deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies He only asked for
water fresh water something to wipe the brine off that done he put on dry
clothes lighted his pipe and leaning against the bulwarks and mildly eyeing
those around him seemed to be saying to himself »It s a mutual jointstock
world in all meridians We cannibals must help these Christians«
Chapter XIV
Nantucket
Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning so after a fine
run we safely arrived in Nantucket
Nantucket Take out your map and look at it See what a real corner of the
world it occupies how it stands there away off shore more lonely than the
Eddystone lighthouse Look at it a mere hillock and elbow of sand all beach
without a background There is more sand there than you would use in twenty
years as a substitute for blottingpaper Some gamesome wights will tell you
that they have to plant weeds there they dont grow naturally that they import
Canada thistles that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak
in an oilcask that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of
the true cross in Rome that people there plant toadstools before their houses
to get under the shade in summer time that one blade of grass makes an oasis
three blades in a days walk a prairie that they wear quicksand shoes
something like Laplander snowshoes that they are so shut up belted about
every way enclosed surrounded and made an utter island of by the ocean that
to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering as
to the backs of seaturtles But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is
no Illinois
Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by
the red men Thus goes the legend In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the
New England coast and carried off an infant Indian in his talons With loud
lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters They
resolved to follow in the same direction Setting out in their canoes after a
perilous passage they discovered the island and there they found an empty ivory
casket the poor little Indians skeleton
What wonder then that these Nantucketers born on a beach should take to
the sea for a livelihood They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand grown
bolder they waded out with nets for mackerel more experienced they pushed off
in boats and captured cod and at last launching a navy of great ships on the
sea explored this watery world put an incessant belt of circumnavigations
round it peeped in at Behring Straits and in all seasons and all oceans
declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the
Flood most monstrous and most mountainous That Himalayan saltsea mastodon
clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power that his very panics are
more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults
And thus have these naked Nantucketers these seahermits issuing from
their anthill in the sea overrun and conquered the watery world like so many
Alexanders parcelling out among them the Atlantic Pacific and Indian oceans
as the three pirate powers did Poland Let America add Mexico to Texas and pile
Cuba upon Canada let the English overswarm all India and hang out their
blazing banner from the sun twothirds of this terraqueous globe are the
Nantucketers For the sea is his he owns it as Emperors own empires other
seamen having but a right of way through it Merchant ships are but extension
bridges armed ones but floating forts even pirates and privateers though
following the sea as highwaymen the road they but plunder other ships other
fragments of the land like themselves without seeking to draw their living from
the bottomless deep itself The Nantucketer he alone resides and riots on the
sea he alone in Bible language goes down to it in ships to and fro ploughing
it as his own special plantation There is his home there lies his business
which a Noahs flood would not interrupt though it overwhelmed all the millions
in China He lives on the sea as prairie cocks in the prairie he hides among
the waves he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps For years he knows
not the land so that when he comes to it at last it smells like another world
more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman With the landless gull that
at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows so at
nightfall the Nantucketer out of sight of land furls his sails and lays him
to his rest while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales
Chapter XV
Chowder
It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to anchor and
Queequeg and I went ashore so we could attend to no business that day at least
none but a supper and a bed The landlord of the SpouterInn had recommended us
to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the Try Pots whom he asserted to be the
proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket and moreover he had
assured us that Cousin Hosea as he called him was famous for his chowders In
short he plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try potluck
at the Try Pots But the directions he had given us about keeping a yellow
warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to the larboard
and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a corner three points to
the starboard and that done then ask the first man we met where the place was
these crooked directions of his very much puzzled us at first especially as at
the outset Queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouse our first point of
departure must be left on the larboard hand whereas I had understood Peter
Coffin to say it was on the starboard However by dint of beating about a
little in the dark and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to
inquire the way we at last came to something which there was no mistaking
Two enormous wooden pots painted black and suspended by asses ears swung
from the crosstrees of an old topmast planted in front of an old doorway The
horns of the crosstrees were sawed off on the other side so that this old
topmast looked not a little like a gallows Perhaps I was oversensitive to such
impressions at the time but I could not help staring at this gallows with a
vague misgiving A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two
remaining horns yes two of them one for Queequeg and one for me It s
ominous thinks I A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port
tombstones staring at me in the whalemans chapel and here a gallows and a
pair of prodigious black pots too Are these last throwing out oblique hints
touching Tophet
I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman with
yellow hair and a yellow gown standing in the porch of the inn under a dull
red lamp swinging there that looked much like an injured eye and carrying on a
brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen shirt
»Get along with ye« said she to the man »or I ll be combing ye«
»Come on Queequeg« said I »all right There s Mrs Hussey«
And so it turned out Mr Hosea Hussey being from home but leaving Mrs
Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs Upon making known our
desires for a supper and a bed Mrs Hussey postponing further scolding for the
present ushered us into a little room and seating us at a table spread with
the relics of a recently concluded repast turned round to us and said »Clam or
cod«
»What s that about cods maam« said I with much politeness
»Clam or cod« she repeated
»A clam for supper a cold clam is that what you mean Mrs Hussey« says
I »but that s a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter time aint it
Mrs Hussey«
But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple shirt
who was waiting for it in the entry and seeming to hear nothing but the word
clam Mrs Hussey hurried toward an open door leading to the kitchen and
bawling out clam for two disappeared
»Queequeg« said I »do you think that we can make out a supper for us both
on one clam«
However a warm savoury steam from the kitchen served to belie the
apparently cheerless prospect before us But when that smoking chowder came in
the mystery was delightfully explained Oh sweet friends hearken to me It was
made of small juicy clams scarcely bigger than hazel nuts mixed with pounded
shipbiscuit and salted pork cut up into little flakes the whole enriched with
butter and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt Our appetites being
sharpened by the frosty voyage and in particular Queequeg seeing his favourite
fishing food before him and the chowder being surpassingly excellent we
dispatched it with great expedition when leaning back a moment and bethinking
me of Mrs Husseys clam and cod announcement I thought I would try a little
experiment Stepping to the kitchen door I uttered the word cod with great
emphasis and resumed my seat In a few moments the savoury steam came forth
again but with a different flavour and in good time a fine codchowder was
placed before us
We resumed business and while plying our spoons in the bowl thinks I to
myself I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head What s that
stultifying saying about chowderheaded people »But look Queequeg aint that
a live eel in your bowl Where s your harpoon«
Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots which well deserved its name
for the pots there were always boiling chowders Chowder for breakfast and
chowder for dinner and chowder for supper till you began to look for
fishbones coming through your clothes The area before the house was paved with
clamshells Mrs Hussey wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra and Hosea
Hussey had his accountbooks bound in superior old sharkskin There was a fishy
flavour to the milk too which I could not at all account for till one morning
happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermens boats I saw
Hoseas brindled cow feeding on fish remnants and marching along the sand with
each foot in a cods decapitated head looking very slipshod I assure ye
Supper concluded we received a lamp and directions from Mrs Hussey
concerning the nearest way to bed but as Queequeg was about to precede me up
the stairs the lady reached forth her arm and demanded his harpoon she
allowed no harpoon in her chambers »Why not« said I »every true whaleman
sleeps with his harpoon but why not« »Because it s dangerous« says she
»Ever since young Stiggs coming from that unfortnt vyge of his when he was
gone four years and a half with only three barrels of ile was found dead in my
first floor back with his harpoon in his side ever since then I allow no
boarders to take sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night So Mr
Queequeg« for she had learned his name »I will just take this here iron and
keep it for you till morning But the chowder clam or cod tomorrow for
breakfast men«
»Both« says I »and lets have a couple of smoked herring by way of
variety«
Chapter XVI
The Ship
In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow But to my surprise and no small
concern Queequeg now gave me to understand that he had been diligently
consulting Yojo the name of his black little god and Yojo had told him two
or three times over and strongly insisted upon it everyway that instead of our
going together among the whalingfleet in harbour and in concert selecting our
craft instead of this I say Yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of the
ship should rest wholly with me inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us and
in order to do so had already pitched upon a vessel which if left to myself
I Ishmael should infallibly light upon for all the world as though it had
turned out by chance and in that vessel I must immediately ship myself for the
present irrespective of Queequeg
I have forgotten to mention that in many things Queequeg placed great
confidence in the excellence of Yojos judgment and surprising forecast of
things and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem as a rather good sort of
god who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole but in all cases did not
succeed in his benevolent designs
Now this plan of Queequegs or rather Yojos touching the selection of
our craft I did not like that plan at all I had not a little relied upon
Queequegs sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to carry us and our
fortunes securely But as all my remonstrances produced no effect upon Queequeg
I was obliged to acquiesce and accordingly prepared to set about this business
with a determined rushing sort of energy and vigour that should quickly settle
that trifling little affair Next morning early leaving Queequeg shut up with
Yojo in our little bedroom for it seemed that it was some sort of Lent or
Ramadan or day of fasting humiliation and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that
day how it was I never could find out for though I applied myself to it
several times I never could master his liturgies and XXXIX Articles leaving
Queequeg then fasting on his tomahawkpipe and Yojo warming himself at his
sacrificial fire of shavings I sallied out among the shipping After much
prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries I learnt that there were three
ships up for threeyears voyages the DevilDam the Titbit and the Pequod
DevilDam I do not know the origin of Titbit is obvious Pequod you will no
doubt remember was the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians now
extinct as the ancient Medes I peered and pryed about the DevilDam from her
hopped over to the Titbit and finally going on board the Pequod looked
around her for a moment and then decided that this was the very ship for us
You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day for aught I know
squaretoed luggers mountainous Japanese junks butterbox galliots and what
not but take my word for it you never saw such a rare old craft as this same
rare old Pequod She was a ship of the old school rather small if anything
with an oldfashioned clawfooted look about her Long seasoned and
weatherstained in the typhoons and calms of all four oceans her old hulls
complexion was darkened like a French grenadiers who has alike fought in Egypt
and Siberia Her venerable bows looked bearded Her masts cut somewhere on the
coast of Japan where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale her
masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne Her
ancient decks were worn and wrinkled like the pilgrimworshipped flagstone in
Canterbury Cathedral where Becket bled But to all these her old antiquities
were added new and marvellous features pertaining to the wild business that for
more than half a century she had followed Old Captain Peleg many years her
chief mate before he commanded another vessel of his own and now a retired
seaman and one of the principal owners of the Pequod this old Peleg during
the term of his chief mateship had built upon her original grotesqueness and
inlaid it all over with a quaintness both of material and device unmatched by
anything except it be ThorkillHakes carved buckler or bedstead She was
apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor his neck heavy with pendants of
polished ivory She was a thing of trophies A cannibal of a craft tricking
herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies All round her unpanelled
open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw with the long sharp teeth
of the sperm whale inserted there for pins to fasten her old hempen thews and
tendons to Those thews ran not through base blocks of landwood but deftly
travelled over sheaves of seaivory Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend
helm she sported there a tiller and that tiller was in one mass curiously
carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe The helmsman who
steered by that tiller in a tempest felt like the Tartar when he holds back
his fiery steed by clutching its jaw A noble craft but somehow a most
melancholy All noble things are touched with that
Now when I looked about the quarterdeck for some one having authority in
order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage at first I saw nobody
but I could not well overlook a strange sort of tent or rather wigwam pitched
a little behind the mainmast It seemed only a temporary erection used in port
It was of a conical shape some ten feet high consisting of the long huge
slabs of limber black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of
the right whale Planted with their broad ends on the deck a circle of these
slabs laced together mutually sloped toward each other and at the apex united
in a tufted point where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the
topknot on some old Pottowottamie sachems head A triangular opening faced
toward the bows of the ship so that the insider commanded a complete view
forward
And half concealed in this queer tenement I at length found one who by his
aspect seemed to have authority and who it being noon and the ships work
suspended was now enjoying respite from the burden of command He was seated on
an oldfashioned oaken chair wriggling all over with curious carving and the
bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of
which the wigwam was constructed
There was nothing so very particular perhaps about the appearance of the
elderly man I saw he was brown and brawny like most old seamen and heavily
rolled up in blue pilotcloth cut in the Quaker style only there was a fine
and almost microscopic network of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his
eyes which must have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales and
always looking to windward for this causes the muscles about the eyes to
become pursed together Such eyewrinkles are very effectual in a scowl
»Is this the captain of the Pequod« said I advancing to the door of the
tent
»Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod what dost thou want of him« he
demanded
»I was thinking of shipping«
»Thou wast wast thou I see thou art no Nantucketer ever been in a stove
boat«
»No sir I never have«
»Dost know nothing at all about whaling I dare say eh«
»Nothing sir but I have no doubt I shall soon learn Ive been several
voyages in the merchant service and I think that «
»Marchant service be damned Talk not that lingo to me Dost see that leg
I ll take that leg away from thy stern if ever thou talkest of the marchant
service to me again Marchant service indeed I suppose now ye feel considerable
proud of having served in those marchant ships But flukes man what makes thee
want to go awhaling eh it looks a little suspicious dont it eh Hast
not been a pirate hast thou Didst not rob thy last captain didst thou
Dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea«
I protested my innocence of these things I saw that under the mask of these
halfhumorous innuendoes this old seaman as an insulated Quakerish
Nantucketer was full of his insular prejudices and rather distrustful of all
aliens unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard
»But what takes thee awhaling I want to know that before I think of
shipping ye«
»Well sir I want to see what whaling is I want to see the world«
»Want to see what whaling is eh Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab«
»Who is Captain Ahab sir«
»Ay ay I thought so Captain Ahab is the captain of this ship«
»I am mistaken then I thought I was speaking to the captain himself«
»Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg that s who ye are speaking to young
man It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the
voyage and supplied with all her needs including crew We are part owners and
agents But as I was going to say if thou wantest to know what whaling is as
thou tellest ye do I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind
yourself to it past backing out Clap eye on Captain Ahab young man and thou
wilt find that he has only one leg«
»What do you mean sir Was the other one lost by a whale«
»Lost by a whale Young man come nearer to me it was devoured chewed up
crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat ah ah«
I was a little alarmed by his energy perhaps also a little touched at the
hearty grief in his concluding exclamation but said as calmly as I could »What
you say is no doubt true enough sir but how could I know there was any
peculiar ferocity in that particular whale though indeed I might have inferred
as much from the simple fact of the accident«
»Look ye now young man thy lungs are a sort of soft d ye see thou dost
not talk shark a bit Sure yeve been to sea before now sure of that«
»Sir« said I »I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in the
merchant «
»Hard down out of that Mind what I said about the marchant service dont
aggravate me I wont have it But let us understand each other I have given
thee a hint about what whaling is do ye yet feel inclined for it«
»I do sir«
»Very good Now art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live 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 awhaling to find out by
experience what whaling is but ye also want to go in order to see the world
Was not that what ye said I thought so Well then just step forward there and
take a peep over the weatherbow and then back to me and tell me what ye see
there«
For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request not knowing
exactly how to take it whether humorously or in earnest But concentrating all
his crows feet into one scowl Captain Peleg started me on the errand
Going forward and glancing over the weatherbow I perceived that the ship
swinging to her anchor with the floodtide was now obliquely pointing toward
the open ocean The prospect was unlimited but exceedingly monotonous and
forbidding not the slightest variety that I could see
»Well what s the report« said Peleg when I came back »what did ye see«
»Not much« I replied »nothing but water considerable horizon though and
there s a squall coming up I think«
»Well what dost thou think then of seeing the world Do ye 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 awhaling I must and I would and the
Pequod was as good a ship as any I thought the best and all this I now
repeated to Peleg Seeing me so determined he expressed his willingness to ship
me
»And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off« he added »come along
with ye« And so saying he led the way below deck into the cabin
Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and surprising
figure It turned out to be Captain Bildad who along with Captain Peleg was one
of the largest owners of the vessel the other shares as is sometimes the case
in these ports being held by a crowd of old annuitants widows fatherless
children and chancery wards each owning about the value of a timber head or a
foot of plank or a nail or two in the ship People in Nantucket invest their
money in whalingvessels the same way that you do yours in approved state
stocks bringing in good interest
Now Bildad like Peleg and indeed many other Nantucketers was a Quaker
the island having been originally settled by that sect and to this day its
inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the
Quaker only variously and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and
heterogeneous For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all
sailors and whalehunters They are fighting Quakers they are Quakers with a
vengeance
So that there are instances among them of men who named with Scripture
names a singularly common fashion on the island and in childhood naturally
imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the Quaker idiom still from the
audacious daring and boundless adventure of their subsequent lives strangely
blend with these unoutgrown peculiarities a thousand bold dashes of character
not unworthy a Scandinavian seaking or a poetical pagan Roman And when these
things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force with a globular brain
and a ponderous heart who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long
nightwatches in the remotest waters and beneath constellations never seen here
at the north been led to think untraditionally and independently receiving all
natures sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and
confiding breast and thereby chiefly but with some help from accidental
advantages to learn a bold and nervous lofty language that man makes one in a
whole nations census a mighty pageant creature formed for noble tragedies
Nor will it at all detract from him dramatically regarded if either by birth
or other circumstances he have what seems a halfwilful overruling morbidness
at the bottom of his nature For all men tragically great are made so through a
certain morbidness Be sure of this O young ambition all mortal greatness is
but disease But as yet we have not to do with such an one but with quite
another and still a man who if indeed peculiar it only results again from
another phase of the Quaker modified by individual circumstances
Like Captain Peleg Captain Bildad was a welltodo retired whaleman But
unlike Captain Peleg who cared not a rush for what are called serious things
and indeed deemed those selfsame serious things the veriest of all trifles
Captain Bildad had not only been originally educated according to the strictest
sect of Nantucket Quakerism but all his subsequent ocean life and the sight of
many unclad lovely island creatures round the Horn all that had not moved
this nativeborn Quaker one single jot had not so much as altered one angle of
his vest Still for all this immutableness was there some lack of common
consistency about worthy Captain Bildad Though refusing from conscientious
scruples to bear arms against land invaders yet himself had illimitably
invaded the Atlantic and Pacific and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed yet
had he in his straightbodied coat spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore
How now in the contemplative evening of his days the pious Bildad reconciled
these things in the reminiscence I do not know but it did not seem to concern
him much and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible
conclusion that a mans religion is one thing and this practical world quite
another This world pays dividends Rising from a little cabinboy in short
clothes of the drabbest drab to a harpooneer in a broad shadbellied waistcoat
from that becoming boatheader chief mate and captain and finally a
shipowner Bildad as I hinted before had concluded his adventurous career by
wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of sixty and dedicating his
remaining days to the quiet receiving of his wellearned income
Now Bildad I am sorry to say had the reputation of being an incorrigible
old hunks and in his seagoing days a bitter hard taskmaster They told me in
Nantucket though it certainly seems a curious story that when he sailed the
old Categut whaleman his crew upon arriving home were mostly all carried
ashore to the hospital sore exhausted and worn out For a pious man especially
for a Quaker he was certainly rather hardhearted to say the least He never
used to swear though at his men they said but somehow he got an inordinate
quantity of cruel unmitigated hard work out of them When Bildad was a chief
mate to have his drabcoloured eye intently looking at you made you feel
completely nervous till you could clutch something a hammer or a
marlingspike and go to work like mad at something or other never mind what
Indolence and idleness perished from before him His own person was the exact
embodiment of his utilitarian character On his long gaunt body he carried no
spare flesh no superfluous beard his chin having a soft economical nap to it
like the worn nap of his broadbrimmed hat
Such then was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I followed
Captain Peleg down into the cabin The space between the decks was small and
there boltupright sat old Bildad who always sat so and never leaned and
this to save his coattails His broadbrim was placed beside him his legs were
stiffly crossed his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin and spectacles on
nose he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume
»Bildad« cried Captain Peleg »at it again Bildad eh Ye have been
studying those Scriptures now for the last thirty years to my certain
knowledge How far ye got Bildad«
As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate Bildad
without noticing his present irreverence quietly looked up and seeing me
glanced again inquiringly toward Peleg
»He says he s our man Bildad« said Peleg »he wants to ship«
»Dost thee« said Bildad in a hollow tone and turning round to me
»I dost« said I unconsciously he was so intense a Quaker
»What do ye think of him Bildad« said Peleg
»He ll do« said Bildad eyeing me and then went on spelling away at his
book in a mumbling tone quite audible
I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw especially as Peleg his
friend and old shipmate seemed such a blusterer But I said nothing only
looking round me sharply Peleg now threw open a chest and drawing forth the
ships articles placed pen and ink before him and seated himself at a little
table I began to think it was high time to settle with myself at what terms I
would be willing to engage for the voyage I was already aware that in the
whaling business they paid no wages but all hands including the captain
received certain shares of the profits called lays and that these lays were
proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of
the ships company I was also aware that being a greenhand at whaling my own
lay would not be very large but considering that I was used to the sea could
steer a ship splice a rope and all that I made no doubt that from all I had
heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay that is the 275th part of
the clear nett proceeds of the voyage whatever that might eventually amount to
And though the 275th lay was what they call a rather long lay yet it was better
than nothing and if we had a lucky voyage might pretty nearly pay for the
clothing I would wear out on it not to speak of my three years beef and board
for which I would not have to pay one stiver
It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely
fortune and so it was a very poor way indeed But I am one of those that
never take on about princely fortunes and am quite content if the world is
ready to board and lodge me while I am putting up at this grim sign of the
Thunder Cloud Upon the whole I thought that the 275th lay would be about the
fair thing but would not have been surprised had I been offered the 200th
considering I was of a broadshouldered make
But one thing nevertheless that made me a little distrustful about
receiving a generous share of the profits was this Ashore I had heard
something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad how that
they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod therefore the other and more
inconsiderable and scattered owners left nearly the whole management of the
ships affairs to these two And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad
might have a mighty deal to say about shipping hands especially as I now found
him on board the Pequod quite at home there in the cabin and reading his Bible
as if at his own fireside Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with
his jackknife old Bildad to my no small surprise considering that he was
such an interested party in these proceedings Bildad never heeded us but went
on mumbling to himself out of his book »Lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth where moth «
»Well Captain Bildad« interrupted Peleg »what d ye say what lay shall
we give this young man«
»Thou knowest best« was the sepulchral reply »the seven hundred and
seventyseventh wouldnt be too much would it where moth and rust do
corrupt but lay «
Lay indeed thought I and such a lay the seven hundred and
seventyseventh Well old Bildad you are determined that I for one shall not
lay up many lays here below where moth and rust do corrupt It was an
exceedingly long lay that indeed and though from the magnitude of the figure
it might at first deceive a landsman yet the slightest consideration will show
that though seven hundred and seventyseven is a pretty large number yet when
you come to make a teenth of it you will then see I say that the seven
hundred and seventyseventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven
hundred and seventyseven gold doubloons and so I thought at the time
»Why blast your eyes Bildad« cried Peleg »thou dost not want to swindle
this young man he must have more than that«
»Seven hundred and seventyseventh« again said Bildad without lifting his
eyes and then went on mumbling »for where your treasure is there will your
heart be also«
»I am going to put him down for the three hundredth« said Peleg »do ye
hear that Bildad The three hundredth lay I say«
Bildad laid down his book and turning solemnly toward him said »Captain
Peleg thou hast a generous heart but thou must consider the duty thou owest to
the other owners of this ship widows and orphans many of them and that if
we too abundantly reward the labours of this young man we may be taking the
bread from those widows and those orphans The seven hundred and seventyseventh
lay Captain Peleg«
»Thou Bildad« roared Peleg starting up and clattering about the cabin
»Blast ye Captain Bildad if I had followed thy advice in these matters I
would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to
founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn«
»Captain Peleg« said Bildad steadily »thy conscience may be drawing ten
inches of water or ten fathoms I cant tell but as thou art still an
impenitent man Captain Peleg I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky
one and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit Captain
Peleg«
»Fiery pit fiery pit ye insult me man past all natural bearing ye
insult me It s an allfired outrage to tell any human creature that he s
bound to hell Flukes and flames Bildad say that again to me and start my
soulbolts but I ll I ll yes I ll swallow a live goat with all his hair
and horns on Out of the cabin ye canting drabcoloured son of a wooden gun
a straight wake with ye«
As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad but with a marvellous
oblique sliding celerity Bildad for that time eluded him
Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and responsible
owners of the ship and feeling half a mind to give up all idea of sailing in a
vessel so questionably owned and temporarily commanded I stepped aside from the
door to give egress to Bildad who I made no doubt was all eagerness to vanish
from before the awakened wrath of Peleg But to my astonishment he sat down
again on the transom very quietly and seemed to have not the slightest
intention of withdrawing He seemed quite used to impenitent Peleg and his ways
As for Peleg after letting off his rage as he had there seemed no more left in
him and he too sat down like a lamb though he twitched a little as if still
nervously agitated »Whew« he whistled at last »the squalls gone off to
leeward I think Bildad thou used to be good at sharpening a lance mend that
pen will ye My jackknife here needs the grindstone That s he thank ye
Bildad Now then my young man Ishmaels thy 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 wants to ship too
shall I bring him down tomorrow«
»To be sure« said Peleg »Fetch him along and we ll look at him«
»What lay does he want« groaned Bildad glancing up from the book in which
he had again been burying himself
»Oh never thee mind about that Bildad« said Peleg »Has he ever whaled it
any« turning to me
»Killed more whales than I can count Captain Peleg«
»Well bring him along then«
And after signing the papers off I went nothing doubting but that I had
done a good mornings work and that the Pequod was the identical ship that Yojo
had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape
But I had not proceeded far when I began to bethink me that the captain
with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me though indeed in many
cases a whaleship will be completely fitted out and receive all her crew on
board ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving to take command for
sometimes these voyages are so prolonged and the shore intervals at home so
exceedingly brief that if the captain have a family or any absorbing
concernment of that sort he does not trouble himself much about his ship in
port but leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea However it is
always as well to have a look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into
his hands Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg inquiring where Captain Ahab
was to be found
»And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab It s all right enough thou art
shipped«
»Yes but I should like to see him«
»But I dont think thou wilt be able to at present I dont know exactly
what s the matter with him but he keeps close inside the house a sort of
sick and yet he dont look so In fact he aint sick but no he isnt well
either Anyhow young man he wont always see me so I dont suppose he will
thee He s a queer man Captain Ahab so some think but a good one Oh
thoult like him well enough no fear no fear He s a grand ungodly godlike
man Captain Ahab doesnt speak much but when he does speak then you may
well listen Mark ye be forewarned Ahabs above the common Ahabs been in
colleges as well as mong the cannibals been used to deeper wonders than the
waves fixed his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales His lance
ay the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle Oh he aint Captain
Bildad no and he aint Captain Peleg he s Ahab boy and Ahab of old thou
knowest was a crowned king«
»And a very vile one When that wicked king was slain the dogs did they
not lick his blood«
»Come hither to me hither hither« said Peleg with a significance in his
eye that almost startled me »Look ye lad never say that on board the Pequod
Never say it anywhere Captain Ahab did not name himself Twas a foolish
ignorant whim of his crazy widowed mother who died when he was only a
twelvemonth old And yet the old squaw Tistig at Gay Head said that the name
would somehow prove prophetic And perhaps other fools like her may tell thee
the same I wish to warn thee It s a lie I know Captain Ahab well Ive
sailed with him as mate years ago I know what he is a good man not a pious
good man like Bildad but a swearing good man something like me only there
s a good deal more of him Ay ay I know that he was never very jolly and I
know that on the passage home he was a little out of his mind for a spell but
it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about
as anyone might see I know too that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by
that accursed whale he s been a kind of moody desperate moody and savage
sometimes but that will all pass off And once for all let me tell thee and
assure thee young man it s better to sail with a moody good captain than a
laughing bad one So goodbye to thee and wrong not Captain Ahab because he
happens to have a wicked name Besides my boy he has a wife not three
voyages wedded a sweet resigned girl Think of that by that sweet girl that
old man has a child hold ye then there can be any utter hopeless harm in Ahab
No no my lad stricken blasted if he be Ahab has his humanities«
As I walked away I was full of thoughtfulness what had been incidentally
revealed to me of Captain Ahab filled me with a certain wild vagueness of
painfulness concerning him And somehow at the time I felt a sympathy and a
sorrow for him but for I dont know what unless it was the cruel loss of his
leg And yet I also felt a strange awe of him but that sort of awe which I
cannot at all describe was not exactly awe I do not know what it was But I
felt it and it did not disincline me toward him though I felt impatience at
what seemed like mystery in him so imperfectly as he was known to me then
However my thoughts were at length carried in other directions so that for the
present dark Ahab slipped my mind
Chapter XVII
The Ramadan
As Queequegs Ramadan or Fasting and Humiliation was to continue all day I
did not choose to disturb him till toward nightfall for I cherish the greatest
respect toward everybodys religious obligations never mind how comical and
could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants
worshipping a toadstool or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth
who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets bow down
before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the
inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name
I say we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things
and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals pagans and what
not because of their halfcrazy conceits on these subjects There was Queequeg
now certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan
but what of that Queequeg thought he knew what he was about I suppose he
seemed to be content and there let him rest All our arguing with him would not
avail let him be I say and Heaven have mercy on us all Presbyterians and
pagans alike for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head and
sadly need mending
Toward evening when I felt assured that all his performances and rituals
must be over I went up to his room and knocked at the door but no answer I
tried to open it but it was fastened inside »Queequeg« said I softly through
the keyhole all silent »I say Queequeg why dont you speak It s I
Ishmael« But all remained still as before I began to grow alarmed I had
allowed him such abundant time I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit I
looked through the keyhole but the door opening into an odd corner of the room
the keyhole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one I could only see part
of the footboard of the bed and a line of the wall but nothing more I was
surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden shaft of Queequegs
harpoon which the landlady the evening previous had taken from him before our
mounting to the chamber That s strange thought I but at any rate since the
harpoon stands yonder and he seldom or never goes abroad without it therefore
he must be inside here and no possible mistake
»Queequeg Queequeg« all still Something must have happened Apoplexy
I tried to burst open the door but it stubbornly resisted Running downstairs
I quickly stated my suspicions to the first person I met the chambermaid »La
la« she cried »I thought something must be the matter I went to make the bed
after breakfast and the door was locked and not a mouse to be heard and it s
been just so silent ever since But I thought maybe you had both gone off and
locked your baggage in for safe keeping La la maam Mistress murder Mrs
Hussey apoplexy« and with these cries she ran toward the kitchen I
following
Mrs Hussey soon appeared with a mustardpot in one hand and a
vinegarcruet in the other having just broken away from the occupation of
attending to the castors and scolding her little black boy meantime
»Woodhouse« cried I »which way to it Run for Gods sake and fetch
something to pry open the door the axe the axe he s had a stroke
depend upon it« and so saying I was unmethodically rushing upstairs again
emptyhanded when Mrs Hussey interposed the mustardpot and vinegarcruet and
the entire castor of her countenance
»What s the matter with you young man«
»Get the axe For Gods sake run for the doctor someone while I pry it
open«
»Look here« said the landlady quickly putting down the vinegarcruet so
as to have one hand free »look here are you talking about prying open any of
my doors« and with that she seized my arm »What s the matter with you What
s the matter with you shipmate«
In as calm but rapid a manner as possible I gave her to understand the
whole case Unconsciously clapping the vinegarcruet to one side of her nose
she ruminated for an instant then exclaimed »No I havent seen it since I
put it there« Running to a little closet under the landing of the stairs she
glanced in and returning told me that Queequegs harpoon was missing »He s
killed himself« she cried »It s unfortnate Stiggs done over again there
goes another counterpane God pity his poor mother it will be the ruin of my
house Has the poor lad a sister Where s that girl there Betty go to
Snarles the Painter and tell him to paint me a sign with no suicides
permitted here and no smoking in the parlour might as well kill both birds
at once Kill The Lord be merciful to his ghost What s that noise there You
young man avast there«
And running after me she caught me as I was again trying to force open the
door
»I wont allow it I wont have my premises spoiled Go for the locksmith
there s one about a mile from here But avast« putting her hand in her
sidepocket »here s a key that ll fit I guess lets see« And with that
she turned it in the lock but alas Queequegs supplemental bolt remained
unwithdrawn within
»Have to burst it open« said I and was running down the entry a little
for a good start when the landlady caught at me again vowing I should not
break down her premises but I tore from her and with a sudden bodily rush
dashed myself full against the mark
With a prodigious noise the door flew open and the knob slamming against
the wall sent the plaster to the ceiling and there good heavens there sat
Queequeg altogether cool and selfcollected right in the middle of the room
squatting on his hams and holding Yojo on top of his head He looked neither
one way nor the other way but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of
active life
»Queequeg« said I going up to him »Queequeg what s the matter with
you«
»He haint been asittin so all day has he« said the landlady
But all we said not a word could we drag out of him I almost felt like
pushing him over so as to change his position for it was almost intolerable
it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained especially as in all
probability he had been sitting so for upward of eight or ten hours going too
without his regular meals
»Mrs Hussey« said I »he s alive at all events so leave us if you
please and I will see to this strange affair myself«
Closing the door upon the landlady I endeavoured to prevail upon Queequeg
to take a chair but in vain There he sat and all he could do for all my
polite arts and blandishments he would not move a peg nor say a single word
nor even look at me nor notice my presence in any the slightest way
I wonder thought I if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan do they
fast on their hams that way in his native island It must be so yes it s part
of his creed I suppose well then let him rest he ll get up sooner or
later no doubt It cant last for ever thank God and his Ramadan only comes
once a year and I dont believe it s very punctual then
I went down to supper After sitting a long time listening to the long
stories of some sailors who had just come from a plumpudding voyage as they
called it that is a short whaling voyage in a schooner or brig confined to
the north of the Line in the Atlantic Ocean only after listening to these
plumpuddingers till nearly eleven oclock I went upstairs to go to bed
feeling quite sure by this time Queequeg must certainly have brought his Ramadan
to a termination But no there he was just where I had left him he had not
stirred an inch I began to grow vexed with him it seemed so downright
senseless and insane to be sitting there all day and half the night on his hams
in a cold room holding a piece of wood on his head
»For heavens sake Queequeg get up and shake yourself get up and have
some supper You ll starve you ll kill yourself Queequeg« But not a word
did he reply
Despairing of him therefore I determined to go to bed and to sleep and no
doubt before a great while he would follow me But previous to turning in I
took my heavy bearskin jacket and threw it over him as it promised to be a
very cold night and he had nothing but his ordinary round jacket on For some
time do all I would I could not get into the faintest doze I had blown out
the candle and the mere thought of Queequeg not four feet off sitting there
in that uneasy position stark alone in the cold and dark this made me really
wretched Think of it sleeping all night in the same room with a wideawake
pagan on his hams in this dreary unaccountable Ramadan
But somehow I dropped off at last and knew nothing more till break of day
when looking over the bedside there squatted Queequeg as if he had been
screwed down to the floor But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered the
window up he got with stiff and grating joints but with a cheerful look
limped toward me where I lay pressed his forehead again against mine and said
his Ramadan was over
Now as I before hinted I have no objection to any persons religion be it
what it may so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person
because that other person dont believe it also But when a mans religion
becomes really frantic when it is a positive torment to him and in fine
makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in then I think it high
time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him
And just so I now did with Queequeg »Queequeg« said I »get into bed now
and lie and listen to me« I then went on beginning with the rise and progress
of the primitive religions and coming down to the various religions of the
present time during which time I laboured to show Queequeg that all these
Lents Ramadans and prolonged hamsquattings in cold cheerless rooms were
stark nonsense bad for the health useless for the soul opposed in short to
the obvious laws of hygiene and commonsense I told him too that he being in
other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage it pained me very
badly pained me to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous
Ramadan of his Besides argued I fasting makes the body cave in hence the
spirit caves in and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be
halfstarved This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such
melancholy notions about their hereafters In one word Queequeg said I rather
digressively hell is an idea first born on an undigested appledumpling and
since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans
I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with dyspepsia
expressing the idea very plainly so that he could take it in He said no only
upon one memorable occasion It was after a great feast given by his father the
King on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty of the enemy had been
killed by about two oclock in the afternoon and all cooked and eaten that very
evening
»No more Queequeg« said I shuddering »that will do« for I knew the
inferences without his further hinting them I had seen a sailor who had visited
that very island and he told me that it was the custom when a great battle had
been gained there to barbecue all the slain in the yard or garden of the
victor and then one by one they were placed in great wooden trenchers and
garnished round like a pilau with breadfruit and cocoanuts and with some
parsley in their mouths were sent round with the victors compliments to all
his friends just as though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys
After all I do not think that my remarks about religion made much
impression upon Queequeg Because in the first place he somehow seemed dull of
hearing on that important subject unless considered from his own point of view
and in the second place he did not more than onethird understand me couch my
ideas simply as I would and finally he no doubt thought he knew a good deal
more about the true religion than I did He looked at me with a sort of
condescending concern and compassion as though he thought it a great pity that
such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan
piety
At last we rose and dressed and Queequeg taking a prodigiously hearty
breakfast of chowders of all sorts so that the landlady should not make much
profit by reason of his Ramadan we sallied out to board the Pequod sauntering
along and picking our teeth with halibut bones
Chapter XVIII
His Mark
As we were walking down the end of the wharf toward the ship Queequeg carrying
his harpoon Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam
saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal and furthermore announcing
that he let no cannibals on board that craft unless they previously produced
their papers
»What do you mean by that Captain Peleg« said I now jumping on the
bulwarks and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf
»I mean« he replied »he must show his papers«
»Yea« said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice sticking his head from
behind Pelegs out of the wigwam »He must show that he s converted Son of
darkness« he added turning to Queequeg »art thou at present in communion with
any Christian church«
»Why« said I »he s a member of the First Congregational Church« Here be
it said that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to
be converted into the churches
»First Congregational Church« cried Bildad »what that worships in Deacon
Deuteronomy Colemans meetinghouse« and so saying taking out his spectacles
he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief and putting them on
very carefully came out of the wigwam and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks
took a good long look at Queequeg
»How long hath he been a member« he then said turning to me »not very
long I rather guess young man«
»No« said Peleg »and he hasnt been baptized right either or it would
have washed some of that devils blue off his face«
»Do tell now« cried Bildad »is this Philistine a regular member of Deacon
Deuteronomys meeting I never saw him going there and I pass it every Lords
day«
»I dont know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting« said I
»all I know is that Queequeg here is a born member of the First Congregational
Church He is a deacon himself Queequeg is«
»Young man« said Bildad sternly »thou art skylarking with me explain
thyself thou young Hittite What church dost thee mean answer me«
Finding myself thus hard pushed I replied »I mean sir the same ancient
Catholic Church to which you and I and Captain Peleg there and Queequeg here
and all of us and every mothers son and soul of us belong the great and
everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world we all belong to
that only some of us cherish some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand
belief in that we all join hands«
»Splice thou meanst splice hands« cried Peleg drawing nearer »Young
man you d better ship for a missionary instead of a foremast hand I never
heard a better sermon Deacon Deuteronomy why Father Mapple himself couldnt
beat it and he s reckoned something Come aboard come aboard never mind
about the papers I say tell Quohog there what s that you call him tell
Quohog to step along By the great anchor what a harpoon he s got there looks
like good stuff that and he handles it about right I say Quohog or whatever
your name is did you ever stand in the head of a whaleboat did you ever
strike a fish«
Without saying a word Queequeg in his wild sort of way jumped upon the
bulwarks from thence into the bows of one of the whaleboats hanging to the
side and then bracing his left knee and poising his harpoon cried out in some
such way as this
»Capain you see him small drop tar on water dere You see him well spose
him one whale eye well den and taking sharp aim at it he darted the iron
right over old Bildads broad brim clean across the ships decks and struck
the glistening tar spot out of sight«
»Now« said Queequeg quietly hauling in the line »sposee him whalee eye
why dad whale dead«
»Quick Bildad« said Peleg to his partner who aghast at the close
vicinity of the flying harpoon had retreated toward the cabin gangway »Quick
I say you Bildad and get the ships papers We must have Hedgehog there I
mean Quohog in one of our boats Look ye Quohog we ll give ye the ninetieth
lay and that s more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket«
So down we went into the cabin and to my great joy Queequeg was soon
enrolled among the same ships company to which I myself belonged
When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for
signing he turned to me and said »I guess Quohog there dont know how to
write does he I say Quohog blast ye dost thou sign thy name or make thy
mark«
But at this question Queequeg who had twice or thrice before taken part in
similar ceremonies looked no ways abashed but taking the offered pen copied
upon the paper in the proper place an exact counterpart of a queer round
figure which was tattooed upon his arm so that through Captain Pelegs
obstinate mistake touching his appellative it stood something like this
Quohog
his mark
Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing Queequeg and at
last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his broadskirted drab
coat took out a bundle of tracts and selecting one entitled »The Latter Day
Coming or No Time to Lose« placed it in Queequegs hands and then grasping
them and the book with both his looked earnestly into his eyes and said »Son
of darkness I must do my duty by thee I am part owner of this ship and feel
concerned for the souls of all its crew if thou still clingest to thy pagan
ways which I sadly fear I beseech thee remain not for aye a Belial bondsman
Spurn the idol Bell and the hideous dragon turn from the wrath to come mind
thine eye I say oh goodness gracious steer clear of the fiery pit«
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildads language
heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases
»Avast there avast there Bildad avast now spoiling our harpooneer« cried
Peleg »Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers it takes the shark out of
em no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish There was young
Nat Swaine once the bravest boatheader out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard
he joined the meeting and never came to good He got so frightened about his
plaguy soul that he shrinked and sheered away from whales for fear of
afterclaps in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones«
»Peleg Peleg« said Bildad lifting his eyes and hands »thou thyself as I
myself hast seen many a perilous time thou knowest Peleg what it is to have
the fear of death how then canst thou prate in this ungodly guise Thou
beliest thine own heart Peleg Tell me when this same Pequod here had her
three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan that same voyage when thou went
mate with Captain Ahab didst thou not think of Death and the Judgment then«
»Hear him hear him now« cried Peleg marching across the cabin and
thrusting his hands far down into his pockets »hear him all of ye Think of
that When every moment we thought the ship would sink Death and the Judgment
then What With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against
the side and every sea breaking over us fore and aft Think of Death and the
Judgment then No no time to think about Death then Life was what Captain Ahab
and I was thinking of and how to save all hands how to rig jurymasts how
to get into the nearest port that was what I was thinking of«
Bildad said no more but buttoning up his coat stalked on deck where we
followed him There he stood very quietly overlooking some sailmakers who were
mending a topsail in the waist Now and then he stooped to pick up a patch or
save an end of the tarred twine which otherwise might have been wasted
Chapter XIX
The Prophet
»Shipmates have ye shipped in that ship«
Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod and were sauntering away from the
water for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts when the above words
were put to us by a stranger who pausing before us levelled his massive
forefinger at the vessel in question He was but shabbily apparelled in faded
jacket and patched trowsers a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck A
confluent smallpox had in all directions flowed over his face and left it like
the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent when the rushing waters have been dried
up
»Have ye shipped in her« he repeated
»You mean the ship Pequod I suppose« said I trying to gain a little more
time for an uninterrupted look at him
»Ay the Pequod that ship there« he said drawing back his whole arm and
then rapidly shoving it straight out from him with the fixed bayonet of his
pointed finger darted full at the object
»Yes« said I »we have just signed the articles«
»Anything down there about your souls«
»About what«
»Oh perhaps you havnt got any« he said quickly »No matter though I
know many chaps that havnt got any good luck to em and they are all the
better off for it A souls a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon«
»What are you jabbering about shipmate« said I
»He s got enough though to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in
other chaps« abruptly said the stranger placing a nervous emphasis upon the
word he
»Queequeg« said I »lets go this fellow has broken loose from somewhere
he s talking about something and somebody we dont know«
»Stop« cried the stranger »Ye said true ye havnt seen Old Thunder yet
have ye«
»Whos Old Thunder« said I again riveted with the insane earnestness of
his manner
»Captain Ahab«
»What the captain of our ship the Pequod«
»Ay among some of us old sailor chaps he goes by that name Ye havnt
seen him yet have ye«
»No we havnt He s sick they say but is getting better and will be
all right again before long«
»All right again before long« laughed the stranger with a solemnly
derisive sort of laugh »Look ye when Captain Ahab is all right then this left
arm of mine will be all right not before«
»What do you know about him«
»What did they tell you about him Say that«
»They didnt tell much of anything about him only Ive heard that he s a
good whalehunter and a good captain to his crew«
»That s true that s true yes both true enough But you must jump when
he gives an order Step and growl growl and go that s the word with Captain
Ahab But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn long ago
when he lay like dead for three days and nights nothing about that deadly
scrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa heard nothing about
that eh Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into And nothing about his
losing his leg last voyage according to the prophecy Didnt ye hear a word
about them matters and something more eh No I dont think ye did how could
ye Who knows it Not all Nantucket I guess But howsever mayhap yeve heard
tell about the leg and how he lost it ay ye have heard of that I dare say
Oh yes that every one knows amost I mean they know he s only one leg and
that a parmacetti took the other off«
»My friend« said I »what all this gibberish of yours is about I dont
know and I dont much care for it seems to me that you must be a little
damaged in the head But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab of that ship there
the Pequod then let me tell you that I know all about the loss of his leg«
»All about it eh sure you do all«
»Pretty sure«
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod the beggarlike stranger
stood a moment as if in a troubled revery then starting a little turned and
said »Yeve shipped have ye Names down on the papers Well well what s
signed is signed and what s to be will be and then again perhaps it wont
be after all Anyhow it s all fixed and arranged aready and some sailors or
other must go with him I suppose as well these as any other men God pity em
Morning to ye shipmates morning the ineffable heavens bless ye I m sorry I
stopped ye«
»Look here friend« said I »if you have anything important to tell us out
with it but if you are only trying to bamboozle us you are mistaken in your
game that s all I have to say«
»And it s said very well and I like to hear a chap talk up that way you
are just the man for him the likes of ye Morning to ye shipmates morning
Oh when ye get there tell em Ive concluded not to make one of em«
»Ah my dear fellow you cant fool us that way you cant fool us It is
the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in
him«
»Morning to ye shipmates morning«
»Morning it is« said I »Come along Queequeg lets leave this 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 and agreed that he was nothing but a
humbug trying to be a bugbear But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred
yards when chancing to turn a corner and looking back as I did so who should
be seen but Elijah following us though at a distance Somehow the sight of him
struck me so that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind but passed on
with my comrade anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner
that we did He did and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us but with
what intent I could not for the life of me imagine This circumstance coupled
with his ambiguous halfhinting halfrevealing shrouded sort of talk now
begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and halfapprehensions and all
connected with the Pequod and Captain Ahab and the leg he had lost and the
Cape Horn fit and the silver calabash and what Captain Peleg had said of him
when I left the ship the day previous and the prediction of the squaw Tistig
and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail and a hundred other shadowy
things
I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really
dogging us or not and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg and on
that side of it retraced our steps But Elijah passed on without seeming to
notice us This relieved me and once more and finally as it seemed to me I
pronounced him in my heart a humbug
Chapter XX
All Astir
A day or two passed and there was great activity aboard the Pequod Not only
were the old sails being mended but new sails were coming on board and bolts
of canvas and coils of rigging in short everything betokened that the ships
preparations were hurrying to a close Captain Peleg seldom or never went
ashore but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp lookout upon the hands Bildad
did all the purchasing and providing at the stores and the men employed in the
hold and on the rigging were working till long after nightfall
On the day following Queequegs signing the articles word was given at all
the inns where the ships company were stopping that their chests must be on
board before night for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be
sailing So Queequeg and I got down our traps resolving however to sleep
ashore till the last But it seems they always give very long notice in these
cases and the ship did not sail for several days But no wonder there was a
good deal to be done and there is no telling how many things to be thought of
before the Pequod was fully equipped
Everyone knows what a multitude of things beds saucepans knives and
forks shovels and tongs napkins nutcrackers and what not are indispensable
to the business of housekeeping Just so with whaling which necessitates a
threeyears housekeeping upon the wide ocean far from all grocers
costermongers doctors bakers and bankers And though this also holds true of
merchant vessels yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen For
besides the great length of the whaling voyage the numerous articles peculiar
to the prosecution of the fishery and the impossibility of replacing them at
the remote harbours usually frequented it must be remembered that of all
ships whalingvessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds and
especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success
of the voyage most depends Hence the spare boats spare spars and spare lines
and harpoons and spare everythings almost but a spare captain and duplicate
ship
At the period of our arrival at the Island the heaviest storage of the
Pequod had been almost completed comprising her beef bread water fuel and
iron hoops and staves But as before hinted for some time there was a
continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of things both
large and small
Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildads
sister a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit but
withal very kindhearted who seemed resolved that if she could help it
nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod after once fairly getting to sea
At one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the stewards
pantry another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mates desk where he
kept his log a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some ones
rheumatic back Never did any woman better deserve her name which was Charity
Aunt Charity as everybody called her And like a sister of charity did this
charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither ready to turn her hand
and heart to anything that promised to yield safety comfort and consolation to
all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned and in
which she herself owned a score or two of wellsaved dollars
But it was startling to see this excellenthearted Quakeress coming on
board as she did the last day with a long oilladle in one hand and a still
longer whalinglance in the other Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at
all backward As for Bildad he carried about with him a long list of the
articles needed and at every fresh arrival down went his mark opposite that
article upon the paper Every once and a while Peleg came hobbling out of his
whalebone den roaring at the men down the hatchways roaring up to the riggers
at the masthead and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam
During these days of preparation Queequeg and I often visited the craft
and as often I asked about Captain Ahab and how he was and when he was going
to come on board his ship To these questions they would answer that he was
getting better and better and was expected aboard every day meantime the two
captains Peleg and Bildad could attend to everything necessary to fit the
vessel for the voyage If I had been downright honest with myself I would have
seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way
to so long a voyage without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the
absolute dictator of it so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea But
when a man suspects any wrong it sometimes happens that if he be already
involved in the matter he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even
from himself And much this way it was with me I said nothing and tried to
think nothing
At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly
sail So next morning Queequeg and I took a very early start
Chapter XXI
Going Aboard
It was nearly six oclock but only gray imperfect misty dawn when we drew nigh
the wharf
»There are some sailors running ahead there if I see right« said I to
Queequeg »it cant be shadows she s off by sunrise I guess come on«
»Avast« cried a voice whose owner at the same time coming close behind us
laid a hand upon both our shoulders and then insinuating himself between us
stood stooping forward a little in the uncertain twilight strangely peering
from Queequeg to me It was Elijah
»Going aboard«
»Hands off will you« said I
»Lookee here« said Queequeg shaking himself »go way«
»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 little impertinent«
»No no no I wasnt aware of that« said Elijah slowly and wonderingly
looking from me to Queequeg with the most unaccountable glances
»Elijah« said I »you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing We are
going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans and would prefer not to be detained«
»Ye be be ye Coming back afore breakfast«
»He s cracked Queequeg« said I »come on«
»Halloa« cried stationary Elijah hailing us when we had removed a few
paces
»Never mind him« said I »Queequeg come on«
But he stole up to us again and suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder
said »Did ye see anything looking like men going toward that ship a while ago«
Struck by this plain matteroffact question I answered saying »Yes I
thought I did see four or five men but it was too dim to be sure«
»Very dim very dim« said Elijah »Morning to ye«
Once more we quitted him but once more he came softly after us and
touching my shoulder again said »See if you can find em now will ye«
»Find who«
»Morning to ye morning to ye« he rejoined again moving off »Oh I was
going to warn ye against but never mind never mind it s all one all in
the family too sharp frost this morning aint it Goodbye to ye Shant see
ye again very soon I guess unless it s before the Grand Jury« And with these
cracked words he finally departed leaving me for the moment in no small
wonderment at his frantic impudence
At last stepping on board the Pequod we found everything in profound
quiet not a soul moving The cabin entrance was locked within the hatches were
all on and lumbered with coils of rigging Going forward to the forecastle we
found the slide of the scuttle open Seeing a light we went down and found
only an old rigger there wrapped in a tattered peajacket He was thrown at
whole length upon two chests his face downward and enclosed in his folded arms
The profoundest slumber slept upon him
»Those sailors we saw Queequeg where can they have gone to« said I
looking dubiously at the sleeper But it seemed that when on the wharf
Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to hence I would have
thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter were it not for
Elijahs otherwise inexplicable question But I beat the thing down and again
marking the sleeper jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit
up with the body telling him to establish himself accordingly He put his hand
upon the sleepers rear as though feeling if it was soft enough and then
without more 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 benevolent countenance then but
how hard he breathes he s heaving himself get off Queequeg you are heavy
it s grinding the face of the poor Get off Queequeg Look he ll twitch you
off soon I wonder he dont wake«
Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper and lighted
his tomahawkpipe I sat at the feet We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper
from one to the other Meanwhile upon questioning him in his broken fashion
Queequeg gave me to understand that in his land owing to the absence of
settees and sofas of all sorts the king chiefs and great people generally
were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans and to
furnish a house comfortably in that respect you had only to buy up eight or ten
lazy fellows and lay them round in the piers and alcoves Besides it was very
convenient on an excursion much better than those gardenchairs which are
convertible into walkingsticks upon occasion a chief calling his attendant
and desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree perhaps in
some damp marshy place
While narrating these things every time Queequeg received the tomahawk from
me he flourished the hatchetside of it over the sleepers head
»What s that for Queequeg«
»Perry easy kille oh perry easy«
He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawkpipe which
it seemed had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed his soul when
we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger The strong vapour now
completely filling the contracted hole it began to tell upon him He breathed
with a sort of muffledness then seemed troubled in the nose then revolved over
once or twice then sat up and rubbed his eyes
»Halloa« he breathed at last »who be ye smokers«
»Shipped men« answered I »When does she sail«
»Ay ay ye are going in her be ye She sails today The captain came
aboard last night«
»What captain Ahab«
»Who but him indeed«
I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab when we heard
a noise on deck
»Halloa Starbucks astir« said the rigger »He s a lively chief mate
that good man and a pious but all alive now I must turn to« And so saying
he went on deck and we followed
It was now clear sunrise Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes
the riggers bestirred themselves the mates were actively engaged and several
of the shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board
Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin
Chapter XXII
Merry Christmas
At length toward noon upon the final dismissal of the ships riggers and
after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf and after the
everthoughtful Charity had come off in a whaleboat with her last gift a
nightcap for Stubb the second mate her brotherinlaw and a spare Bible for
the steward after all this the two captains Peleg and Bildad issued from
the cabin and turning to the chief mate Peleg said
»Now Mr Starbuck are you sure everything is right Captain Ahab is all
ready just spoke to him nothing more to be got from shore eh Well call
all hands then Muster em aft here blast em«
»No need of profane words however great the hurry Peleg« said Bildad
»but away with thee friend Starbuck and do our bidding«
How now Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage Captain Peleg
and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the quarterdeck just as
if they were to be jointcommanders at sea as well as to all appearances in
port And as for Captain Ahab no sign of him was yet to be seen only they
said he was in the cabin But then the idea was that his presence was by no
means necessary in getting the ship under weigh and steering her well out to
sea Indeed as that was not at all his proper business but the pilots and as
he was not yet completely recovered so they said therefore Captain Ahab
stayed below And all this seemed natural enough especially as in the merchant
service many captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable time
after heaving up the anchor but remain over the cabin table having a farewell
merrymaking with their shore friends before they quit the ship for good with
the pilot
But there was not much chance to think over the matter for Captain Peleg
was now all alive He seemed to do most of the talking and commanding and not
Bildad
»Aft here ye sons of bachelors« he cried as the sailors lingered at the
mainmast »Mr Starbuck drive em aft«
»Strike the tent there« was the next order As I hinted before this
whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port and on board the Pequod for
thirty years the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing
to heaving up the anchor
»Man the capstan Blood and thunder jump« was the next command and
the crew sprang for the handspikes
Now in getting under weigh the station generally occupied by the pilot is
the forward part of the ship And here Bildad who with Peleg be it known in
addition to his other offices was one of the licensed pilots of the port he
being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket
pilotfee to all the ships he was concerned in for he never piloted any other
craft Bildad I say might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the
bows for the approaching anchor and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal
stave of psalmody to cheer the hands at the windlass who roared forth some
sort of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley with hearty goodwill
Nevertheless not three days previous Bildad had told them that no profane
songs would be allowed on board the Pequod particularly in getting under weigh
and Charity his sister had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each
seamans berth
Meantime overseeing the other part of the ship Captain Peleg ripped and
swore astern in the most frightful manner I almost thought he would sink the
ship before the anchor could be got up involuntarily I paused on my handspike
and told Queequeg to do the same thinking of the perils we both ran in
starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot I was comforting myself
however with the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some salvation
spite of his seven hundred and seventyseventh lay when I felt a sudden sharp
poke in my rear and turning round was horrified at the apparition of Captain
Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity That was my
first kick
»Is that the way they heave in the marchant service« he roared »Spring
thou sheephead spring and break thy backbone Why dont ye spring I say all
of ye spring Quohag spring thou chap with the red whiskers spring there
Scotchcap spring thou green pants Spring I say all of ye and spring your
eyes out« And so saying he moved along the windlass here and there using his
leg very freely while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody
Thinks I Captain Peleg must have been drinking something today
At last the anchor was up the sails were set and off we glided It was a
short cold Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night we found
ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean whose freezing spray cased us in
ice as in polished armour The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in
the moonlight and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant vast
curving icicles depended from the bows
Lank Bildad as pilot headed the first watch and ever and anon as the old
craft deep dived into the green seas and sent the shivering frost all over her
and the winds howled and the cordage rang his steady notes were heard
»Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green
So to the Jews old Canaan stood
While Jordan rolled between«
Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then They were full
of hope and fruition Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous
Atlantic spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket there was yet it then seemed
to me many a pleasant haven in store and meads and glades so eternally vernal
that the grass shot up by the spring untrodden unwilted remains at midsummer
At last we gained such an offing that the two pilots were needed no longer
The stout sailboat that had accompanied us began ranging alongside
It was curious and not unpleasing how Peleg and Bildad were affected at
this juncture especially Captain Bildad For loath to depart yet very loath
to leave for good a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage beyond both
stormy Capes a ship in which some thousands of his hardearned dollars were
invested a ship in which an old shipmate sailed as captain a man almost as
old as he once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw
loath to say goodbye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him
poor old Bildad lingered long paced the deck with anxious strides ran down
into the cabin to speak another farewell word there again came on deck and
looked to windward looked toward the wide and endless waters only bounded by
the faroff unseen Eastern Continents looked toward the land looked aloft
looked right and left looked everywhere and nowhere and at last mechanically
coiling a rope upon its pin convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand and
holding up a lantern for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face as much
as to say »Nevertheless friend Peleg I can stand it yes I can«
As for Peleg himself he took it more like a philosopher but for all his
philosophy there was a tear twinkling in his eye when the lantern came too
near And he too did not a little run from cabin to deck now a word below
and now a word with Starbuck the chief mate
But at last he turned to his comrade with a final sort of look about him
»Captain Bildad come old shipmate we must go Back the mainyard there
Boat ahoy Stand by to come close alongside now Careful careful come
Bildad boy say your last Luck to ye Starbuck luck to ye Mr Stubb luck
to ye Mr Flask goodbye and good luck to ye all and this day three years
I ll have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket Hurrah and away«
»God bless ye and have ye in His holy keeping men« murmured old Bildad
almost incoherently »I hope yell have fine weather now so that Captain Ahab
may soon be moving among ye a pleasant sun is all he needs and yell have
plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go Be careful in the hunt ye mates
Dont stave the boats needlessly ye harpooneers good white cedar plank is
raised full three per cent within the year Dont forget your prayers either
Mr Starbuck mind that cooper dont waste the spare staves Oh the
sailneedles are in the green locker Dont whale it too much a Lords days
men but dont miss a fair chance either that s rejecting Heavens good gifts
Have an eye to the molasses tierce Mr Stubb it was a little leaky I thought
If ye touch at the islands Mr Flask beware of fornication Goodbye
goodbye Dont keep that cheese too long down in the hold Mr Starbuck it ll
spoil Be careful with the butter twenty cents the pound it was and mind ye
if «
»Come come Captain Bildad stop palavering away« and with that Peleg
hurried him over the side and both dropped into the boat
Ship and boat diverged the cold damp night breeze blew between a
screaming gull flew overhead the two hulls wildly rolled we gave three
heavyhearted cheers and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic
Chapter XXIII
The Lee Shore
Some chapters back one Bulkington was spoken of a tall newlanded mariner
encountered in New Bedford at the inn
When on that shivering winters night the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows
into the cold malicious waves who should I see standing at her helm but
Bulkington I looked with sympathetic awe and tearfulness upon the man who in
midwinter just landed from a four years dangerous voyage could so unrestingly
push off again for still another tempestuous term The land seemed scorching to
his feet Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable deep memories yield
no epitaphs this sixinch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington Let me
only say that it fared with him as with the stormtossed ship that miserably
drives along the leeward land The port would fain give succour the port is
pitiful in the port is safety comfort hearthstone supper warm blankets
friends all that s kind to our mortalities But in that gale the port the
land is that ships direst jeopardy she must fly all hospitality one touch of
land though it but graze the keel would make her shudder through and through
With all her might she crowds all sail off shore in so doing fights gainst
the very winds that fain would blow her homeward seeks all the lashed seas
landlessness again for refuges sake forlornly rushing into peril her only
friend her bitterest foe
Know ye now Bulkington Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally
intolerable truth that all deep earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of
the soul to keep the open independence of her sea while the wildest winds of
heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous slavish shore
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth shoreless
indefinite as God so better is it to perish in that howling infinite than be
ingloriously dashed upon the lee even if that were safety For wormlike then
oh who would craven crawl to land Terrors of the terrible is all this agony
so vain Take heart take heart O Bulkington Bear thee grimly demigod Up
from the spray of thy oceanperishing straight up leaps thy apotheosis
Chapter XXIV
The Advocate
As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling and as
this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a
rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit therefore I am all anxiety to
convince ye ye landsmen of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales
In the first place it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the
fact, that among people at large the business of whaling is not accounted on a
level with what are called the liberal professions If a stranger were
introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society it would but slightly
advance the general opinion of his merits were he presented to the company as a
harpooneer say and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the
initials S W F Sperm Whale Fishery to his visiting card such a procedure
would be deemed preeminently presuming and ridiculous
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us whalemen is
this they think that at best our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of
business and that when actively engaged therein we are surrounded by all
manner of defilements Butchers we are that is true But butchers also and
butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world
invariably delights to honour And as for the matter of the alleged
uncleanliness of our business ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts
hitherto pretty generally unknown and which upon the whole will triumphantly
plant the sperm whaleship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy
earth But even granting the charge in question to be true what disordered
slippery decks of a whaleship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of
those battlefields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies
plaudits And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the
soldiers profession let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely
marched up to a battery would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm
whales vast tail fanning into eddies the air over his head For what are the
comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders
of God
But though the world scouts at us whalehunters yet does it unwittingly
pay us the profoundest homage yea an allabounding adoration for almost all
the tapers lamps and candles that burn round the globe burn as before so
many shrines to our glory
But look at this matter in other lights weigh it in all sorts of scales
see what we whalemen are and have been
Why did the Dutch in De Witts time have admirals of their whalingfleets
Why did Louis XVI of France at his own personal expense fit out whalingships
from Dunkirk and politely invite to that town some score or two of families
from our own island of Nantucket Why did Britain between the years 1750 and
1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties upward of £1000000 And lastly how comes
it that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen
in the world sail a navy of upward of seven hundred vessels manned by eighteen
thousand men yearly consuming 4000000 of dollars the ships worth at the
time of sailing 20000000 and every year importing into our harbours a
wellreaped harvest of 7000000 How comes all this if there be not something
puissant in whaling
But this is not the half look again
I freely assert that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot for his life
point out one single peaceful influence which within the last sixty years has
operated more potentially upon the whole broad world taken in one aggregate
than the high and mighty business of whaling One way and another it has
begotten events so remarkable in themselves and so continuously momentous in
their sequential issues that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian
mother who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb It would be a
hopeless endless task to catalogue all these things Let a handful suffice For
many years past the whaleship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the
remotest and least known parts of the earth She has explored seas and
archipelagoes which had no chart where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed If
American and European menofwar now peacefully ride in once savage harbours
let them fire salutes to the honour and the glory of the whaleship which
originally showed them the way and first interpreted between them and the
savages They may celebrate as they will the heroes of exploring expeditions
your Cooks your Krusensterns but I say that scores of anonymous captains have
sailed out of Nantucket that were as great and greater than your Cook and your
Krusenstern For in their succourless emptyhandedness they in the heathenish
sharked waters and by the beaches of unrecorded javelin islands battled with
virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets would not
willingly have dared All that is made such a flourish of in the old South Sea
Voyages those things were but the lifetime commonplaces of our heroic
Nantucketers Often adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to
these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ships common log Ah the
world Oh the world
Until the whalefishery rounded Cape Horn no commerce but colonial
scarcely any intercourse but colonial was carried on between Europe and the
long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast It was the
whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown
touching those colonies and if space permitted it might be distinctly shown
how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru Chili and
Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain and the establishment of the eternal
democracy in those parts
That great America on the other side of the sphere Australia was given to
the enlightened world by the whaleman After its first blunderborn discovery by
a Dutchman all other ships long shunned those shores as pestiferously
barbarous but the whaleship touched there The whaleship is the true mother
of that now mighty colony Moreover in the infancy of the first Australian
settlement the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the
benevolent biscuit of the whaleship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters
The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth and do commercial
homage to the whaleship that cleared the way for the missionary and the
merchant and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first
destinations If that doublebolted land Japan is ever to become hospitable
it is the whaleship alone to whom the credit will be due for already she is on
the threshold
But if in the face of all this you still declare that whaling has no
æsthetically noble associations connected with it then am I ready to shiver
fifty lances with you there and unhorse you with a split helmet every time
The whale has no famous author and whaling no famous chronicler you will
say
The whale no famous author and whaling no famous chronicler Who wrote the
first account of our leviathan Who but mighty Job And who composed the first
narrative of a whaling voyage Who but no less a prince than Alfred the Great
who with his own royal pen took down the words from Other the Norwegian
whalehunter of those times And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in
Parliament Who but Edmund Burke
True enough but then whalemen themselves are poor devils they have no good
blood in their veins
No good blood in their veins They have something better than royal blood
there The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel afterward by
marriage Mary Folger one of the old settlers of Nantucket and the ancestress
to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers all kith and kin to noble Benjamin
this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other
Good again but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable
Whaling not respectable Whaling is imperial By old English statutory law
the whale is declared a royal fish1
Oh that s only nominal The whale himself has never figured in any grand
imposing way
The whale never figured in any grand imposing way In one of the mighty
triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the worlds capital the
bones of a whale brought all the way from the Syrian coast were the most
conspicuous object in the cymballed procession
Grant it since you cite it but say what you will there is no real
dignity in whaling
No dignity in whaling The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest
Cetus is a constellation in the south No more Drive down your hat in presence
of the Czar and take it off to Queequeg No more I know a man that in his
lifetime has taken three hundred and fifty whales I account that man more
honourable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many
walled towns
And as for me if by any possibility there be any as yet undiscovered
prime thing in me if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but
high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of if hereafter I
shall do anything that upon the whole a man might rather have done than to
have left undone if at my death my executors or more properly my creditors
find any precious MSS in my desk then here I prospectively ascribe all the
honour and the glory to whaling for a whaleship was my Yale College and my
Harvard
Chapter XXV
Postscript
In behalf of the dignity of whaling I would fain advance naught but
substantiated facts But after embattling his facts an advocate who should
wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise which might tell eloquently upon his
cause such an advocate would he not be blameworthy
It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens even modern
ones a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone
through There is a saltcellar of state so called and there may be a castor
of state How they use the salt precisely who knows Certain I am however
that a kings head is solemnly oiled at his coronation even as a head of salad
Can it be though that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run
well as they anoint machinery Much might be ruminated here concerning the
essential dignity of this regal process because in common life we esteem but
meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair and palpably smells of
that anointing In truth a mature man who uses hairoil unless medicinally
that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere As a general rule he
cant amount to much in his totality
But the only thing to be considered here is this what kind of oil is used
at coronations Certainly it cannot be olive oil nor macassar oil nor castor
oil nor bears oil nor train oil nor codliver oil What then can it possibly
be but sperm oil in its unmanufactured unpolluted state the sweetest of all
oils
Think of that ye loyal Britons we whalemen supply your kings and queens
with coronation stuff
Chapter XXVI
Knights and Squires
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck a native of Nantucket and a Quaker
by descent He was a long earnest man and though born on an icy coast seemed
well adapted to endure hot latitudes his flesh being hard as twicebaked
biscuit Transported to the Indies his live blood would not spoil like bottled
ale He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine or upon
one of those fast days for which his state is famous Only some thirty arid
summers had he seen those summers had dried up all his physical
superfluousness But this his thinness so to speak seemed no more the token
of wasting anxieties and cares than it seemed the indication of any bodily
blight It was merely the condensation of the man He was by no means
illlooking quite the contrary His pure tight skin was an excellent fit and
closely wrapped up in it and embalmed with inner health and strength like a
revivified Egyptian this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to
come and to endure always as now for be it Polar snow or torrid sun like a
patent chronometer his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all
climates Looking into his eyes you seemed to see there the yet lingering
images of those thousandfold perils he had calmly confronted through life A
staid steadfast man whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of
action and not a tame chapter of sounds Yet for all his hardy sobriety and
fortitude there were certain qualities in him which at times affected and in
some cases seemed wellnigh to overbalance all the rest Uncommonly
conscientious for a seaman and endued with a deep natural reverence the wild
watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to
superstition but to that sort of superstition which in some organisations
seems rather to spring somehow from intelligence than from ignorance Outward
portents and inward presentiments were his And if at times these things bent
the welded iron of his soul much more did his faraway domestic memories of his
young Cape wife and child tend to bend him still more from the original
ruggedness of his nature and open him still further to those latent influences
which in some honesthearted men restrain the gush of daredevil daring so
often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery »I
will have no man in my boat« said Starbuck »who is not afraid of a whale« By
this he seemed to mean not only that the most reliable and useful courage was
that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril but that an
utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward
»Ay ay« said Stubb the second mate »Starbuck there is as careful a man
as you ll find anywhere in this fishery« But we shall ere long see what that
word careful precisely means when used by a man like Stubb or almost any other
whalehunter
Starbuck was no crusader after perils in him courage was not a sentiment
but a thing simply useful to him and always at hand upon all mortally practical
occasions Besides he thought perhaps that in this business of whaling
courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship like her beef and her
bread and not to be foolishly wasted Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering
for whales after sundown nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much
persisted in fighting him For thought Starbuck I am here in this critical
ocean to kill whales for my living and not to be killed by them for theirs and
that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew What doom was his
own fathers Where in the bottomless deeps could he find the torn limbs of
his brother
With memories like these in him and moreover given to a certain
superstitiousness as has been said the courage of this Starbuck which could
nevertheless still flourish must indeed have been extreme But it was not in
reasonable nature that a man so organised and with such terrible experiences
and remembrances as he had it was not in nature that these things should fail
in latently engendering an element in him which under suitable circumstances
would break out from its confinement and burn all his courage up And brave as
he might be it was that sort of bravery chiefly visible in some intrepid men
which while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas or winds or
whales or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world yet cannot
withstand those more terrific because more spiritual terrors which sometimes
menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man
But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance the complete
abasement of poor Starbucks fortitude scarce might I have the heart to write
it for it is a thing most sorrowful nay shocking to expose the fall of valour
in the soul Men may seem detestable as jointstock companies and nations
knaves fools and murderers there may be men may have mean and meagre faces
but man in the ideal is so noble and so sparkling such a grand and glowing
creature that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to
throw their costliest robes That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves
so far within us that it remains intact though all the outer character seem
gone bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valourruined
man Nor can piety itself at such a shameful sight completely stifle her
upbraidings against the permitting stars But this august dignity I treat of is
not the dignity of kings and robes but that abounding dignity which has no
robed investiture Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or
drives a spike that democratic dignity which on all hands radiates without
end from God Himself The great God absolute The centre and circumference of
all democracy His omnipresence our divine equality
If then to meanest mariners and renegades and castaways I shall
hereafter ascribe high qualities though dark weave round them tragic graces
if even the most mournful perchance the most abased among them all shall at
times lift himself to the exalted mounts if I shall touch that workmans arm
with some ethereal light if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of
sun then against all mortal critics bear me out in it thou just Spirit of
Equality which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind Bear
me out in it thou great democratic God who didst not refuse to the swart
convict Bunyan the pale poetic pearl Thou who didst clothe with doubly
hammered leaves of finest gold the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes
Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles who didst hurl him upon
a warhorse who didst thunder him higher than a throne Thou who in all Thy
mighty earthly marchings ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly
commons bear me out in it O God
Chapter XXVII
Knights and Squires
Stubb was the second mate He was a native of Cape Cod and hence according to
local usage was called a CapeCodman A happygolucky neither craven nor
valiant taking perils as they came with an indifferent air and while engaged
in the most imminent crisis of the chase toiling away calm and collected as a
journeyman joiner engaged for the year Goodhumoured easy and careless he
presided over his whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner
and his crew all invited guests He was as particular about the comfortable
arrangement of his part of the boat as an old stagedriver is about the
snugness of his box When close to the whale in the very deathlock of the
fight he handled his unpitying lance coolly and offhandedly as a whistling
tinker his hammer He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank
with the most exasperated monster Long usage had for this Stubb converted the
jaws of death into an easychair What he thought of death itself there is no
telling Whether he ever thought of it at all might be a question but if he
ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner no doubt
like a good sailor he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble
aloft and bestir themselves there about something which he would find out when
he obeyed the order and not sooner
What perhaps with other things made Stubb such an easygoing unfearing
man so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of grave
peddlers all bowed to the ground with their packs what helped to bring about
that almost impious goodhumour of his that thing must have been his pipe For
like his nose his short black little pipe was one of the regular features of
his face You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk
without his nose as without his pipe He kept a whole row of pipes there ready
loaded stuck in a rack within easy reach of his hand and whenever he turned
in he smoked them all out in succession lighting one from the other to the end
of the chapter then loading them again to be in readiness anew For when Stubb
dressed instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers he put his pipe
into his mouth
I say this continual smoking must have been one cause at least of his
peculiar disposition for everyone knows that this earthly air whether ashore
or afloat is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless
mortals who have died exhaling it and as in time of the cholera some people go
about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths so likewise against all
mortal tribulations Stubbs tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of
disinfecting agent
The third mate was Flask a native of Tisbury in Marthas Vineyard A
short stout ruddy young fellow very pugnacious concerning whales who somehow
seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily
affronted him and therefore it was a sort of point of honour with him to
destroy them whenever encountered So utterly lost was he to all sense of
reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways and so
dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger from encountering
them that in his poor opinion the wondrous whale was but a species of
magnified mouse or at least waterrat requiring only a little circumvention
and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil This
ignorant unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the
matter of whales he followed these fish for the fun of it and a three years
voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time As
a carpenters nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails so mankind may
be similarly divided Little Flask was one of the wrought ones made to clinch
tight and last long They called him KingPost on board of the Pequod because
in form he could be well likened to the short square timber known by that name
in Arctic whalers and which by the means of many radiating side timbers
inserted into it served to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those
battering seas
Now these three mates Starbuck Stubb and Flask were momentous men
They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the Pequods boats
as headsmen In that grand order of battle in which Captain Ahab would probably
marshal his forces to descend on the whales these three headsmen were as
captains of companies Or being armed with their long keen whalingspears they
were as a picked trio of lancers even as the harpooneers were flingers of
javelins
And since in this famous fishery each mate or headsman like a Gothic
knight of old is always accompanied by his boatsteerer or harpooneer who in
certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance when the former one has
been badly twisted or elbowed in the assault and moreover as there generally
subsists between the two a close intimacy and friendliness it is therefore but
meet that in this place we set down who the Pequods harpooneers were and to
what headsman each of them belonged
First of all was Queequeg whom Starbuck the chief mate had selected for
his squire But Queequeg is already known
Next was Tashtego an unmixed Indian from Gay Head the most westerly
promontory of Marthas Vineyard where there still exists the last remnant of a
village of red men which has long supplied the neighbouring island of Nantucket
with many of her most daring harpooneers In the fishery they usually go by the
generic name of GayHeaders Tashtegos long lean sable hair his high
cheekbones and black rounding eyes for an Indian Oriental in their
largeness but Antarctic in their glittering expression all this sufficiently
proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior
hunters who in quest of the great New England moose had scoured bow in hand
the aboriginal forests of the main But no longer snuffing in the trail of the
wild beasts of the woodland Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales
of the sea the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow
of the sires To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs you would
almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans and
halfbelieved this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the
Air Tashtego was Stubb the second mates squire
Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo a gigantic coalblack negrosavage
with a lionlike tread an Ahasuerus to behold Suspended from his ears were
two golden hoops so large that the sailors called them ringbolts and would
talk of securing the topsail halyards to them In his youth Daggoo had
voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler lying in a lonely bay on his native
coast And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa Nantucket and
the pagan harbours most frequented by whalemen and having now led for many
years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of
what manner of men they shipped Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues and
erect as a giraffe moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in
his socks There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him and a white man
standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress Curious
to tell this imperial negro Ahasuerus Daggoo was the squire of little Flask
who looked like a chessman beside him As for the residue of the Pequods
company be it said that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand
men before the mast employed in the American whalefishery are Americans born
though pretty nearly all the officers are Herein it is the same with the
American whalefishery as with the American army and military and merchant
navies and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American
canals and railroads The same I say because in all these cases the native
American liberally provides the brains the rest of the world as generously
supplying the muscles No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the
Azores where the outwardbound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment
their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores In like manner the
Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London put in at the Shetland Islands
to receive the full complement of their crew Upon the passage homeward they
drop them there again How it is there is no telling but Islanders seem to
make the best whalemen They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod Isolatoes
too I call such not acknowledging the common continent of men but each
Isolato living on a separate continent of his own Yet now federated along one
keel what a set these Isolatoes were An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all
the isles of the sea and all the ends of the earth accompanying Old Ahab in
the Pequod to lay the worlds grievances before that bar from which not very
many of them ever come back Black Little Pip he never did oh no he went
before Poor Alabama boy On the grim Pequods forecastle ye shall ere long see
him beating his tambourine prelusive of the eternal time when sent for to
the great quarterdeck on high he was bid strike in with angels and beat his
tambourine in glory called a coward here hailed a hero there
Chapter XXVIII
Ahab
For several days after leaving Nantucket nothing above hatches was seen of
Captain Ahab The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches and for
aught that could be seen to the contrary they seemed to be the only commanders
of the ship only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and
peremptory that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously Yes
their supreme lord and dictator was there though hitherto unseen by any eyes
not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin
Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below I instantly gazed
aft to mark if any strange face were visible for my first vague disquietude
touching the unknown captain now in the seclusion of the sea became almost a
perturbation This was strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijahs
diabolical incoherences uninvitingly recurring to me with a subtle energy I
could not have before conceived of But poorly could I withstand them much as
in other moods I was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that
outlandish prophet of the wharves But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or
uneasiness to call it so which I felt yet whenever I came to look about me
in the ship it seemed against all warranty to cherish such emotions For though
the harpooneers with the great body of the crew were a far more barbaric
heathenish and motley set than any of the tame merchantship companies which my
previous experiences had made me acquainted with still I ascribed this and
rightly ascribed it to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild
Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked But it was
especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship the mates which
was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings and induce
confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage Three better
more likely seaofficers and men each in his own different way could not
readily be found and they were every one of them Americans a Nantucketer a
Vineyarder a Cape man Now it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her
harbour for a space we had biting Polar weather though all the time running
away from it to the southward and by every degree and minute of latitude which
we sailed gradually leaving that merciless winter and all its intolerable
weather behind us It was one of those less lowering but still gray and gloomy
enough mornings of the transition when with a fair wind the ship was rushing
through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity
that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch so soon as I
levelled my glance toward the taffrail foreboding shivers ran over me Reality
outran apprehension Captain Ahab stood upon his quarterdeck
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him nor of the recovery
from any He looked like a man cut away from the stake when the fire has
overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them or taking away one
particle from their compacted aged robustness His whole high broad form
seemed made of solid bronze and shaped in an unalterable mould like Cellinis
cast Perseus Threading its way out from among his gray hairs and continuing
right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck till it disappeared in
his clothing you saw a slender rodlike mark lividly whitish It resembled
that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight lofty trunk of a great
tree when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it and without wrenching a
single twig peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off
into the soil leaving the tree still greenly alive but branded Whether that
mark was born with him or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound
no one could certainly say By some tacit consent throughout the voyage little
or no allusion was made to it especially by the mates But once Tashtegos
senior an old GayHead Indian among the crew superstitiously asserted that not
till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded and then it
came upon him not in the fury of any mortal fray but in an elemental strife at
sea Yet this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived by what a gray Manxman
insinuated an old sepulchral man who having never before sailed out of
Nantucket had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab Nevertheless the old
seatraditions the immemorial credulities popularly invested this old Manxman
with preternatural powers of discernment So that no white sailor seriously
contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly
laid out which might hardly come to pass so he muttered then whoever
should do that last office for the dead would find a birthmark on him from
crown to sole
So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me and the livid
brand which streaked it that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not
a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon
which he partly stood It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at
sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whales jaw »Ay he was
dismasted off Japan« said the old GayHead Indian once »but like his dismasted
craft he shipped another mast without coming home for it He has a quiver of
em«
I was struck with the singular posture he maintained Upon each side of the
Pequods quarterdeck and pretty close to the mizen shrouds there was an
augerhole bored about half an inch or so into the plank His bone leg
steadied in that hole one arm elevated and holding by a shroud Captain Ahab
stood erect looking straight out beyond the ships everpitching prow There
was an infinity of firmest fortitude a determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness
in the fixed and fearless forward dedication of that glance Not a word he
spoke nor did his officers say aught to him though by all their minutest
gestures and expressions they plainly showed the uneasy if not painful
consciousness of being under a troubled mastereye And not only that but moody
stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face in all the
nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe
Ere long from his first visit in the air he withdrew into his cabin But
after that morning he was every day visible to the crew either standing in his
pivothole or seated upon an ivory stool he had or heavily walking the deck
As the sky grew less gloomy indeed began to grow a little genial he became
still less and less a recluse as if when the ship had sailed from home
nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded
And by and by it came to pass that he was almost continually in the air but
as yet for all that he said or perceptibly did on the at last sunny deck he
seemed as unnecessary there as another mast But the Pequod was only making a
passage now not regularly cruising nearly all whaling preparatives needing
supervision the mates were fully competent to so that there was little or
nothing out of himself to employ or excite Ahab now and thus chase away for
that one interval the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow as
ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon
Nevertheless ere long the warm warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant
holiday weather we came to seemed gradually to charm him from his mood For as
when the redcheeked dancing girls April and May trip home to the wintry
misanthropic woods even the barest ruggedest most thundercloven old oak will
at least send forth some few green sprouts to welcome such gladhearted
visitants so Ahab did in the end a little respond to the playful allurings of
that girlish air More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look
which in any other man would have soon flowered out in a smile
Chapter XXIX
Enter Ahab to Him Stubb
Some days elapsed and ice and icebergs all astern the Pequod now went rolling
through the bright Quito spring which at sea almost perpetually reigns on the
threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic The warmly cool clear ringing
perfumed overflowing redundant days were as crystal goblets of Persian
sherbet heaped up flaked up with rosewater snow The starred and stately
nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets nursing at home in lonely
pride the memory of their absent conquering Earls the golden helmeted suns
For sleeping man twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such
seducing nights But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely
lend new spells and potencies to the outward world Inward they turned upon the
soul especially when the still mild hours of eve came on then memory shot her
crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights And all these
subtle agencies more and more they wrought on Ahabs texture
Old age is always wakeful as if the longer linked with life the less man
has to do with aught that looks like death Among seacommanders the old
graybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the nightcloaked deck It
was so with Ahab only that now of late he seemed so much to live in the open
air that truly speaking his visits were more to the cabin than from the cabin
to the planks »It feels like going down into ones tomb« he would mutter to
himself »for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle to go
to my gravedug berth«
So almost every twentyfour hours when the watches of the night were set
and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below and when if a
rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle the sailors flung it not rudely down
as by day but with some cautiousness dropped it to its place for fear of
disturbing their slumbering shipmates when this sort of steady quietude would
begin to prevail habitually the silent steersman would watch the
cabinscuttle and ere long the old man would emerge gripping at the iron
banister to help his crippled way Some considerating touch of humanity was in
him for at times like these he usually abstained from patrolling the
quarterdeck because to his wearied mates seeking repose within six inches of
his ivory heel such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that
bony step that their dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks
But once the mood was on him too deep for common regardings and as with heavy
lumberlike pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast Stubb the
odd second mate came up from below and with a certain unassured deprecating
humorousness hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks then
no one could say nay but there might be some way of muffling the noise hinting
something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow and the insertion
into it of the ivory heel Ah Stubb thou didst not know Ahab then
»Am I a cannonball Stubb« said Ahab »that thou wouldst wad me that
fashion But go thy ways I had forgot Below to thy nightly grave where such
as ye sleep between shrouds to use ye to the filling one at last Down dog
and kennel«
Starting at the unforeseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly
scornful old man Stubb was speechless a moment then said excitedly »I am not
used to be spoken to that way sir I do but less than half like it sir«
»Avast« gritted Ahab between his set teeth and violently moving away as
if to avoid some passionate temptation
»No sir not yet« said Stubb emboldened »I will not tamely be called a
dog sir«
»Then be called ten times a donkey and a mule and an ass and begone or I
ll clear the world of thee«
As he said this Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his
aspect that Stubb involuntarily retreated
»I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it« muttered
Stubb as he found himself descending the cabinscuttle »It s very queer
Stop Stubb somehow now I dont well know whether to go back and strike him
or what s that down here on my knees and pray for him Yes that was the
thought coming up in me but it would be the first time I ever did pray It s
queer very queer and he s queer too ay take him fore and aft he s about
the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with How he flashed at me his eyes
like powderpans is he mad Anyway there s something on his mind as sure as
there must be something on a deck when it cracks He aint in his bed now
either more than three hours out of the twentyfour and he dont sleep then
Didnt that DoughBoy the steward tell me that of a morning he always finds
the old mans hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled and the sheets down at
the foot and the coverlid almost tied into knots and the pillow a sort of
frightful hot as though a baked brick had been on it A hot old man I guess he
s got what some folks ashore call a conscience it s a kind of TicDollyrow
they say worse nor a toothache Well well I dont know what it is but the
Lord keep me from catching it He s full of riddles I wonder what he goes into
the afterhold for every night as DoughBoy tells me he suspects what s that
for I should like to know Whos made appointments with him in the hold Aint
that queer now But there s no telling it s the old game Here goes for a
snooze Damn me it s worth a fellows while to be born into the world if only
to fall right asleep And now that I think of it that s about the first thing
babies do and that s a sort of queer too Damn me but all things are queer
come to think of em But that s against my principles Think not is my
eleventh commandment and sleep when you can is my twelfth So here goes
again But hows that didnt he call me a dog blazes he called me ten times a
donkey and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that He might as well have
kicked me and done with it Maybe he did kick me and I didnt observe it I
was so taken all aback with his brow somehow It flashed like a bleached bone
What the devils the matter with me I dont stand right on my legs Coming
afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out By the Lord I
must have been dreaming though How how how but the only ways to stash
it so here goes to hammock again and in the morning I ll see how this plaguy
juggling thinks over by daylight«
Chapter XXX
The Pipe
When Stubb had departed Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks and
then as had been usual with him of late calling a sailor of the watch he sent
him below for his ivory stool and also his pipe Lighting the pipe at the
binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weatherside of the deck he sat and
smoked
In old Norse times the thrones of the sealoving Danish kings were
fabricated saith tradition of the tusks of the narwhale How could one look at
Ahab then seated on that tripod of bones without bethinking him of the royalty
it symbolised For a khan of the plank and a king of the sea and a great lord
of leviathans was Ahab
Some moments passed during which the thick vapour came from his mouth in
quick and constant puffs which blew back again into his face »How now« he
soliloquised at last withdrawing the tube »this smoking no longer soothes Oh
my pipe hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone Here have I been
unconsciously toiling not pleasuring ay and ignorantly smoking to windward
all the while to windward and with such nervous whiffs as if like the dying
whale my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble What business
have I with this pipe This thing that is meant for sereneness to send up mild
white vapours among mild white hairs not among torn irongray locks like mine
I ll smoke no more «
He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea The fire hissed in the waves
the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made With
slouched hat Ahab lurchingly paced the planks
Chapter XXXI
Queen Mab
Next morning Stubb accosted Flask
»Such a queer dream KingPost I never had You know the old mans ivory
leg well I dreamed he kicked me with it and when I tried to kick back upon my
soul my little man I kicked my leg right off And then presto Ahab seemed a
pyramid and I like a blazing fool kept kicking at it But what was still more
curious Flask you know how curious all dreams are through all this rage
that I was in I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself that after all it was
not much of an insult that kick from Ahab Why thinks I what s the row It
s not a real leg only a false leg And there s a mighty difference between a
living thump and a dead thump That s what makes a blow from the hand Flask
fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane The living member
that makes the living insult my little man And thinks I to myself all the
while mind while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid so
confoundedly contradictory was it all all the while I say I was thinking to
myself What s his leg now but a cane a whalebone cane Yes thinks I it
was only a playful cudgelling in fact only a whaleboning that he gave me
not a base kick Besides thinks I look at it once why the end of it the
foot part what a small sort of end it is whereas if a broadfooted farmer
kicked me there s a devilish broad insult But this insult is whittled down to
a point only But now comes the greatest joke of the dream Flask While I was
battering away at the pyramid a sort of badgerhaired old merman with a hump
on his back takes me by the shoulders and slews me round What are you bout
says he Slid man but I was frightened Such a phiz But somehow next moment
I was over the fright What am I about says I at last And what business is
that of yours I should like to know Mr Humpback Do you want a kick By the
lord Flask I had no sooner said that than he turned round his stern to me
bent over and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a clout what do you
think I saw why thunder alive man his stern was stuck full of
marlingspikes with the points out Says I on second thoughts I guess I wont
kick you old fellow Wise Stubb said he wise Stubb and kept muttering it all
the time a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag Seeing he wasnt
going to stop saying over his wise Stubb wise Stubb I thought I might as well
fall to kicking the pyramid again But I had only just lifted my foot for it
when he roared out Stop that kicking Halloa says I what s the matter now
old fellow Look ye here says he lets argue the insult Captain Ahab kicked
ye didnt he Yes he did says I right here it was Very good says he he
used his ivory leg didnt he Yes he did says I Well then says he wise
Stubb what have you to complain of Didnt he kick with right goodwill it
wasnt a common pitchpine leg he kicked with was it No you were kicked by a
great man and with a beautiful ivory leg Stubb It s an honour I consider it
an honour Listen wise Stubb In old England the greatest lords think it great
glory to be slapped by a queen and made garterknights of but be your boast
Stubb that ye were kicked by old Ahab and made a wise man of Remember what I
say be kicked by him account his kicks honours and on no account kick back
for you cant help yourself wise Stubb Dont you see that pyramid With that
he all of a sudden seemed somehow in some queer fashion to swim off into the
air I snored rolled over and there I was in my hammock Now what do you
think of that dream Flask«
»I dont know it seems a sort of foolish to me though«
»Maybe maybe But it s made a wise man of me Flask D ye see Ahab
standing there sideways looking over the stern Well the best thing you can
do Flask is to let that old man alone never speak to him whatever he says
Halloa What s that he shouts Hark«
»Masthead there Look sharp all of ye There are whales hereabouts If ye
see a white one split your lungs for him«
»What do you think of that now Flask aint there a small drop of something
queer about that eh A white whale did ye mark that man Look ye there s
something special in the wind Stand by for it Flask Ahab has that that s
bloody on his mind But mum he comes this way«
Chapter XXXII
Cetology
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep but soon we shall be lost in its
unshored harbourless immensities Ere that come to pass ere the Pequods weedy
hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan at the outset
it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough
appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and
allusions of all sorts which are to follow
It is some systematised exhibition of the whale in his broad genera that I
would now fain put before you Yet is it no easy task The classification of the
constituents of a chaos nothing less is here essayed Listen to what the best
and latest authorities have laid down
»No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
Cetology« says Captain Scoresby AD 1820
»It is not my intention were it in my power to enter into the inquiry as
to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families Utter
confusion exists among the historians of this animal« Sperm whale says
Surgeon Beale A D 1839
»Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters« »Impenetrable
veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea« »A field strewn with thorns« »All
these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists«
Thus speak of the whale the great Cuvier and John Hunter and Lesson
those lights of zoology and anatomy Nevertheless though of real knowledge
there be little yet of books there are a plenty and so in some small degree
with Cetology or the science of whales Many are the men small and great old
and new landsmen and seamen who have at large or in little written of the
whale Run over a few The Authors of the Bible Aristotle Pliny Aldrovandi
Sir Thomas Browne Gesner Ray Linnæus Rondeletius Willoughby Green Artedi
Sibbald Brisson Marten Lacépède Bonneterre Desmarest Baron Cuvier
Frederick Cuvier John Hunter Owen Scoresby Beale Bennett J Ross Browne
the Author of Miriam Coffin Olmstead and the Rev T Cheever But to what
ultimate generalising purpose all these have written the abovecited extracts
will show
Of the names in this list of whale authors only those following Owen ever
saw living whales and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer and
whaleman I mean Captain Scoresby On the separate subject of the Greenland or
Right whale he is the best existing authority But Scoresby knew nothing and
says nothing of the great Sperm whale compared with which the Greenland whale
is almost unworthy mentioning And here be it said that the Greenland whale is
an usurper upon the throne of the seas He is not even by any means the largest
of the whales Yet owing to the long priority of his claims and the profound
ignorance which till some seventy years back invested the then fabulous or
utterly unknown Sperm whale and which ignorance to this present day still
reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whaleports this usurpation
has been every way complete Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions
in the great poets of past days will satisfy you that the Greenland whale
without one rival was to them the monarch of the seas But the time has at last
come for a new proclamation This is Charing Cross hear ye good people all
the Greenland whale is deposed the great Sperm whale now reigneth
There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living
Sperm whale before you and at the same time in the remotest degree succeed in
the attempt Those books are Beales and Bennetts both in their time surgeons
to the English SouthSea whaleships and both exact and reliable men The
original matter touching the Sperm whale to be found in their volumes is
necessarily small but so far as it goes it is of excellent quality though
mostly confined to scientific description As yet however the Sperm whale
scientific or poetic lives not complete in any literature Far above all other
hunted whales his is an unwritten life
Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive
classification if only an easy outline one for the present hereafter to be
filled in all its departments by subsequent labourers As no better man advances
to take this matter in hand I hereupon offer my own poor endeavours I promise
nothing complete because any human thing supposed to be complete must for that
very reason infallibly be faulty I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical
description of the various species or in this place at least to much of any
description My object here is simply to project the draught of a
systematisation of Cetology I am the architect not the builder
But it is a ponderous task no ordinary lettersorter in the Post Office is
equal to it To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them to have ones
hands among the unspeakable foundations ribs and very pelvis of the world
this is a fearful thing What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this
leviathan The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me »Will he the
leviathan make a covenant with thee Behold the hope of him is vain« But I
have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans I have had to do with
whales with these visible hands I am in earnest and I will try There are some
preliminaries to settle
First The uncertain unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in
the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains
a moot point whether a whale be a fish In his System of Nature A D 1776
Linnæus declares »I hereby separate the whales from the fish« But of my own
knowledge I know that down to the year 1850 sharks and shad alewives and
herring against Linnæuss express edict were still found dividing the
possession of the same seas with the leviathan
The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished the whales from the
waters he states as follows »On account of their warm bilocular heart their
lungs their movable eyelids their hollow ears penem intrantem feminam mammis
lactantem« and finally »ex lege naturæ jure meritoque« I submitted all this
to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin of Nantucket both messmates of
mine in a certain voyage and they united in the opinion that the reasons set
forth were altogether insufficient Charley profanely hinted they were humbug
Be it known that waiving all argument I take the good oldfashioned ground
that the whale is a fish and call upon holy Jonah to back me This fundamental
thing settled the next point is in what internal respect does the whale differ
from other fish Above Linnæus has given you those items But in brief they
are those lungs and warm blood whereas all other fish are lungless and
coldblooded
Next how shall we define the whale by his obvious externals so as
conspicuously to label him for all time to come To be short then a whale is a
spouting fish with a horizontal tail There you have him However contracted
that definition is the result of expanded meditation A walrus spouts much like
a whale but the walrus is not a fish because he is amphibious But the last
term of the definition is still more cogent as coupled with the first Almost
any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a
flat but a vertical or upanddown tail Whereas among spouting fish the
tail though it may be similarly shaped invariably assumes a horizontal
position
By the above definition of what a whale is I do by no means exclude from
the leviathanic brotherhood any seacreature hitherto identified with the whale
by the bestinformed Nantucketers nor on the other hand link with it any fish
hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien2 Hence all the smaller spouting
and horizontaltailed fish must be included in this groundplan of Cetology
Now then come the grand divisions of the entire whale host
First According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS
subdivisible into CHAPTERS and these shall comprehend them all both small
and large
I The FOLIO WHALE II the OCTAVO WHALE III the DUODECIMO WHALE
As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale of the OCTAVO the
Grampus of the DUODECIMO the Porpoise
FOLIOS Among these I here include the following chapters I the Sperm
Whale II the Right Whale III the Finback Whale IV the Humpbacked Whale
V the Razorback Whale VI the Sulphurbottom Whale
BOOK I Folio CHAPTER I Sperm Whale This whale among the English
of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale and the Physeter whale and the
Anvilheaded whale is the present Cachalot of the French and the Pottsfisch of
the Germans and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words He is without doubt the
largest inhabitant of the globe the most formidable of all whales to encounter
the most majestic in aspect and lastly by far the most valuable in commerce
he being the only creature from which that valuable substance spermaceti is
obtained All his peculiarities will in many other places be enlarged upon It
is chiefly with his name that I now have to do Philologically considered it is
absurd Some centuries ago when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in
his own proper individuality and when his oil was only accidentally obtained
from the stranded fish in those days spermaceti it would seem was popularly
supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in
England as the Greenland or Right whale It was the idea also that this same
spermaceti was that quickening humour of the Greenland whale which the first
syllable of the word literally expresses In those times also spermaceti was
exceedingly scarce not being used for light but only as an ointment and
medicament It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an
ounce of rhubarb When as I opine in the course of time the true nature of
spermaceti became known its original name was still retained by the dealers no
doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity
And so the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from
which this spermaceti was really derived
BOOK I Folio CHAPTER II Right Whale In one respect this is the
most venerable of the leviathans being the one first regularly hunted by man
It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen and the oil
specially known as whale oil an inferior article in commerce Among the
fishermen he is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles The
Whale the Greenland Whale the Black Whale the Great Whale the True Whale
the Right Whale There is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the
species thus multitudinously baptized What then is the whale which I include
in the second species of my Folios It is the Great Mysticetus of the English
naturalists the Greenland Whale of the English whalemen the Baleine Ordinaire
of the French whalemen the Growlands Walfisch of the Swedes It is the whale
which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English
in the Arctic seas it is the whale which the American fishermen have long
pursued in the Indian Ocean on the Brazil Banks on the NorWest Coast and
various other parts of the world designated by them Right Whale
CruisingGrounds
Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the English
and the Right whale of the Americans But they precisely agree in all their
grand features nor has there yet been presented a single determinate fact upon
which to ground a radical distinction It is by endless subdivisions based upon
the most inconclusive differences that some departments of natural history
become so repellingly intricate The Right whale will be elsewhere treated of at
some length with reference to elucidating the Sperm whale
BOOK I Folio CHAPTER III Finback Under this head I reckon a
monster which by the various names of Finback Tallspout and LongJohn has
been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so
often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic in the New York
packettracks In the length he attains and in his baleen the Finback
resembles the Right whale but is of a less portly girth and a lighter colour
approaching to olive His great lips present a cablelike aspect formed by the
intertwisting slanting folds of large wrinkles His grand distinguishing
feature the fin from which he derives his name is often a conspicuous object
This fin is some three or four feet long growing vertically from the hinder
part of the back of an angular shape and with a very sharppointed end Even
if not the slightest other part of the creature be visible this isolated fin
will at times be seen plainly projecting from the surface When the sea is
moderately calm and slightly marked with spherical ripples and this
gnomonlike fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface it may
well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a
dial with its style and wavy hourlines graved on it On that Ahazdial the
shadow often goes back The Finback is not gregarious He seems a whalehater
as some men are manhaters Very shy always going solitary unexpectedly rising
to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters his straight and single
lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain gifted with
such wondrous power and velocity in swimming as to defy all present pursuit
from man this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race
bearing for his mark that style upon his back From having the baleen in his
mouth the Finback is sometimes included with the Right whale among a
theoretic species denominated Whalebone whales that is whales with baleen Of
these socalled Whalebone whales there would seem to be several varieties most
of which however are little known Broadnosed whales and Beaked whales
Pikeheaded whales Bunched whales Underjawed whales and Rostrated 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 a nomenclature may be convenient in
facilitating allusions to some kind of whales yet it is in vain to attempt a
clear classification of the leviathan founded upon either his baleen or hump
or fin or teeth notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very
obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of
Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions which the whale in his
kinds presents How then The baleen hump backfin and teeth these are
things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of
whales without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other
and more essential particulars Thus the Sperm whale and the Humpbacked whale
each has a hump but there the similitude ceases Then this same Humpbacked
whale and the Greenland whale each of these has baleen but there again the
similitude ceases And it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned
In various sorts of whales they form such irregular combinations or in the
case of any one of them detached such an irregular isolation as utterly to
defy all general methodisation formed upon such a basis On this rock every one
of the whalenaturalists has split
But it may possibly be conceived that in the internal parts of the whale
in his anatomy there at least we shall be able to hit the right
classification Nay what thing for example is there in the Greenland whales
anatomy more striking than his baleen Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is
impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale And if you descend into
the bowels of the various leviathans why there you will not find distinctions a
fiftieth part as available to the systematiser as those external ones already
enumerated What then remains nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily in
their entire liberal volume and boldly sort them that way And this is the
Bibliographical system here adopted and it is the only one that can possibly
succeed for it alone is practicable To proceed
BOOK I Folio CHAPTER IV Humpback This whale is often seen on the
northern American coast He has been frequently captured there and towed into
harbour He has a great pack on him like a peddler or you might call him the
Elephant and Castle whale At any rate the popular name for him does not
sufficiently distinguish him since the Sperm whale also has a hump though a
smaller one His oil is not very valuable He has baleen He is the most
gamesome and lighthearted of all the whales making more gay foam and white
water generally than any other of them
BOOK I Folio CHAPTER V Razorback Of this whale little is known
but his name I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn Of a retiring nature
he eludes both hunters and philosophers Though no coward he has never yet
shown any part of him but his back which rises in a long sharp ridge Let him
go I know little more of him nor does anybody else
BOOK I Folio CHAPTER VI Sulphurbottom Another retiring gentleman
with a brimstone belly doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in
some of his profounder divings He is seldom seen at least I have never seen
him except in the remoter Southern seas and then always at too great a distance
to study his countenance He is never chased he would run away with ropewalks
of line Prodigies are told of him Adieu Sulphurbottom 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
OCTAVOS3 These embrace the whales of middling magnitude among which at
present may be numbered I the Grampus II the Black Fish III the
Narwhale IV the Killer V the Thrasher
BOOK II Octavo CHAPTER I Grampus Though this fish whose loud
sonorous breathing or rather blowing has furnished a proverb to landsmen is
so well known a denizen of the deep yet is he not popularly classed among
whales But possessing all the grand distinctive features of the leviathan most
naturalists have recognised him for one He is of moderate octavo size varying
from fifteen to twentyfive feet in length and of corresponding dimensions
round the waist He swims in herds he is never regularly hunted though his oil
is considerable in quantity and pretty good for light By some fishermen his
approach is regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great Sperm whale
BOOK II Octavo CHAPTER II Black Fish I give the popular
fishermens names for all these fish for generally they are the best Where any
name happens to be vague or inexpressive I shall say so and suggest another I
do so now touching the Black Fish so called because blackness is the rule
among almost all whales So call him the Hyena whale if you please His
voracity is well known and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his
lips are curved upward he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his
face This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length He is found
in almost all latitudes He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin
in swimming which looks something like a Roman nose When not more profitably
employed the Spermwhale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale to keep up
the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment as some frugal housekeepers
in the absence of company and quite alone by themselves burn unsavoury tallow
instead of odorous wax Though their blubber is very thin some of these whales
will yield you upward of thirty gallons of oil
BOOK II Octavo CHAPTER III Narwhale that is Nostril Whale
Another instance of a curiously named whale so named I suppose from his
peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose The creature is some
sixteen feet in length while its horn averages five feet though some exceed
ten and even attain to fifteen feet Strictly speaking this horn is but a
lengthened tusk growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the
horizontal But it is only found on the sinister side which has an ill effect
giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy lefthanded man
What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers it would be hard to say
It does not seem to be used like the blade of the swordfish and billfish
though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning
over the bottom of the sea for food Charley Coffin said it was used for an
icepiercer for the Narwhale rising to the surface of the Polar Sea and
finding it sheeted with ice thrusts his horn up and so breaks through But you
cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct My own opinion is that
however this onesided horn may really be used by the Narwhale however that
may be it would certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading
pamphlets The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale the Horned whale
and the Unicorn whale He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism to be
found in almost every kingdom of animated nature From certain cloistered old
authors I have gathered that this same seaunicorns horn was in ancient days
regarded as the great antidote against poison and as such preparations of it
brought immense prices It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting
ladies the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into
hartshorn Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity
Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage
when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of
Greenwich Palace as his bold ship sailed down the Thames »when Sir Martin
returned from that voyage« saith Black Letter »on bended knees he presented to
her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale which for a long period
after hung in the castle at Windsor« An Irish author avers that the Earl of
Leicester on bended knees did likewise present to her highness another horn
pertaining to a landbeast of the unicorn nature
The Narwhale has a very picturesque leopardlike look being of a
milkwhite ground colour dotted with round and oblong spots of black His oil
is very superior clear and fine but there is little of it and he is seldom
hunted He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas
BOOK II Octavo CHAPTER IV Killer Of this whale little is precisely
known to the Nantucketer and nothing at all to the professed naturalist From
what I have seen of him at a distance I should say that he was about the
bigness of a grampus He is very savage a sort of Feegee fish He sometimes
takes the great Folio whale by the lip and hangs there like a leech till the
mighty brute is worried to death The Killer is never hunted I never heard what
sort of oil he has Exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon this
whale on the ground of its indistinctness For we are all killers on land and
on sea Bonapartes and Sharks included
BOOK II Octavo CHAPTER V Thrasher This gentleman is famous for his
tail which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes He mounts the Folio
whales back and as he swims he works his passage by flogging him as some
schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar process Still less is known
of the Thrasher than of the Killer Both are outlaws even in the lawless seas
Thus ends BOOK II Octavo and begins BOOK III Duodecimo
DUODECIMOS These include the smaller whales I the Huzza Porpoise II
the Algerine Porpoise III the Mealymouthed Porpoise
To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject it may
possibly seem strange that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five feet
should be marshalled among WHALES a word which in the popular sense always
conveys an idea of hugeness But the creatures set down above as Duodecimos are
infallibly whales by the terms of my definition of what a whale is ie a
spouting fish with a horizontal tail
BOOK III Duodecimo CHAPTER I Huzza Porpoise This is the common
porpoise found almost all over the globe The name is of my own bestowal for
there are more than one sort of porpoises and something must be done to
distinguish them I call him thus because he always swims in hilarious shoals
which upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a
FourthofJuly crowd Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the
mariner Full of fine spirits they invariably come from the breezy billows to
windward They are the lads that always live before the wind They are accounted
a lucky omen If you yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding these
vivacious fish then heaven help ye the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in
ye A wellfed plump Huzza porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil
But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable
It is in request among jewellers and watchmakers Sailors put it on their hones
Porpoise meat is good eating you know It may never have occurred to you that a
porpoise spouts Indeed his spout is so small that it is not very readily
discernible But the next time you have a chance watch him and you will then
see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature
BOOK III Duodecimo CHAPTER II Algerine Porpoise A pirate Very
savage He is only found I think in the Pacific He is somewhat larger than
the Huzza porpoise but much of the same general make Provoke him and he will
buckle to a shark I have lowered for him many times but never yet saw him
captured
BOOK III Duodecimo CHAPTER III Mealymouthed Porpoise The largest
kind of porpoise and only found in the Pacific so far as it is known The only
English name by which he has hitherto been designated is that of the fishers
Rightwhale porpoise from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the
vicinity of that Folio In shape he differs in some degree from the Huzza
porpoise being of a less rotund and jolly girth indeed he is of quite a neat
and gentlemanlike figure He has no fins on his back most other porpoises
have he has a lovely tail and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue But his
mealymouth spoils all Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a
deep sable yet a boundary line distinct as the mark in a ships hull called
the bright waist that line streaks him from stem to stern with two separate
colours black above and white below The white comprises part of his head and
the whole of his mouth which makes him look as if he had just escaped from a
felonious visit to a mealbag A most mean and mealy aspect His oil is much
like that of the common porpoise
Beyond the DUODECIMO this system does not proceed inasmuch as the porpoise is
the smallest of the whales Above you have all the leviathans of note But
there are a rabble of uncertain fugitive halffabulous whales which as an
American whaleman I know by reputation but not personally I shall enumerate
them by their forecastle appellations for possibly such a list may be valuable
to future investigators who may complete what I have here but begun If any of
the following whales shall hereafter be caught and marked then he can readily
be incorporated into this system according to his Folio Octavo or Duodecimo
magnitude The Bottlenose Whale the Junk Whale the Puddingheaded Whale
the Cape Whale the Leading Whale the Cannon Whale the Scragg Whale the
Coppered Whale the Elephant Whale the Iceberg Whale the Quog Whale the Blue
Whale etc From Icelandic Dutch and old English authorities there might be
quoted other lists of uncertain whales blessed with all manner of uncouth
names But I omit them as altogether obsolete and can hardly help suspecting
them for mere sounds full of leviathanism but signifying nothing
Finally It was stated at the outset that this system would not be here
and at once perfected You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word But
I now leave my cetological system standing thus unfinished even as the great
Cathedral of Cologne was left with the crane still standing upon the top of the
uncompleted tower For small erections may be finished by their first
architects grand ones true ones ever leave the copestone to posterity God
keep me from ever completing anything This whole book is but a draught nay
but the draught of a draught Oh Time Strength Cash and Patience
Chapter XXXIII
The Specksynder
Concerning the officers of the whalecraft this seems as good a place as any to
set down a little domestic peculiarity on shipboard arising from the existence
of the harpooneer class of officers a class unknown of course in any other
marine than the whalefleet
The large importance attached to the harpooneers vocation is evinced by the
fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery two centuries and more ago the
command of a whaleship was not wholly lodged in the person now called the
captain but was divided between him and an officer called the Specksynder
Literally this word means FatCutter usage however in time made it equivalent
to Chief Harpooneer In those days the captains authority was restricted to
the navigation and general management of the vessel while over the
whalehunting department and all its concerns the Specksynder or Chief
Harpooneer reigned supreme In the British Greenland Fishery under the
corrupted title of Specksioneer this old Dutch official is still retained but
his former dignity is sadly abridged At present he ranks simply as senior
Harpooneer and as such is but one of the captains more inferior subalterns
Nevertheless as upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a
whaling voyage largely depends and since in the American Fishery he is not only
an important officer in the boat but under certain circumstances nightwatches
on a whalingground the command of the ships deck is also his therefore the
grand political maxim of the sea demands that he should nominally live apart
from the men before the mast and be in some way distinguished as their
professional superior though always by them familiarly regarded as their
social equal
Now the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea is this
the first lives aft the last forward Hence in whaleships and merchantmen
alike the mates have their quarters with the captain and so too in most of
the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship
That is to say they take their meals in the captains cabin and sleep in a
place indirectly communicating with it
Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage by far the longest of
all voyages now or ever made by man the peculiar perils of it and the
community of interest prevailing among a company all of whom high or low
depend for their profits not upon fixed wages but upon their common luck
together with their common vigilance intrepidity and hard work though all
these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in
merchantmen generally yet never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian family
these whalemen may in some primitive instances live together for all that
the punctilious externals at least of the quarterdeck are seldom materially
relaxed and in no instance done away Indeed many are the Nantucket ships in
which you will see the skipper parading his quarterdeck with an elated grandeur
not surpassed in any military navy nay extorting almost as much outward homage
as if he wore the imperial purple and not the shabbiest of pilotcloth
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least given to
that sort of shallowest assumption and though the only homage he ever exacted
was implicit instantaneous obedience though he required no man to remove the
shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarterdeck and though there were
times when owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to
be detailed he addressed them in unusual terms whether of condescension or in
terrorem or otherwise yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the
paramount forms and usages of the sea
Nor perhaps will it fail to be eventually perceived that behind those
forms and usages as it were he sometimes masked himself incidentally making
use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended
to subserve That certain sultanism of his brain which had otherwise in a good
degree remained unmanifested through those forms that same sultanism became
incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship For be a mans intellectual
superiority what it will it can never assume the practical available supremacy
over other men without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments
always in themselves more or less paltry and base This it is that forever
keeps Gods true princes of the Empire from the worlds hustings and leaves the
highest honours that this air can give to those men who become famous more
through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine
Inert than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass
Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political
superstitions invest them that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility
they have imparted potency But when as in the case of Nicholas the Czar the
ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain then the
plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralisation Nor will the
tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep
and direct swing ever forget a hint incidentally so important in his art as
the one now alluded to
But Ahab my captain still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness
and shagginess and in this episode touching emperors and kings I must not
conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whalehunter like him and
therefore all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me Oh
Ahab what shall be grand in thee it must needs be plucked at from the skies
and dived for in the deep and featured in the unbodied air
Chapter XXXIV
The CabinTable
It is noon and DoughBoy the steward thrusting his pale loafofbread face
from the cabinscuttle announces dinner to his lord and master who sitting in
the lee quarterboat has just been taking an observation of the sun and is now
mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth medallionshaped tablet reserved
for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg From his complete
inattention to the tidings you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his
menial But presently catching hold of the mizen shrouds he swings himself to
the deck and in an even unexhilarated voice saying »Dinner Mr Starbuck«
disappears into the cabin
When the last echo of his sultans step has died away and Starbuck the
first Emir has every reason to suppose that he is seated then Starbuck rouses
from his quietude takes a few turns along the planks and after a grave peep
into the binnacle says with some touch of pleasantness »Dinner Mr Stubb«
and descends the scuttle The second Emir lounges about the rigging a while and
then slightly shaking the mainbrace to see whether it be all right with that
important rope he likewise takes up the old burden and with a rapid »Dinner
Mr Flask« follows after his predecessors
But the third Emir now seeing himself all alone on the quarterdeck seems
to feel relieved from some curious restraint for tipping all sorts of knowing
winks in all sorts of directions and kicking off his shoes he strikes into a
sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turks head and
then by a dexterous sleight pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a
shelf he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the
deck reversing all other processions by bringing up the rear with music But
ere stepping into the cabin doorway below he pauses ships a new face
altogether and then independent hilarious little Flask enters King Ahabs
presence in the character of Abjectus or the Slave
It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
artificialness of seausages that while in the open air of the deck some
officers will upon provocation bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough
toward their commander yet ten to one let those very officers the next moment
go down to their customary dinner in that same commanders cabin and
straightway their inoffensive not to say deprecatory and humble air toward him
as he sits at the head of the table this is marvellous sometimes most comical
Wherefore this difference A problem Perhaps not To have been Belshazzar King
of Babylon and to have been Belshazzar not haughtily but courteously therein
certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur But he who in the
rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinnertable
of invited guests that mans unchallenged power and dominion of individual
influence for the time that mans royalty of state transcends Belshazzars for
Belshazzar was not the greatest Who has but once dined his friends has tasted
what it is to be Cæsar It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no
withstanding Now if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy
of a shipmaster then by inference you will derive the cause of that
peculiarity of sealife just mentioned
Over his ivoryinlaid table Ahab presided like a mute maned sealion on
the white coral beach surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs In
his own proper turn each officer waited to be served They were as little
children before Ahab and yet in Ahab there seemed not to lurk the smallest
social arrogance With one mind their intent eyes all fastened upon the old
mans knife as he carved the chief dish before him I do not suppose that for
the world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation
even upon so neutral a topic as the weather No And when reaching out his knife
and fork between which the slice of beef was locked Ahab thereby motioned
Starbucks plate toward him the mate received his meat as though receiving
alms and cut it tenderly and a little started if perchance the knife grazed
against the plate and chewed it noiselessly and swallowed it not without
circumspection For like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort where the German
Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors so these cabin meals
were somehow solemn meals eaten in awful silence and yet at table old Ahab
forbade not conversation only he himself was dumb What a relief it was to
choking Stubb when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below And poor
little Flask he was the youngest son and little boy of this weary family
party His were the shinbones of the saline beef his would have been the
drumsticks For Flask to have presumed to help himself this must have seemed to
him tantamount to larceny in the first degree Had he helped himself at that
table doubtless never more would he have been able to hold his head up in this
honest world nevertheless strange to say Ahab never forbade him And had
Flask helped himself the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it
Least of all did Flask presume to help himself to butter Whether he thought
the owners of the ship denied it to him on account of its clotting his clear
sunny complexion or whether he deemed that on so long a voyage in such
marketless waters butter was at a premium and therefore was not for him a
subaltern however it was Flask alas was a butterless man
Another thing Flask was the last person down at the dinner and Flask is
the first man up Consider For hereby Flasks dinner was badly jammed in point
of time Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him and yet they also have
the privilege of lounging in the rear If Stubb even who is but a peg higher
than Flask happens to have but a small appetite and soon shows symptoms of
concluding his repast then Flask must bestir himself he will not get more than
three mouthfuls that day for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede
Flask to the deck Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private that
ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer from that moment he had
never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry more or less For what he
ate did not so much relieve his hunger as keep it immortal in him Peace and
satisfaction thought Flask have forever departed from my stomach I am an
officer but how I wish I could fist a bit of oldfashioned beef in the
forecastle as I used to when I was before the mast There s the fruits of
promotion now there s the vanity of glory there s the insanity of life
Besides if it were so that any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against
Flask in Flasks official capacity all that sailor had to do in order to
obtain ample vengeance was to go aft at dinnertime and get a peep at Flask
through the cabin skylight sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab
Now Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table in
the Pequods cabin After their departure taking place in inverted order to
their arrival the canvas cloth was cleared or rather was restored to some
hurried order by the pallid steward And then the three harpooneers were bidden
to the feast they being its residuary legatees They made a sort of temporary
servants hall of the high and mighty cabin
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
invisible domineerings of the captains table was the entire carefree licence
and ease the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the
harpooneers While their masters the mates seemed afraid of the sound of the
hinges of their own jaws the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish
that there was a report to it They dined like lords they filled their bellies
like Indian ships all day loading with spices Such portentous appetites had
Queequeg and Tashtego that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous
repast often the pale DoughBoy was fain to bring on a great baron of
saltjunk seemingly quarried out of the solid ox And if he were not lively
about it if he did not go with a nimble hopskipandjump then Tashtego had an
ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back
harpoonwise And once Daggoo seized with a sudden humour assisted DoughBoys
memory by snatching him up bodily and thrusting his head into a great empty
wooden trencher while Tashtego knife in hand began laying out the circle
preliminary to scalping him He was naturally a very nervous shuddering sort of
little fellow this broadfaced steward the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a
hospital nurse And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab
and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages DoughBoys
whole life was one continual lipquiver Commonly after seeing the harpooneers
furnished with all things they demanded he would escape from their clutches
into his little pantry adjoining and fearfully peep out at them through the
blinds of its door till all was over
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego opposing his
filed teeth to the Indians crosswise to them Daggoo seated on the floor for
a bench would have brought his hearseplumed head to the low carlines at every
motion of his colossal limbs making the low cabin framework to shake as when
an African elephant goes passenger in a ship But for all this the great negro
was wonderfully abstemious not to say dainty It seemed hardly possible that by
such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused
through so broad baronial and superb a person But doubtless this noble
savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air and through
his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds Not by beef or
by bread are giants made or nourished But Queequeg he had a mortal barbaric
smack of the lip in eating an ugly sound enough so much so that the
trembling DoughBoy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in
his own lean arms And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to
produce himself that his bones might be picked the simplewitted steward all
but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry by his sudden fits
of the palsy Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their
pockets for their lances and other weapons and with which whetstones at
dinner they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives that grating sound did
not at all tend to tranquillise poor DoughBoy How could he forget that in his
Island days Queequeg for one must certainly have been guilty of some
murderous convivial indiscretions Alas DoughBoy hard fares the white waiter
who waits upon cannibals Not a napkin should he carry on his arm but a
buckler In good time though to his great delight the three saltsea warriors
would rise and depart to his credulous fablemongering ears all their martial
bones jingling in them at every step like Moorish scimitars in scabbards
But though these barbarians dined in the cabin and nominally lived there
still being anything but sedentary in their habits they were scarcely ever in
it except at mealtimes and just before sleepingtime when they passed through
it to their own peculiar quarters
In this one matter Ahab seemed no exception to most American
whalecaptains who as a set rather incline to the opinion that by rights the
ships cabin belongs to them and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else
is at any time permitted there So that in real truth the mates and
harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of the
cabin than in it For when they did enter it it was something as a streetdoor
enters a house turning inward for a moment only to be turned out the next
and as a permanent thing residing in the open air Nor did they lose much
hereby in the cabin was no companionship socially Ahab was inaccessible
Though nominally included in the census of Christendom he was still an alien to
it He lived in the world as the last of the grizzly bears lived in settled
Missouri And as when spring and summer had departed that wild Logan of the
woods burying himself in the hollow of a tree lived out the winter there
sucking his own paws so in his inclement howling old age Ahabs soul shut
up in the caved trunk of his body there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom
Chapter XXXV
The MastHead
It was during the more pleasant weather that in due rotation with the other
seamen my first masthead came round
In most American whalemen the mastheads are manned almost simultaneously
with the vessels leaving her port even though she may have fifteen thousand
miles and more to sail ere reaching her proper cruisingground And if after
a three four or five years voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything
empty in her say an empty vial even then her mastheads are kept manned to
the last and not till her skysailpoles sail in among the spires of the port
does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more
Now as the business of standing mastheads ashore or afloat is a very
ancient and interesting one let us in some measure expatiate here I take it
that the earliest standers of mastheads were the old Egyptians because in all
my researches I find none prior to them For though their progenitors the
builders of Babel must doubtless by their tower have intended to rear the
loftiest masthead in all Asia or Africa either yet ere the final truck was
put to it as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the
board in the dread gale of Gods wrath therefore we cannot give these Babel
builders priority over the Egyptians And that the Egyptians were a nation of
masthead standers is an assertion based upon the general belief among
archæologists that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes a
theory singularly supported by the peculiar stairlike formation of all four
sides of those edifices whereby with prodigious long upliftings of their legs
those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex and sing out for new
stars even as the lookouts of a modern ship sing out for a sail or a whale
just bearing in sight In Saint Stylites the famous Christian hermit of old
times who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole
latter portion of his life on its summit hoisting his food from the ground with
a tackle in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander of
mastheads who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts rain
hail or sleet but valiantly facing everything out to the last literally died
at his post Of modern standers of mastheads we have but a lifeless set mere
stone iron and bronze men who though well capable of facing out a stiff
gale are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon
discovering any strange sight There is Napoleon who upon the top of the
column of Vendôme stands with arms folded some one hundred and fifty feet in
the air careless now who rules the decks below whether LouisPhilippe Louis
Blanc or Louis the Devil Great Washington too stands high aloft on his
towering mainmast in Baltimore and like one of Hercules pillars his column
marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go Admiral
Nelson also on a capstan of gunmetal stands his masthead in Trafalgar
Square and ever when most obscured by that London smoke token is yet given
that a hidden hero is there for where there is smoke must be fire But neither
great Washington nor Napoleon nor Nelson will answer a single hail from
below however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks
upon which they gaze however it may be surmised that their spirits penetrate
through the thick haze of the future and descry what shoals and what rocks must
be shunned
It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the masthead standers of
the land with those of the sea but that in truth it is not so is plainly
evinced by an item for which Obed Macy the sole historian of Nantucket stands
accountable The worthy Obed tells us that in the early times of the
whalefishery ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit of the game the
people of that island erected lofty spars along the seacoast to which the
lookouts ascended by means of nailed cleats something as fowls go upstairs in
a henhouse A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of
New Zealand who upon descrying the game gave notice to the readymanned boats
nigh the beach But this custom has now become obsolete turn we then to the one
proper masthead that of a whaleship at sea The three mastheads are kept
manned from sunrise to sunset the seamen taking their regular turns as at the
helm and relieving each other every two hours In the serene weather of the
Tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the masthead nay to a dreamy meditative
man it is delightful There you stand a hundred feet above the silent decks
striding along the deep as if the masts were gigantic stilts while beneath you
and between your legs as it were swim the hugest monsters of the sea even as
ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes There
you stand lost in the infinite series of the sea with nothing ruffled but the
waves The tranced ship indolently rolls the drowsy trade winds blow
everything resolves you into languor For the most part in this tropic whaling
life a sublime uneventfulness invests you you hear no news read no gazettes
extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary
excitements you hear of no domestic afflictions bankrupt securities fall of
stocks are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner
for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks and your
bill of fare is immutable
In one of those Southern whalemen on a long three or four years voyage as
often happens the sum of the various hours you spend at the masthead would
amount to several entire months And it is much to be deplored that the place to
which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural
life should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy
inhabitiveness or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling such as
pertains to a bed a hammock a hearse a sentrybox a pulpit a coach or any
other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate
themselves Your most usual point of perch is the head of the tgallantmast
where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks almost peculiar to whalemen
called the tgallantcrosstrees Here tossed about by the sea the beginner
feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bulls horns To be sure in cold
weather you may carry your house aloft with you in the shape of a watchcoat
but properly speaking the thickest watchcoat is no more of a house than the
unclad body for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshly tabernacle and
cannot freely move about in it nor even move out of it without running great
risk of perishing like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter
so a watchcoat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope or
additional skin encasing you You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your
body and no more can you make a convenient closet of your watchcoat
Concerning all this it is much to be deplored that the mastheads of a
Southern whaleship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or pulpits
called crowsnests in which the lookouts of a Greenland whaler are protected
from the inclement weather of the frozen seas In the fireside narrative of
Captain Sleet entitled A Voyage among the Icebergs in quest of the Greenland
Whale and incidentally for the rediscovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of
Old Greenland in this admirable volume all standers of mastheads are
furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented
crowsnest of the Glacier which was the name of Captain Sleets good craft He
called it the Sleets crowsnest in honour of himself he being the original
inventor and patentee and free from all ridiculous false delicacy and holding
that if we call our own children after our own names we fathers being the
original inventors and patentees so likewise should we denominate after
ourselves any other apparatus we may beget In shape the Sleets crowsnest is
something like a large tierce or pipe it is open above however where it is
furnished with a movable sidescreen to keep to windward of your head in a hard
gale Being fixed on the summit of the mast you ascend into it through a little
traphatch in the bottom On the after side or side next the stern of the ship
is a comfortable seat with a locker underneath for umbrellas comforters and
coats In front is a leather rack in which to keep your speaking trumpet pipe
telescope and other nautical conveniences When Captain Sleet in person stood
his masthead in this crowsnest of his he tells us that he always had a rifle
with him also fixed in the rack together with a powderflask and shot for
the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales or vagrant seaunicorns
infesting those waters for you cannot successfully shoot at them from the deck
owing to the resistance of the water but to shoot down upon them is a very
different thing Now it was plainly a labour of love for Captain Sleet to
describe as he does all the little detailed conveniences of his crowsnest
but though he so enlarges upon many of these and though he treats us to a very
scientific account of his experiments in this crowsnest with a small compass
he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is
called the local attraction of all binnacle magnets an error ascribable to the
horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ships planks and in the Glaciers case
perhaps to there having been so many brokendown blacksmiths among her crew I
say that though the captain is very discreet and scientific here yet for all
his learned binnacle deviations azimuth compass observations and approximate
errors he knows very well Captain Sleet that he was not so much immersed in
those profound magnetic meditations as to fail being attracted occasionally
toward that wellreplenished little casebottle so nicely tucked in on one side
of his crowsnest within easy reach of his hand Though upon the whole I
greatly admire and even love the brave the honest and learned captain yet I
take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that casebottle
seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been while with
mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in
that birds nest within three or four perches of the pole
But if we Southern whalefishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain
Sleet and his Greenland men were yet that disadvantage is greatly
counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in
which we South fishers mostly float For one I used to lounge up the rigging
very leisurely resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg or anyone else
off duty whom I might find there then ascending a little way further and
throwing a lazy leg over the topsailyard take a preliminary view of the watery
pastures and so at last mount to my ultimate destination
Let me make a clean breast of it here and frankly admit that I kept but
sorry guard With the problem of the universe revolving in me how could I
being left completely to myself at such a thoughtengendering altitude how
could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships standing
orders Keep your weathereye open and sing out every time
And let me in this place movingly admonish you ye shipowners of Nantucket
Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow
eye given to unseasonable meditativeness and who offers to ship with the
Phædon instead of Bowditch in his head Beware of such an one I say your
whales must be seen before they can be killed and this sunkeneyed young
Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world and never make you one pint of
sperm the richer Nor are these monitions at all unneeded For nowadays the
whalefishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic melancholy and
absentminded young men disgusted with the carking cares of earth and seeking
sentiment in tar and blubber Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself
upon the masthead of some luckless disappointed whaleship and in moody phrase
ejaculates
»Roll on thou deep and dark blue ocean roll
Ten thousand blubberhunters sweep over thee in vain«
Very often do the captains of such ships take those absentminded young
philosophers to task upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient interest in
the voyage halfhinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honourable
ambition as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than
otherwise But all in vain those young Platonists have a notion that their
vision is imperfect they are shortsighted what use then to strain the
visual nerve They have left their operaglasses at home
»Why thou monkey« said a harpooneer to one of these lads »we ve been
cruising now hard upon three years and thou hast not raised a whale yet Whales
are scarce as hens teeth whenever thou art up here« Perhaps they were or
perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon but lulled into
such an opiumlike listlessness of vacant unconscious revery is this
absentminded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts that at last
he loses his identity takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image
of that deep blue bottomless soul pervading mankind and nature and every
strange halfseen gliding beautiful thing that eludes him every dimly
discovered uprising fin of some undiscernible form seems to him the embodiment
of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting
through it In this enchanted mood thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came
becomes diffused through time and space like Cranmers sprinkled Pantheistic
ashes forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over
There is no life in thee now except that rocking life imparted by a gently
rolling ship by her borrowed from the sea by the sea from the inscrutable
tides of God But while this sleep this dream is on ye move your foot or hand
an inch slip your hold at all and your identity comes back in horror Over
Descartian vortices you hover And perhaps at midday in the fairest weather
with one halfthrottled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the
summer sea no more to rise forever Heed it well ye Pantheists
Chapter XXXVI
The QuarterDeck
Enter Ahab Then all
It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe that one morning shortly
after breakfast Ahab as was his wont ascended the cabingangway to the deck
There most seacaptains usually walk at that hour as country gentlemen after
the same meal take a few turns in the garden
Soon his steady ivory stride was heard as to and fro he paced his old
rounds upon planks so familiar to his tread that they were all over dented
like geological stones with the peculiar mark of his walk Did you fixedly
gaze too upon that ribbed and dented brow there also you would see still
stranger footprints the footprints of his one unsleeping everpacing thought
But on the occasion in question those dents looked deeper even as his
nervous step that morning left a deeper mark And so full of his thought was
Ahab that at every uniform turn that he made now at the mainmast and now at
the binnacle you could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned and
pace in him as he paced so completely possessing him indeed that it all but
seemed the inward mould of every outer movement
»D ye mark him Flask« whispered Stubb »the chick that s in him pecks
the shell Twill soon be out«
The hours wore on Ahab now shut up within his cabin anon pacing the
deck with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect
It drew near the close of day Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks
and inserting his bone leg into the augerhole there and with one hand grasping
a shroud he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft
»Sir« said the mate astonished at an order seldom or never given on
shipboard except in some extraordinary case
»Send everybody aft« repeated Ahab »Mastheads there come down«
When the entire ships company were assembled and with curious and not
wholly unapprehensive faces were eyeing him for he looked not unlike the
weather horizon when a storm is coming up Ahab after rapidly glancing over the
bulwarks and then darting his eyes among the crew started from his standpoint
and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck
With bent head and halfslouched hat he continued to pace unmindful of the
wondering whispering among the men till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask
that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a
pedestrian feat But this did not last long Vehemently pausing he cried
»What do ye do when ye see a whale men«
»Sing out for him« was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed
voices
»Good« cried Ahab with a wild approval in his tones observing the hearty
animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them
»And what do ye next men«
»Lower away and after him«
»And what tune is it ye pull to men«
»A dead whale or a stove boat«
More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving grew the countenance
of the old man at every shout while the mariners began to gaze curiously at
each other as if marvelling how it was that they themselves became so excited
at such seemingly purposeless questions
But they were all eagerness again as Ahab now halfrevolving in his
pivothole with one hand reaching high up a shroud and tightly almost
convulsively grasping it addressed them thus
»All ye mastheaders have before now heard me give orders about a white
whale Look ye d ye see this Spanish ounce of gold« holding up a broad
bright coin to the sun »it is a sixteendollar piece men D ye see it Mr
Starbuck hand me yon topmaul«
While the mate was getting the hammer Ahab without speaking was slowly
rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket as if to heighten its
lustre and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself
producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the
mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him
Receiving the topmaul from Starbuck he advanced toward the mainmast with
the hammer uplifted in one hand exhibiting the gold with the other and with a
high raised voice exclaiming »Whosoever of ye raises me a whiteheaded whale
with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw whosoever of ye raises me that
whiteheaded whale with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke look ye
whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale he shall have this gold ounce
my boys«
»Huzza huzza« cried the seamen as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed
the act of nailing the gold to the mast
»It s a white whale I say« resumed Ahab as he threw down the topmaul
»a white whale Skin your eyes for him men look sharp for white water if ye
see but a bubble sing out«
All this while Tashtego Daggoo and Queequeg had looked on with even more
intense interest and surprise than the rest and at the mention of the wrinkled
brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately touched by some
specific recollection
»Captain Ahab« said Tashtego »that white whale must be the same that some
call MobyDick«
»MobyDick« shouted Ahab »Do ye know the white whale then Tash«
»Does he fantail a little curious sir before he goes down« said the
GayHeader 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 tree oh good many iron in him hide too captain«
cried Queequeg disjointedly »all twisketee betwisk like him him «
faltering hard for a word and screwing his hand round and round as though
uncorking a bottle »like him him «
»Corkscrew« cried Ahab »ay Queequeg the harpoons lie all twisted and
wrenched in him ay Daggoo his spout is a big one like a whole shock of
wheat and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual
sheepshearing ay Tashtego and he fantails like a split jib in a squall
Death and devils men it is MobyDick ye have seen MobyDick MobyDick«
»Captain Ahab« said Starbuck who with Stubb and Flask had thus far been
eyeing his superior with increasing surprise but at last seemed struck with a
thought which somewhat explained all the wonder »Captain Ahab I have heard of
MobyDick but it was not MobyDick that took off thy leg«
»Who told thee that« cried Ahab then pausing »Ay Starbuck ay my
hearties all round it was MobyDick that dismasted me MobyDick that brought
me to this dead stump I stand on now Ay ay« he shouted with a terrific
loud animal sob like that of a heartstricken moose »Ay ay it was that
accursed white whale that razeed me made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever
and a day« Then tossing both arms with measureless imprecations he shouted
out »Ay ay and I ll chase him round Good Hope and round the Horn and round
the Norway Maelstrom and round perditions flames before I give him up And
this is what ye have shipped for men to chase that white whale on both sides
of land and over all sides of earth till he spouts black blood and rolls fin
out What say ye men will ye splice hands on it now I think ye do look
brave«
»Ay ay« shouted the harpooneers and seamen running closer to the excited
old man »a sharp eye for the White Whale a sharp lance for MobyDick«
»God bless ye« he seemed to half sob and half shout »God bless ye men
Steward go draw the great measure of grog But what s this long face about
Mr Starbuck wilt thou not chase the White Whale art not game for MobyDick«
»I am game for his crooked jaw and for the jaws of Death too Captain Ahab
if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow but I came here to hunt
whales not my commanders vengeance How many barrels will thy vengeance yield
thee even if thou gettest it Captain Ahab it will not fetch thee much in our
Nantucket market«
»Nantucket market Hoot But come closer Starbuck thou requirest a little
lower layer If money s to be the measurer man and the accountants have
computed their great countinghouse the globe by girdling it with guineas one
to every three parts of an inch then let me tell thee that my vengeance will
fetch a great premium here«
»He smites his chest« whispered Stubb »what s that for methinks it rings
most vast but hollow«
»Vengeance on a dumb brute« cried Starbuck »that simply smote thee from
blindest instinct Madness To be enraged with a dumb thing Captain Ahab seems
blasphemous«
»Hark ye yet again the little lower layer All visible objects man are
but as pasteboard masks But in each event in the living act the undoubted
deed there some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of
its features from behind the unreasoning mask If man will strike strike
through the mask How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through
the wall To me the White Whale is that wall shoved near to me Sometimes I
think there s naught beyond But tis enough He tasks me he heaps me I see
in him outrageous strength with an inscrutable malice sinewing it That
inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate and be the White Whale agent or be
the White Whale principal I will wreak that hate upon him Talk not to me of
blasphemy man I d strike the sun if it insulted me For could the sun do
that then could I do the other since there is ever a sort of fair play herein
jealousy presiding over all creations But not my master man is even that fair
play Who s over me Truth hath no confines Take off thine eye more
intolerable than fiends glarings is a doltish stare So so thou reddenest and
palest my heat has melted thee to angerglow But look ye Starbuck what is
said in heat that thing unsays itself There are men from whom warm words are
small indignity I meant not to incense thee Let it go Look see yonder
Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn living breathing pictures painted by the sun
The pagan leopards the unrecking and unworshipping things that live and
seek and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel The crew man the
crew Are they not one and all with Ahab in this matter of the whale See
Stubb he laughs See yonder Chilian he snorts to think of it Stand up amid
the general hurricane thy one tost sapling cannot Starbuck And what is it
Reckon it Tis but to help strike a fin no wondrous feat for Starbuck What is
it more From this one poor hunt then the best lance out of all Nantucket
surely he will not hang back when every foremasthand has clutched a whetstone
Ah constrainings seize thee I see the billow lifts thee Speak but speak
Ay ay thy silence then that voices thee Aside Something shot from my
dilated nostrils he has inhaled it in his lungs Starbuck now is mine cannot
oppose me now without rebellion«
»God keep me keep us all« murmured Starbuck lowly
But in his joy at the enchanted tacit acquiescence of the mate Ahab did
not hear his foreboding invocation nor yet the low laugh from the hold nor yet
the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage nor yet the hollow flap of
the sails against the masts as for a moment their hearts sank in For again
Starbucks downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life the
subterranean laugh died away the winds blew on the sails filled out the ship
heaved and rolled as before Ah ye admonitions and warnings why stay ye not
when ye come But rather are ye predictions than warnings ye shadows Yet not
so much predictions from without as verifications of the foregoing things
within For with little external to constrain us the innermost necessities in
our being these still drive us on
»The measure the measure« cried Ahab
Receiving the brimming pewter and turning to the harpooneers he ordered
them to produce their weapons Then ranging them before him near the capstan
with their harpoons in their hands while his three mates stood at his side with
their lances and the rest of the ships company formed a circle round the
group he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew But
those wild eyes met his as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the
eye of their leader ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison
but alas only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian
»Drink and pass« he cried handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest
seaman »The crew alone now drink Round with it round Short draughts long
swallows men tis hot as Satans hoof So so it goes round excellently It
spiralises in ye forks out at the serpentsnapping eye Well done almost
drained That way it went this way it comes Hand it me here s a hollow
Men ye seem the years so brimming life is gulped and gone Steward refill
Attend now my braves I have mustered ye all round this capstan and ye
mates flank me with your lances and ye harpooneers stand there with your
irons and ye stout mariners ring me in that I may in some sort revive a
noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me O men you will yet see that
Ha boy come back bad pennies come not sooner Hand it me Why now this
pewter had run brimming again wert not thou St Vitus imp away thou ague
Advance ye mates Cross your lances full before me Well done Let me touch
the axis« So saying with extended arm he grasped the three level radiating
lances at their crossed centre while so doing suddenly and nervously twitched
them meanwhile glancing intently from Starbuck to Stubb from Stubb to Flask
It seemed as though by some nameless interior volition he would fain have
shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of
his own magnetic life The three mates quailed before his strong sustained and
mystic aspect Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him the honest eye of
Starbuck fell downright
»In vain« cried Ahab »but maybe tis well For did ye three but once
take the fullforced shock then mine own electric thing that had perhaps
expired from out me Perchance too it would have dropped ye dead Perchance ye
need it not Down lances And now ye mates I do appoint ye three cupbearers
to my three pagan kinsmen there yon three most honourable gentlemen and
noblemen my valiant harpooneers Disdain the task What when the great Pope
washes the feet of beggars using his tiara for ewer Oh my sweet cardinals
your own condescension that shall bend ye to it I do not order ye ye will it
Cut your seizings and draw the poles ye harpooneers«
Silently obeying the order the three harpooneers now stood with the
detached iron part of their harpoons some three feet long held barbs up
before him
»Stab me not with that keen steel Cant them cant them over know ye not
the goblet end Turn up the socket So so now ye cupbearers advance The
irons take them hold them while I fill« Forthwith slowly going from one
officer to the other he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from
the pewter
»Now three to three ye stand Commend the murderous chalices Bestow them
ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league Ha Starbuck but the
deed is done Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it Drink ye harpooneers
drink and swear ye men that man the deathful whaleboats bow Death to
MobyDick God hunt us all if we do not hunt MobyDick to his death« The long
barbed steel goblets were lifted and to cries and maledictions against the
White Whale the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss Starbuck
paled and turned and shivered Once more and finally the replenished pewter
went the rounds among the frantic crew when waving his free hand to them they
all dispersed and Ahab retired within his cabin
Chapter XXXVII
Sunset
The cabin by the stern windows Ahab sitting alone and gazing out
I leave a white and turbid wake pale waters paler cheeks whereer I sail The
envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track let them but first I pass
Yonder by the everbrimming goblets rim the warm waves blush like wine
The gold brow plumbs the blue The diver sun slow dived from noon goes
down my soul mounts up she wearies with her endless hill Is then the crown
too heavy that I wear this Iron Crown of Lombardy Yet is it bright with many a
gem I the wearer see not its far flashings but darkly feel that I wear that
that dazzlingly confounds Tis iron that I know not gold Tis split too
that I feel the jagged edge galls me so my brain seems to beat against the
solid metal ay steel skull mine the sort that needs no helmet in the most
brainbattering fight
Dry heat upon my brow Oh time was when as the sunrise nobly spurred me
so the sunset soothed No more This lovely light it lights not me all
loveliness is anguish to me since I can neer enjoy Gifted with the high
perception I lack the low enjoying power damned most subtly and most
malignantly damned in the midst of Paradise Good night good night Waving
his hand he moves from the window
Twas not so hard a task I thought to find one stubborn at the least but
my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels and they revolve Or
if you will like so many anthills of powder they all stand before me and I
their match Oh hard that to fire others the match itself must needs be
wasting What I ve dared I ve willed and what I ve willed I ll do They
think me mad Starbuck does but I m demoniac I am madness maddened That
wild madness that s only calm to comprehend itself The prophecy was that I
should be dismembered and Ay I lost this leg I now prophesy that I will
dismember my dismemberer Now then be the prophet and the fulfiller one That
s more than ye ye great gods ever were I laugh and hoot at ye ye
cricketplayers ye pugilists ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes I will not
say as schoolboys do to bullies Take some one of your own size dont pommel
me No ye ve knocked me down and I am up again but ye have run and hidden
Come forth from behind your cotton bags I have no long gun to reach ye Come
Ahabs compliments to ye come and see if ye can swerve me Swerve me ye cannot
swerve me else ye swerve yourselves man has ye there Swerve me The path to
my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run
Over unsounded gorges through the rifled hearts of mountains under torrents
beds unerringly I rush Naught s an obstacle naught s an angle to the iron
way
Chapter XXXVIII
Dusk
By the mainmast Starbuck leaning against it
My soul is more than matched she s overmanned and by a madman Insufferable
sting that sanity should ground arms on such a field But he drilled deep down
and blasted all my reason out of me I think I see his impious end but feel
that I must help him to it Will I nill I the ineffable thing has tied me to
him tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut Horrible old man Who s over
him he cries ay he would be a democrat to all above look how he lords it
over all below Oh I plainly see my miserable office to obey rebelling and
worse yet to hate with touch of pity For in his eyes I read some lurid woe
would shrivel me up had I it Yet is there hope Time and tide flow wide The
hated whale has the round watery world to swim in as the small goldfish has
its glassy globe His heaveninsulting purpose God may wedge aside I would up
heart were it not like lead But my whole clock s run down my heart the
allcontrolling weight I have no key to lift again
A burst of revelry from the forecastle
Oh God to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of human mothers
in them Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea The White Whale is their
demigorgon Hark the infernal orgies that revelry is forward mark the
unfaltering silence aft Methinks it pictures life Foremost through the
sparkling sea shoots on the gay embattled bantering bow but only to drag dark
Ahab after it where he broods within his sternward cabin builded over the dead
water of the wake and further on hunted by its wolfish gurglings The long
howl thrills me through Peace ye revellers and set the watch Oh life tis
in an hour like this with soul beat down and held to knowledge as wild
untutored things are forced to feed Oh life tis now that I do feel the
latent horror in thee but tis not me that horror s out of me and with the
soft feeling of the human in me yet will I try to fight ye ye grim phantom
futures Stand by me hold me bind me O ye blessed influences
Chapter XXXIX
First NightWatch
ForeTop
Stubb solus and mending a brace
Ha ha ha ha hem clear my throat I ve been thinking over it ever since
and that ha ha s the final consequence Why so Because a laugh s the wisest
easiest answer to all that s queer and come what will one comfort s always
left that unfailing comfort is it s all predestinated I heard not all his
talk with Starbuck but to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the
other evening felt Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him too I twigged it knew
it had had the gift might readily have prophesied it for when I clapped my
eye upon his skull I saw it Well Stubb wise Stubb that s my title well
Stubb what of it Stubb Here s a carcase I know not all that may be coming
but be it what it will I ll go to it laughing Such a waggish leering as lurks
in all your horribles I feel funny Fa la lirra skirra What s my juicy
little pear at home doing now Crying its eyes out Giving a party to the last
arrived harpooneers I dare say gay as a frigates pennant and so am I fa
la lirra skirra Oh
We ll drink tonight with hearts as light
To love as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beakers brim
And break on the lips while meeting
A brave stave that who calls Mr Starbuck Ay ay sir Aside he s my
superior he has his too if I m not mistaken Ay ay sir just through with
this job coming
Chapter XL
Midnight Forecastle
Harpooneers and Sailors
Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing lounging leaning and lying
in various attitudes all singing in chorus
Farewell and adieu to you Spanish ladies
Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain
Our captains commanded
1st Nantucket Sailor
Oh boys dont be sentimental it s bad for the digestion Take a tonic
follow me
Sings and all follow
Our captain stood upon the deck
A spyglass in his hand
Aviewing of those gallant whales
That blew at every strand
Oh your tubs in your boats my boys
And by your braces stand
And we ll have one of those fine whales
Hand boys over hand
So be cheery my lads may your hearts never fail
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale
Mates Voice from the QuarterDeck
Eight bells there forward
2nd Nantucket Sailor
Avast the chorus Eight bells there d ye hear bellboy Strike the bell
eight thou Pip thou blackling and let me call the watch I ve the sort of
mouth for that the hogshead mouth So so thrusts his head down the scuttle
Star boleens ahoy Eight bells there below Tumble up
Dutch Sailor
Grand snoozing tonight maty fat night for that I mark this in our old
Moguls wine it s quite as deadening to some as filliping to others We sing
they sleep ay lie down there like groundtier butts At em again There
take this copperpump and hail em through it Tell em to avast dreaming of
their lasses Tell em it s the resurrection they must kiss their last and
come to judgment That s the way that s it thy throat aint spoiled with
eating Amsterdam butter
French Sailor
Hist boys let s have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay
What say ye There comes the other watch Stand by all legs Pip little Pip
hurrah with your tambourine
Pip
Sulky and sleepy
Dont know where it is
French Sailor
Beat thy belly then and wag thy ears Jig it men I say merry s the word
hurrah Damn me wont you dance Form now Indianfile and gallop into the
doubleshuffle Throw yourselves Legs legs
Iceland Sailor
I dont like your floor maty it s too springy to my taste I m used to
icefloors I m sorry to throw cold water on the subject but excuse me
Maltese Sailor
Me too where s your girls Who but a fool would take his left hand by his
right and say to himself how d ye do Partners I must have partners
Sicilian Sailor
Ay girls and a green then I ll hop with ye yea turn grasshopper
LongIsland Sailor
Well well ye sulkies there s plenty more of us Hoe corn when you may say
I All legs go to harvest soon Ah here comes the music now for it
Azore Sailor
Ascending and pitching the tambourine up the scuttle
Here you are Pip and there s the windlassbitts up you mount Now boys
The half of them dance to the tambourine some go below some sleep or lie
among the coils of rigging Oaths aplenty
Azore Sailor
Dancing
Go it Pip Bang it bellboy Rig it dig it stig it quig it bellboy Make
fireflies break the jinglers
Pip
Jinglers you say there goes another dropped off I pound it so
China Sailor
Rattle thy teeth then and pound away make a pagoda of thyself
French Sailor
Merrymad Hold up thy hoop Pip till I jump through it Split jibs tear
yourselves
Tashtego
Quietly smoking
That s a white man he calls that fun humph I save my sweat
Old Manx Sailor
I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are dancing over I
ll dance over your grave I will that s the bitterest threat of your
nightwomen that beat headwinds round corners O Christ to think of the green
navies and the greenskulled crews Well well belike the whole world s a
ball as you scholars have it and so tis right to make one ballroom of it
Dance on lads you re young I was once
3rd Nantucket Sailor
Spell oh whew this is worse than pulling after whales in a calm give us a
whiff Tash
They cease dancing and gather in clusters Meantime the sky darkens the wind
rises
Lascar Sailor
By Brahma boys it ll be douse sail soon The skyborn hightide Ganges
turned to wind Thou showest thy black brow Seeva
Maltese Sailor
Reclining and shaking his cap
It s the waves the snows caps turn to jig it now They ll shake their
tassels soon Now would all the waves were women then I d go drown and
chassee with them evermore There s naught so sweet on earth heaven may not
match it as those swift glances of warm wild bosoms in the dance when the
overarbouring arms hide such ripe bursting grapes
Sicilian Sailor
Reclining
Tell me not of it Hark ye lad fleet interlacings of the limbs lithe
swayings coyings flutterings lip heart hip all graze unceasing touch
and go not taste observe ye else come satiety Eh Pagan Nudging
Tahitian Sailor
Reclining on a mat
Hail holy nakedness of our dancing girls the HeevaHeeva Ah lowveiled
highpalmed Tahiti I still rest me on thy mat but the soft soil has slid I
saw thee woven in the wood my mat green the first day I brought ye thence now
worn and wilted quite Ah me not thou nor I can bear the change How then if
so be transplanted to yon sky Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitees peak
of spears when they leap down the crags and drown the villages The blast
the blast Up spine and meet it Leaps to his feet
Portuguese Sailor
How the sea rolls swashing gainst the side Stand by for reefing hearties the
winds are just crossing swords pellmell they ll go lunging presently
Danish Sailor
Crack crack old ship so long as thou crackest thou holdest Well done The
mate there holds ye to it stiffly He s no more afraid than the isle fort at
Cattegat put there to fight the Baltic with stormlashed guns on which the
seasalt cakes
4th Nantucket Sailor
He has his orders mind ye that I heard old Ahab tell him he must always kill a
squall something as they burst a waterspout with a pistol fire your ship
right into it
English Sailor
Blood but that old man s a grand old cove We are the lads to hunt him up his
whale
All
Ay ay
Old Manx Sailor
How the three pines shake Pines are the hardest sort of tree to live when
shifted to any other soil and here there s none but the crews cursed clay
Steady helmsman steady This is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap
ashore and keeled hulls split at sea Our captain has his birthmark look
yonder boys there s another in the sky luridlike ye see all else pitch
black
Daggoo
What of that Who s afraid of black s afraid of me I m quarried out of it
Spanish Sailor
Aside He wants to bully ah the old grudge makes me touchy Advancing
Ay harpooneer thy race is the undeniable dark side of mankind devilish dark
at that No offence
Daggoo grimly
None
St Jagos Sailor
That Spaniard s mad or drunk But that cant be or else in his one case our
old Moguls firewaters are somewhat long in working
5th Nantucket Sailor
What s that I saw lightning Yes
Spanish Sailor
No Daggoo showing his teeth
Daggoo springing
Swallow thine manikin White skin white liver
Spanish Sailor meeting him
Knife thee heartily big frame small spirit
All
A row a row a row
Tashtego with a whiff
A row alow and a row aloft Gods and men both brawlers Humph
Belfast Sailor
A row arrah a row The Virgin be blessed a row Plunge in with ye
English Sailor
Fair play Snatch the Spaniards knife A ring a ring
Old Manx Sailor
Ready formed There the ringed horizon In that ring Cain struck Abel Sweet
work right work No Why then God madst thou the ring
Mates Voice from the QuarterDeck
Hands by the halyards in topgallantsails Stand by to reef topsails
All
The squall the squall jump my jollies They scatter
Pip shrinking under the windlass
Jollies Lord help such jollies Crish crash there goes the jibstay
Blangwhang God Duck lower Pip here comes the royal yard It s worse than
being in the whirled woods the last day of the year Who d go climbing after
chestnuts now But there they go all cursing and here I dont Fine prospects
to em they re on the road to heaven Hold on hard Jimmini what a squall
But those chaps there are worse yet they are your white squalls they White
squalls white whale shirr shirr Here have I heard all their chat just now
and the White Whale shirr shirr but spoken of once and only this evening
it makes me jingle all over like my tambourine that anaconda of an old man
swore em in to hunt him Oh thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon
darkness have mercy on this small black boy down here preserve him from all
men that have no bowels to feel fear
Chapter XLI
MobyDick
I Ishmael was one of that crew my shouts had gone up with the rest my oath
had been welded with theirs and stronger I shouted and more did I hammer and
clinch my oath because of the dread in my soul A wild mystical sympathetical
feeling was in me Ahabs quenchless feud seemed mine With greedy ears I
learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others
had taken our oaths of violence and revenge
For some time past though at intervals only the unaccompanied secluded
White Whale had haunted those uncivilised seas mostly frequented by the sperm
whale fishermen But not all of them knew of his existence only a few of them
comparatively had knowingly seen him while the number who as yet had actually
and knowingly given battle to him was small indeed For owing to the large
number of whalecruisers the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire
watery circumference many of them adventurously pushing their quest along
solitary latitudes so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or more on a
stretch to encounter a single newstelling sail of any sort the inordinate
length of each separate voyage the irregularity of the times of sailing from
home all these with other circumstances direct and indirect long obstructed
the spread through the whole worldwide whalingfleet of the special
individualising tidings concerning MobyDick It was hardly to be doubted that
several vessels reported to have encountered at such or such a time or on such
or such a meridian a sperm whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity which
whale after doing great mischief to his assailants had completely escaped
them to some minds it was not an unfair presumption I say that the whale in
question must have been no other than MobyDick Yet as of late the sperm whale
fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent instances of great
ferocity cunning and malice in the monster attacked therefore it was that
those who by accident ignorantly gave battle to MobyDick such hunters
perhaps for the most part were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred
more as it were to the perils of the sperm whale fishery at large than to the
individual cause In that way mostly the disastrous encounter between Ahab and
the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded
And as for those who previously hearing of the White Whale by chance
caught sight of him in the beginning of the thing they had every one of them
almost as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him as for any other whale of that
species But at length such calamities did ensue in these assaults not
restricted to sprained wrists and ankles broken limbs or devouring amputations
but fatal to the last degree of fatality those repeated disastrous repulses
all accumulating and piling their terrors upon MobyDick those things had gone
far to shake the fortitude of many brave hunters to whom the story of the White
Whale had eventually come
Nor did wild rumours of all sorts fail to exaggerate and still the more
horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters For not only do fabulous
rumours naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events
as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi but in maritime life far more
than in that of terrafirma wild rumours abound wherever there is any adequate
reality for them to cling to And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter
so the whalefishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life in the
wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumours which sometimes circulate there
For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and
superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors but of all sailors they are by all
odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly
astonishing in the sea face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels
but hand to jaw give battle to them Alone in such remotest waters that
though you sailed a thousand miles and passed a thousand shores you would not
come to any chiselled hearthstone or aught hospitable beneath that part of the
sun in such latitudes and longitudes pursuing too such a calling as he does
the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant
with many a mighty birth
No wonder then that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over the
wildest watery spaces the outblown rumours of the White Whale did in the end
incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints and halfformed foetal
suggestions of supernatural agencies which eventually invested MobyDick with
new terrors unborrowed from anything that visibly appears So that in many cases
such a panic did he finally strike that few who by those rumours at least had
heard of the White Whale few of those hunters were willing to encounter the
perils of his jaw
But there were still other and more vital practical influences at work Not
even at the present day has the original prestige of the sperm whale as
fearfully distinguished from all other species of the leviathan died out of the
minds of the whalemen as a body There are those this day among them who
though intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or
right whale would perhaps either from professional inexperience or
incompetency or timidity decline a contest with the sperm whale at any rate
there are plenty of whalemen especially among those whaling nations not sailing
under the American flag who have never hostilely encountered the sperm whale
but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster
primitively pursued in the North seated on their hatches these men will
hearken with a childish fireside interest and awe to the wild strange tales of
Southern whaling Nor is the preeminent tremendousness of the great sperm whale
anywhere more feelingly comprehended than on board of those prows which stem
him
And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary times
thrown its shadow before it we find some book naturalists Olassen and
Povelson declaring the sperm whale not only to be a consternation to every
other creature in the sea but also to be so incredibly ferocious as continually
to be athirst for human blood Nor even down to so late a time as Cuviers were
these or almost similar impressions effaced For in his Natural History the
Baron himself affirms that at sight of the sperm whale all fish sharks
included are struck with the most lively terrors and often in the precipitancy
of their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to cause
instantaneous death And however the general experiences in the fishery may
amend such reports as these yet in their full terribleness even to the
bloodthirsty item of Povelson the superstitious belief in them is in some
vicissitudes of their vocation revived in the minds of the hunters
So that overawed by the rumours and portents concerning him not a few of
the fishermen recalled in reference to MobyDick the earlier days of the sperm
whale fishery when it was oftentimes hard to induce longpractised right
whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring warfare such men
protesting that although other leviathans might be hopefully pursued yet to
chase and point lance at such an apparition as the sperm whale was not for
mortal man That to attempt it would be inevitably to be torn into a quick
eternity On this head there are some remarkable documents that may be
consulted
Nevertheless some there were who even in the face of these things were
ready to give chase to MobyDick and a still greater number who chancing only
to hear of him distantly and vaguely without the specific details of any
certain calamity and without superstitious accompaniments were sufficiently
hardy not to flee from the battle if offered
One of the wild suggestings referred to as at last coming to be linked with
the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined was the unearthly
conceit that MobyDick was ubiquitous that he had actually been encountered in
opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time
Nor credulous as such minds must have been was this conceit altogether
without some faint show of superstitious probability For as the secrets of the
currents in the seas have never yet been divulged even to the most erudite
research so the hidden ways of the sperm whale when beneath the surface remain
in great part unaccountable to his pursuers and from time to time have
originated the most curious and contradictory speculations regarding them
especially concerning the mystic modes whereby after sounding to a great depth
he transports himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant
points
It is a thing well known to both American and English whaleships and as
well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby that some
whales have been captured far north in the Pacific in whose bodies have been
found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas Nor is it to be
gainsaid that in some of these instances it has been declared that the interval
of time between the two assaults could not have exceeded very many days Hence
by inference it has been believed by some whalemen that the NorWest Passage
so long a problem to man was never a problem to the whale So that here in the
real living experience of living men the prodigies related in old times of the
inland Strello mountain in Portugal near whose top there was said to be a lake
in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface and that still more
wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse whose waters were
believed to have come from the Holy Land by an underground passage these
fabulous narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whaleman
Forced into familiarity then with such prodigies as these and knowing
that after repeated intrepid assaults the White Whale had escaped alive it
cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in
their superstitions declaring MobyDick not only ubiquitous but immortal for
immortality is but ubiquity in time that though groves of spears should be
planted in his flanks he would still swim away unharmed or if indeed he should
ever be made to spout thick blood such a sight would be but a ghastly
deception for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away his
unsullied jet would once more be seen
But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings there was enough in the
earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike the
imagination with unwonted power For it was not so much his uncommon bulk that
so much distinguished him from other sperm whales but as was elsewhere thrown
out a peculiar snowwhite wrinkled forehead and a high pyramidical white
hump These were his prominent features the tokens whereby even in the
limitless uncharted seas he revealed his identity at a long distance to
those who knew him
The rest of his body was so streaked and spotted and marbled with the same
shrouded hue that in the end he had gained his distinctive appellation of the
White Whale a name indeed literally justified by his vivid aspect when seen
gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea leaving a milkyway wake of creamy
foam all spangled with golden gleamings
Nor was it his unwonted magnitude nor his remarkable hue nor yet his
deformed lower jaw that so much invested the whale with natural terror as that
unexampled intelligent malignity which according to specific accounts he had
over and over again evinced in his assaults More than all his treacherous
retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else For when swimming
before his exulting pursuers with every apparent symptom of alarm he had
several times been known to turn round suddenly and bearing down upon them
either stave their boats to splinters or drive them back in consternation to
their ship
Already several fatalities had attended his chase But though similar
disasters however little bruited ashore were by no means unusual in the
fishery yet in most instances such seemed the White Whales infernal
aforethought of ferocity that every dismembering or death that he caused was
not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent
Judge then to what pitches of inflamed distracted fury the minds of his
more desperate hunters were impelled when amid the chips of chewed boats and
the sinking limbs of torn comrades they swam out of the white curds of the
whales direful wrath into the serene exasperating sunlight that smiled on as
if at a birth or a bridal
His three boats stove around him and oars and men both whirling in the
eddies one captain seizing the lineknife from his broken prow had dashed at
the whale as an Arkansas duellist at his foe blindly seeking with a sixinch
blade to reach the fathomdeep life of the whale That captain was Ahab And
then it was that suddenly sweeping his sickleshaped lower jaw beneath him
MobyDick had reaped away Ahabs leg as a mower a blade of grass in the field
No turbaned Turk no hired Venetian or Malay could have smote him with more
seeming malice Small reason was there to doubt then that ever since that
almost fatal encounter Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the
whale all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to
identify with him not only all his bodily woes but all his intellectual and
spiritual exasperations The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac
incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in
them till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung That
intangible malignity which has been from the beginning to whose dominion even
the modern Christians ascribe onehalf of the worlds which the ancient Ophites
of the East reverenced in their statue devil Ahab did not fall down and
worship it like them but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred
White Whale he pitted himself all mutilated against it All that most maddens
and torments all that stirs up the lees of things all truth with malice in it
all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain all the subtle demonisms of life
and thought all evil to crazy Ahab were visibly personified and made
practically assailable in MobyDick He piled upon the whales white hump the
sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down and
then as if his chest had been a mortar he burst his hot hearts shell upon it
It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the
precise time of his bodily dismemberment Then in darting at the monster knife
in hand he had but given loose to a sudden passionate corporal animosity and
when he received the stroke that tore him he probably but felt the agonising
bodily laceration but nothing more Yet when by this collision forced to turn
toward home and for long months of days and weeks Ahab and anguish lay
stretched together in one hammock rounding in midwinter that dreary howling
Patagonian Cape then it was that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one
another and so interfusing made him mad That it was only then on the
homeward voyage after the encounter that the final monomania seized him seems
all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage he was a
raving lunatic and though unlimbed of a leg yet such vital strength yet
lurked in his Egyptian chest and was moreover intensified by his delirium that
his mates were forced to lace him fast even there as he sailed raving in his
hammock In a straitjacket he swung to the mad rockings of the gales And
when running into more sufferable latitudes the ship with mild stunsails
spread floated across the tranquil tropics and to all appearances the old
mans delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells and he came
forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air even then when he bore
that firm collected front however pale and issued his calm orders once again
and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now gone even then Ahab in
his hidden self raved on Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline
thing When you think it fled it may have but become transfigured into some
still subtler form Ahabs full lunacy subsided not but deepeningly contracted
like the unabated Hudson when that noble Northman flows narrowly but
unfathomably through the Highland gorge But as in his narrowflowing
monomania not one jot of Ahabs broad madness had been left behind so in that
broad madness not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished That
before living agent now became the living instrument If such a furious trope
may stand his special lunacy stormed his general sanity and carried it and
turned all its concentrated cannon upon its own mad mark so that far from
having lost his strength Ahab to that one end did now possess a thousandfold
more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable
object
This is much yet Ahabs larger darker deeper part remains unhinted But
vain to popularise profundities and all truth is profound Winding far down
from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand
however grand and wonderful now quit it and take your way ye nobler sadder
souls to those vast Roman halls of Thermes where far beneath the fantastic
towers of mans upper earth his root of grandeur his whole awful essence sits
in bearded state an antique buried beneath antiquities and throned on torsoes
So with a broken throne the great gods mock that captive king so like a
Caryatid he patient sits upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures
of ages Wind ye down there ye prouder sadder souls question that proud sad
king A family likeness ay he did beget ye ye young exiled royalties and
from your grim sire only will the old Statesecret come
Now in his heart Ahab had some glimpse of this namely all my means are
sane my motive and my object mad Yet without power to kill or change or shun
the fact he likewise knew that to mankind he did long dissemble in some sort
did still But that thing of his dissembling was only subject to his
perceptibility not to his will determinate Nevertheless so well did he
succeed in that dissembling that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last
no Nantucketer thought him otherwise than but naturally grieved and that to the
quick with the terrible casualty which had overtaken him
The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly ascribed
to a kindred cause And so too all the added moodiness which always afterward
to the very day of sailing in the Pequod on the present voyage sat brooding on
his brow Nor is it so very unlikely that far from distrusting his fitness for
another whaling voyage on account of such dark symptoms the calculating people
of that prudent isle were inclined to harbour the conceit that for those very
reasons he was all the better qualified and set on edge for a pursuit so full
of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales Gnawed within and scorched
without with the unfixed unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea such an
one could he be found would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his
lance against the most appalling of all brutes Or if for any reason thought to
be corporeally incapacitated for that yet such an one would seem superlatively
competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack But be all this as
it may certain it is that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up
and keyed in him Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one
only and allengrossing object of hunting the White Whale Had any one of his
old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then how
soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a
fiendish man They were bent on profitable cruises the profit to be counted
down in dollars from the mint He was intent on an audacious immitigable and
supernatural revenge
Here then was this grayheaded ungodly old man chasing with curses a
Jobs whale round the world at the head of a crew too chiefly made up of
mongrel renegades and castaways and cannibals morally enfeebled also by
the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or rightmindedness in Starbuck the
invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb and the
pervading mediocrity in Flask Such a crew so officered seemed specially
picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac
revenge How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old mans ire by
what evil magic their souls were possessed that at times his hate seemed almost
theirs the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his how all this came
to be what the White Whale was to them or how to their unconscious
understandings also in some dim unsuspected way he might have seemed the
gliding great demon of the seas of life all this to explain would be to dive
deeper than Ishmael can go The subterranean miner that works in us all how can
one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting muffled sound of his
pick Who does not feel the irresistible arm drag What skiff in tow of a
seventyfour can stand still For one I gave myself up to the abandonment of
the time and the place but while yet all arush to encounter the whale could
see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill
Chapter XLII
The Whiteness of the Whale
What the White Whale was to Ahab has been hinted what at times he was to me
as yet remains unsaid
Aside from those more obvious considerations touching MobyDick which could
not but occasionally awaken in any mans soul some alarm there was another
thought or rather vague nameless horror concerning him which at times by its
intensity completely overpowered all the rest and yet so mystical and wellnigh
ineffable was it that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form
It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me But how can
I hope to explain myself here and yet in some dim random way explain myself
I must else all these chapters might be naught
Though in many natural objects whiteness refiningly enhances beauty as if
imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles japonicas and pearls
and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal
preeminence in this hue even the barbaric grand old kings of Pegu placing the
title »Lord of the White Elephants« above all their other magniloquent
ascriptions of dominion and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same
snowwhite quadruped in the royal standard and the Hanoverian flag bearing the
one figure of a snowwhite charger and the great Austrian Empire Cæsarian
heir to overlording Rome having for the imperial colour the same imperial hue
and though this preeminence in it applies to the human race itself giving the
white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe and though besides all this
whiteness has been even made significant of gladness for among the Romans a
white stone marked a joyful day and though in other mortal sympathies and
symbolisings this same hue is made the emblem of many touching noble things
the innocence of brides the benignity of age though among the Red Men of
America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honour
though in many climes whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine
of the Judge and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by
milkwhite steeds though even in the higher mysteries of the most august
religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power by
the Persian fireworshippers the white forked flame being held the holiest on
the altar and in the Greek mythologies Great Jove himself being made incarnate
in a snowwhite bull and though to the noble Iroquois the midwinter sacrifice
of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology that
spotless faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the
Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity and though directly
from the Latin word for white all Christian priests derive the name of one part
of their sacred vesture the alb or tunic worn beneath the cassock and though
among the holy pomps of the Romish faith white is specially employed in the
celebration of the Passion of our Lord though in the Vision of St John white
robes are given to the redeemed and the fourandtwenty elders stand clothed in
white before the great white throne and the Holy One that sitteth there white
like wool yet for all these accumulated associations with whatever is sweet
and honourable and sublime there yet lurks an elusive something in the
innermost idea of this hue which strikes more of panic to the soul than that
redness which affrights in blood
This elusive quality it is which causes the thought of whiteness when
divorced from more kindly associations and coupled with any object terrible in
itself to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds Witness the white bear
of the Poles and the white shark of the Tropics what but their smooth flaky
whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are That ghastly whiteness
it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness even more loathsome than
terrific to the dumb gloating of their aspect So that not the fiercefanged
tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the whiteshrouded bear or
shark4
Bethink thee of the albatross whence come those clouds of spiritual
wonderment and pale dread in which that white phantom sails in all
imaginations Not Coleridge first threw that spell but Gods great
unflattering laureate Nature5
Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the White
Steed of the Prairies a magnificent milkwhite charger largeeyed
smallheaded bluffchested and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his
lofty overscorning carriage He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild
horses whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and
the Alleghanies At their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen
star which every evening leads on the hosts of light The flashing cascade of
his mane the curving comet of his tail invested him with housings more
resplendent than gold and silver beaters could have furnished him A most
imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen Western world which to
the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the glories of those primeval
times when Adam walked majestic as a god bluffbowed and fearless as this
mighty steed Whether marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of
countless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over the plains like an Ohio or
whether with his circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon the
White Steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through his
cool milkiness in whatever aspect he presented himself always to the bravest
Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe Nor can it be
questioned from what stands on legendary record of this noble horse that it was
his spiritual whiteness chiefly which so clothed him with divineness and that
this divineness had that in it which though commanding worship at the same
time enforced a certain nameless terror
But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that accessory
and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and Albatross
What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks the
eye as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin It is that
whiteness which invests him a thing expressed by the name he bears The Albino
is as well made as other men has no substantive deformity and yet this mere
aspect of allpervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the
ugliest abortion Why should this be so
Nor in quite other aspects does Nature in her least palpable but not the
less malicious agencies fail to enlist among her forces this crowning attribute
of the terrible From its snowy aspect the gauntleted ghost of the Southern
seas has been denominated the White Squall Nor in some historic instances has
the art of human malice omitted so potent an auxiliary How wildly it heightens
the effect of that passage in Froissart when masked in the snowy symbol of
their faction the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the
marketplace
Nor in some things does the common hereditary experience of all mankind
fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue It cannot well be
doubted that the one visible quality in the aspect of the dead which most
appals the gazer is the marble pallor lingering there as if indeed that pallor
were as much like the badge of consternation in the other world as of mortal
trepidation here And from that pallor of the dead we borrow the expressive hue
of the shroud in which we wrap them Nor even in our superstitions do we fail to
throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms all ghosts rising in a
milkwhite fog Yea while these terrors seize us let us add that even the
king of terrors when personified by the evangelist rides on his pallid horse
Therefore in his other moods symbolise whatever grand or gracious thing he
will by whiteness no man can deny that in its profoundest idealised
significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul
But though without dissent this point be fixed how is mortal man to account
for it To analyse it would seem impossible Can we then by the citation of
some of those instances wherein this thing of whiteness though for the time
either wholly or in great part stripped of all direct associations calculated to
impart to it aught fearful but nevertheless is found to exert over us the
same sorcery however modified can we thus hope to light upon some chance
clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek
Let us try But in a matter like this subtlety appeals to subtlety and
without imagination no man can follow another into these halls And though
doubtless some at least of the imaginative impressions about to be presented
may have been shared by most men yet few perhaps were entirely conscious of
them at the time and therefore may not be able to recall them now
Why to the man of untutored ideality who happens to be but loosely
acquainted with the peculiar character of the day does the bare mention of
Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long dreary speechless processions of
slowpacing pilgrims downcast and hooded with newfallen snow Or to the
unread unsophisticated Protestant of the Middle American States why does the
passing mention of a White Friar or a White Nun evoke such an eyeless statue in
the soul
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings
which will not wholly account for it that makes the White Tower of London tell
so much more strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American than those
other storied structures its neighbours the Byward Tower or even the Bloody
And those sublimer towers the White Mountains of New Hampshire whence in
peculiar moods comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare
mention of that name while the thought of Virginias Blue Ridge is full of a
soft dewy distant dreaminess Or why irrespective of all latitudes and
longitudes does the name of the White Sea exert such a spectralness over the
fancy while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal thoughts of long
lacquered mild afternoons on the waves followed by the gaudiest and yet
sleepiest of sunsets Or to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance purely
addressed to the fancy why in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe
does the tall pale man of the Hartz forests whose changeless pallor
unrustlingly glides through the green of the groves why is this phantom more
terrible than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg
Nor is it altogether the remembrance of her cathedraltoppling
earthquakes nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas nor the tearlessness of
arid skies that never rain nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires
wrenched copestones and crosses all adroop like canted yards of anchored
fleets and her suburban avenues of housewalls lying over upon each other as
a tossed pack of cards it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima
the strangest saddest city thou canst see For Lima has taken the white veil
and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe Old as Pizarro this
whiteness keeps her ruins forever new admits not the cheerful greenness of
complete decay spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy
that fixes its own distortions
I know that to the common apprehension this phenomenon of whiteness is not
confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise
terrible nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those
appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely consists in this one
phenomenon especially when exhibited under any form at all approaching to
muteness or universality What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be
respectively elucidated by the following examples
First The mariner when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands if by
night he hear the roar of breakers starts to vigilance and feels just enough
of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties but under precisely similar
circumstances let him be called from his hammock to view his ship sailing
through a midnight sea of milky whiteness as if from encircling headlands
shoals of combed white bears were swimming round him then he feels a silent
superstitious dread the shrouded phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to
him as a real ghost in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings
heart and helm they both go down he never rests till blue water is under him
again Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee »Sir it was not so much the
fear of striking hidden rocks as the fear of that hideous whiteness that so
stirred me«
Second To the native Indian of Peru the continual sight of the
snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread except perhaps in the mere
fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes
and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself in
such inhuman solitudes Much the same is it with the backwoodsman of the West
who with comparative indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven
snow no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness Not so
the sailor beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas where at times by some
infernal trick of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air he shivering and
half shipwrecked instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery
views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice
monuments and splintered crosses
But thou sayest methinks this whitelead chapter about whiteness is but a
white flag hung out from a craven soul thou surrenderest to a hypo Ishmael
Tell me why this strong young colt foaled in some peaceful valley of
Vermont far removed from all beasts of prey why is it that upon the sunniest
day if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him so that he cannot even
see it but only smells its wild animal muskiness why will he start snort
and with bursting eyes paw the ground in frenzies of affright There is no
remembrance in him of any gorings of wild creatures in his green northern home
so that the strange muskiness he smells cannot recall to him anything associated
with the experience of former perils for what knows he this New England colt
of the black bisons of distant Oregon
No but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute the instinct of the
knowledge of the demonism in the world Though thousands of miles from Oregon
still when he smells that savage musk the rending goring bison herds are as
present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies which this instant they
may be trampling into dust
Thus then the muffled rollings of a milky sea the bleak rustlings of the
festooned frosts of mountains the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of
prairies all these to Ishmael are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to the
frightened colt
Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic sign
gives forth such hints yet with me as with the colt somewhere those things
must exist Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in
love the invisible spheres were formed in fright
But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness and learned
why it appeals with such power to the soul and more strange and far more
portentous why as we have seen it is at once the most meaning symbol of
spiritual things nay the very veil of the Christians Deity and yet should be
as it is the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and
immensities of the universe and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of
annihilation when beholding the white depths of the Milky Way Or is it that
as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of
colour and at the same time the concrete of all colours is it for these
reasons that there is such a dumb blankness full of meaning in a wide
landscape of snows a colourless allcolour of atheism from which we shrink
And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers that all
other earthly hues every stately or lovely emblazoning the sweet tinges of
sunset skies and woods yea and the gilded velvets of butterflies and the
butterfly cheeks of young girls all these are but subtle deceits not actually
inherent in substances but only laid on from without so that all deified
Nature absolutely paints like the harlot whose allurements cover nothing but
the charnelhouse within and when we proceed further and consider that the
mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues the great principle of
light forever remains white or colourless in itself and if operating without
medium upon matter would touch all objects even tulips and roses with its own
blank tinge pondering all this the palsied universe lies before us a leper
and like wilful travellers in Lapland who refuse to wear coloured and colouring
glasses upon their eyes so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the
monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him And of all these
things the Albino whale was the symbol Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt
Chapter XLIII
Hark
»Hist Did you hear that noise Cabaco«
It was the middlewatch a fair moonlight the seamen were standing in a
cordon extending from one of the freshwater butts in the waist to the
scuttlebutt near the taffrail In this manner they passed the buckets to fill
the scuttlebutt Standing for the most part on the hallowed precincts of the
quarterdeck they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet From hand to
hand the buckets went in the deepest silence only broken by the occasional
flap of a sail and the steady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel
It was in the midst of this repose that Archy one of the cordon whose
post was near the afterhatches whispered to his neighbour a Cholo the words
above
»Hist did you hear that noise Cabaco«
»Take the bucket will ye Archy what noise d ye mean«
»There it is again under the hatches dont you hear it a cough it
sounded like a cough«
»Cough be damned Pass along that return bucket«
»There again there it is it sounds like two or three sleepers turning
over now«
»Caramba have done shipmate will ye It s the three soaked biscuits ye
eat for supper turning over inside of ye nothing else Look to the bucket«
»Say what ye will shipmate I ve sharp ears«
»Ay you are the chap aint ye that heard the hum of the old Quakeresss
knittingneedles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket you re the chap«
»Grin away we ll see what turns up Hark ye Cabaco there is somebody
down in the afterhold that has not yet been seen on deck and I suspect our old
Mogul knows something of it too I heard Stubb tell Flask one morningwatch
that there was something of that sort in the wind«
»Tish the bucket«
Chapter XLIV
The Chart
Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that took
place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose with his
crew you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom and bringing out a
large wrinkled roll of yellowish seacharts spread them before him on his
screweddown table Then seating himself before it you would have seen him
intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye and with
slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were
blank At intervals he would refer to piles of old logbooks beside him
wherein were set down the seasons and places in which on various former voyages
of various ships sperm whales had been captured or seen
While thus employed the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his
head continually rocked with the motion of the ship and forever threw shifting
gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow till it almost seemed that
while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts some
invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart
of his forehead
But it was not this night in particular that in the solitude of his cabin
Ahab thus pondered over his charts Almost every night they were brought out
almost every night some pencil marks were effaced and others were substituted
For with the charts of all four oceans before him Ahab was threading a maze of
currents and eddies with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that
monomaniac thought of his soul
Now to anyone not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans it
might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in
the unhooped oceans of this planet But not so did it seem to Ahab who knew the
sets of all tides and currents and thereby calculating the driftings of the
sperm whales food and also calling to mind the regular ascertained seasons
for hunting him in particular latitudes could arrive at reasonable surmises
almost approaching to certainties concerning the timeliest day to be upon this
or that ground in search of his prey
So assured indeed is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the sperm
whales resorting to given waters that many hunters believe that could he be
closely observed and studied throughout the world were the logs for one voyage
of the entire whalefleet carefully collated then the migrations of the sperm
whale would be found to correspond in invariability to those of the
herringshoals or the flights of swallows On this hint attempts have been made
to construct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale6
Besides when making a passage from one feedingground to another the sperm
whales guided by some infallible instinct say rather secret intelligence
from the Deity mostly swim in veins as they are called continuing their way
along a given oceanline with such undeviating exactitude that no ship ever
sailed her course by any chart with one tithe of such marvellous precision
Though in these cases the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a
surveyors parallel and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its
own unavoidable straight wake yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times
he is said to swim generally embraces some few miles in width more or less as
the vein is presumed to expand or contract but never exceeds the visual sweep
from the whaleships mastheads when circumspectly gliding along this magic
zone The sum is that at particular seasons within that breadth and along that
path migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for
And hence not only at substantiated times upon wellknown separate
feedinggrounds could Ahab hope to encounter his prey but in crossing the
widest expanses of water between those grounds he could by his art so place
and time himself on his way as even then not to be wholly without prospect of a
meeting
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his
delirious but still methodical scheme But not so in reality perhaps Though
the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds
yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds which haunted such and such a
latitude or longitude this year say will turn out to be identically the same
with those that were found there the preceding season though there are peculiar
and unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true In
general the same remark only within a less wide limit applies to the
solitaries and hermits among the matured aged sperm whales So that though
MobyDick had in a former year been seen for example on what is called the
Seychelle ground in the Indian Ocean or Volcano Bay on the Japanese coast yet
it did not follow that were the Pequod to visit either of those spots at any
subsequent corresponding season she would infallibly encounter him there So
too with some other feedinggrounds where he had at times revealed himself
But all these seemed only his casual stoppingplaces and oceaninns so to
speak not his places of prolonged abode And where Ahabs chances of
accomplishing his object have hitherto been spoken of allusion has only been
made to whatever wayside antecedent extra prospects were his ere a particular
set time or place were attained when all possibilities would become
probabilities and as Ahab fondly thought every possibility the next thing to
a certainty That particular set time and place were conjoined in the one
technical phrase the SeasonontheLine For there and then for several
consecutive years MobyDick had been periodically descried lingering in those
waters for a while as the sun in its annual round loiters for a predicted
interval in any one sign of the Zodiac There it was too that most of the
deadly encounters with the White Whale had taken place there the waves were
storied with his deeds there also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old
man had found the awful motive to his vengeance But in the cautious
comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding
soul into this unfaltering hunt he would not permit himself to rest all his
hopes upon the one crowning fact above mentioned however flattering it might be
to those hopes nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillise his
unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest
Now the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the
SeasonontheLine No possible endeavour then could enable her commander to
make the great passage southward double Cape Horn and then running down sixty
degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time to cruise there
Therefore he must wait for the next ensuing season Yet the premature hour of
the Pequods sailing had perhaps been correctly selected by Ahab with a view
to this very complexion of things Because an interval of three hundred and
sixtyfive days and nights was before him an interval which instead of
impatiently enduring ashore he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt if by
chance the White Whale spending his vacation in seas far remote from his
periodical feedinggrounds should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian
Gulf or in the Bengal Bay or China Seas or in any other waters haunted by his
race So that Monsoons Pampas NorWesters Harmattans Trades any wind but
the Levanter and Simoom might blow MobyDick into the devious zigzag
worldcircle of the Pequods circumnavigating wake
But granting all this yet regarded discreetly and coolly seems it not but
a mad idea this that in the broad boundless ocean one solitary whale even if
encountered should be thought capable of individual recognition from his
hunter even as a whitebearded Mufti in the thronged thoroughfares of
Constantinople Yes For the peculiar snowwhite brow of MobyDick and his
snowwhite hump could not but be unmistakable And have I not tallied the
whale Ahab would mutter to himself as after poring over his charts till long
after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries tallied him and shall
he escape His broad fins are bored and scalloped out like a lost sheeps ear
And here his mad mind would run on in a breathless race till a weariness and
faintness of pondering came over him and in the open air of the deck he would
seek to recover his strength Ah God what trances of torments does that man
endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire He sleeps with
clenched hands and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms
Often when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid
dreams of the night which resuming his own intense thoughts through the day
carried them on amid a clashing of frenzies and whirled them round and round in
his blazing brain till the very throbbing of his lifespot became insufferable
anguish and when as was sometimes the case these spiritual throes in him
heaved his being up from its base and a chasm seemed opening in him from which
forked flames and lightnings shot up and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap
down among them when this hell in himself yawned beneath him a wild cry would
be heard through the ship and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his
stateroom as though escaping from a bed that was on fire Yet these perhaps
instead of being the unsuppressible symptoms of some latent weakness or fright
at his own resolve were but the plainest tokens of its intensity For at such
times crazy Ahab the scheming unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the White
Whale this Ahab that had gone to his hammock was not the agent that so caused
him to burst from it in horror again The latter was the eternal living
principle or soul in him and in sleep being for the time dissociated from the
characterising mind which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or
agent it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the
frantic thing of which for the time it was no longer an integral But as the
mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul therefore it must have been
that in Ahabs case yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one
supreme purpose that purpose by its own sheer inveteracy of will forced
itself against gods and devils into a kind of selfassumed independent being of
its own. Nay could grimly live and burn while the common vitality to which it
was conjoined fled horrorstricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth
Therefore the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes when what seemed
Ahab rushed from his room was for the time but a vacated thing a formless
somnambulistic being a ray of living light to be sure but without an object
to colour and therefore a blankness in itself God help thee old man thy
thoughts have created a creature in thee and he whose intense thinking thus
makes him a Prometheus a vulture feeds upon that heart forever that vulture
the very creature he creates
Chapter XLV
The Affidavit
So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book and indeed as
indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the
habits of sperm whales the foregoing chapter in its earlier part is as
important a one as will be found in this volume but the leading matter of it
requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon in order to be
adequately understood and moreover to take away any incredulity which a
profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds as to the
natural verity of the main points of this affair
I care not to perform this part of my task methodically but shall be
content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items
practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman and from these citations I
take it the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself
First I have personally known three instances where a whale after
receiving a harpoon has effected a complete escape and after an interval in
one instance of three years has been again struck by the same hand and slain
when the two irons both marked by the same private cipher have been taken from
the body In the instance where three years intervened between the flinging of
the two harpoons and I think it may have been something more than that the man
who darted them happening in the interval to go in a tradingship on a voyage
to Africa went ashore there joined a discovery party and penetrated far into
the interior where he travelled for a period of nearly two years often
endangered by serpents savages tigers poisonous miasmas with all the other
common perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions Meanwhile
the whale he had struck must also have been on its travels no doubt it had
thrice circumnavigated the globe brushing with its flanks all the coasts of
Africa but to no purpose This man and this whale again came together and the
one vanquished the other I say I myself have known three instances similar to
this that is in two of them I saw the whales struck and upon the second
attack saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them afterward taken
from the dead fish In the threeyear instance it so fell out that I was in the
boat both times first and last and the last time distinctly recognised a
peculiar sort of huge mole under the whales eye which I had observed there
three years previous I say three years but I am pretty sure it was more than
that Here are three instances then which I personally know the truth of but
I have heard of many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter
there is no good ground to impeach
Secondly It is well known in the sperm whale fishery however ignorant the
world ashore may be of it that there have been several memorable historical
instances where a particular whale in the ocean has been at distant times and
places popularly cognisable Why such a whale became thus marked was not
altogether and originally owing to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished
from other whales for however peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be
they soon put an end to his peculiarities by killing him and boiling him down
into a peculiarly valuable oil No the reason was this that from the fatal
experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about
such a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini insomuch that most fishermen
were content to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would
be discovered lounging by them on the sea without seeking to cultivate a more
intimate acquaintance Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an
irascible great man they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the
street lest if they pursued the acquaintance further they might receive a
summary thump for their presumption
But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
celebrity nay you may call it an oceanwide renown not only was he famous in
life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death but he was admitted
into all the rights privileges and distinctions of a name had as much a name
indeed as Cambyses or Cæsar Was it not so O Timor Tom thou famed leviathan
scarred like an iceberg who so long didst lurk in the oriental straits of that
name whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay Was it not so O
New Zealand Jack thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the
vicinity of the Tattoo Land Was it not so O Morquan King of Japan whose
lofty jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snowwhite cross against
the sky Was it not so O Don Miguel thou Chilian whale marked like an old
tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back In plain prose here are four
whales as well known to the students of Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to
the classic scholar
But this is not all New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel after at various times
creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels were finally gone in
quest of systematically hunted out chased and killed by valiant
whalingcaptains who heaved up their anchors with that express object as much
in view as in setting out through the Narragansett Woods Captain Butler of old
had it in his mind to capture that notorious murderous savage Annawon the
headmost warrior of the Indian King Philip
I do not know where I can find a better place than just here to make
mention of one or two other things which to me seem important as in printed
form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the
White Whale more especially the catastrophe For this is one of those
disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error
So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders
of the world that without some hints touching the plain facts historical and
otherwise of the fishery they might scout at MobyDick as a monstrous fable
or still worse and more detestable a hideous and intolerable allegory
First Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general perils
of the grand fishery yet they have nothing like a fixed vivid conception of
those perils and the frequency with which they recur One reason perhaps is
that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and deaths by casualties in the
fishery ever finds a public record at home however transient and immediately
forgotten that record Do you suppose that that poor fellow there who this
moment perhaps caught by the whaleline off the coast of New Guinea is being
carried down to the bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan do you suppose
that that poor fellows name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read
tomorrow at your breakfast No because the mails are very irregular between
here and New Guinea In fact did you ever hear what might be called regular
news direct or indirect from New Guinea Yet I tell you that upon one particular
voyage which I made to the Pacific among many others we spoke thirty different
ships every one of which had had a death by a whale some of them more than
one and three that had each lost a boats crew For Gods sake be economical
with your lamps and candles not a gallon you burn but at least one drop of
mans blood was spilled for it
Secondly People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is an
enormous creature of enormous power but I have ever found that when narrating
to them some specific example of this twofold enormousness they have
significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness when I declare upon my
soul I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses when he wrote the
history of the plagues of Egypt
But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon
testimony entirely independent of my own That point is this The sperm whale is
in some cases sufficiently powerful knowing and judiciously malicious as with
direct aforethought to stave in utterly destroy and sink a large ship and
what is more the sperm whale has done it
First In the year 1820 the ship Essex Captain Pollard of Nantucket was
cruising in the Pacific Ocean One day she saw spouts lowered her boats and
gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales Ere long several of the whales were
wounded when suddenly a very large whale escaping from the boats issued from
the shoal and bore directly down upon the ship Dashing his forehead against
her hull he so stove her in that in less than ten minutes she settled down and
fell over Not a surviving plank of her has been seen since After the severest
exposure part of the crew reached the land in their boats Being returned home
at last Captain Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific in command of another
ship but the gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers for
the second time his ship was utterly lost and forthwith forswearing the sea he
has never tempted it since At this day Captain Pollard is a resident of
Nantucket I have seen Owen Chace who was chief mate of the Essex at the time
of the tragedy I have read his plain and faithful narrative I have conversed
with his son and all this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe7
Secondly The ship Union also of Nantucket was in the year 1807 totally
lost off the Azores by a similar onset but the authentic particulars of this
catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter though from the whalehunters I
have now and then heard casual allusions to it
Thirdly Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J then commanding an
American sloopofwar of the first class happened to be dining with a party of
whalingcaptains on board a Nantucket ship in the harbour of Oahu Sandwich
Islands Conversation turning upon whales the commodore was pleased to be
sceptical touching the amazing strength ascribed to them by the professional
gentlemen present He peremptorily denied for example that any whale could so
smite his stout sloopofwar as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful
Very good but there is more coming Some weeks after the commodore set sail in
this impregnable craft for Valparaiso But he was stopped on the way by a portly
sperm whale that begged a few moments confidential business with him That
business consisted in fetching the commodores craft such a thwack that with
all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest port to heave down and
repair I am not superstitious but I consider the commodores interview with
that whale as providential Was not Saul of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a
similar fright I tell you the sperm whale will stand no nonsense
I will now refer you to Langsdorffs Voyages for a little circumstance in
point peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof Langsdorff you must know by
the way was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusensterns famous Discovery
Expedition in the beginning of the present century Captain Langsdorff thus
begins his seventeenth chapter
»By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail and the next day we
were out in the open sea on our way to Ochotsh The weather was very clear and
fine but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on our fur clothing
For some days we had very little wind it was not till the nineteenth that a
brisk gale from the northwest sprang up An uncommon large whale the body of
which was larger than the ship itself lay almost at the surface of the water
but was not perceived by anyone on board till the moment when the ship which
was in full sail was almost upon him so that it was impossible to prevent its
striking against him We were thus placed in the most imminent danger as this
gigantic creature setting up its back raised the ship three feet at least out
of the water The masts reeled and the sails fell altogether while we who were
below all sprang instantly upon the deck concluding that we had struck upon
some rock instead of this we saw the monster sailing off with the utmost
gravity and solemnity Captain DWolf applied immediately to the pumps to
examine whether or not the vessel had received any damage from the shock but we
found that very happily it had escaped entirely uninjured«
Now the Captain DWolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in question
is a New Englander who after a long life of unusual adventures as a
seacaptain this day resides in the village of Dorchester near Boston I have
the honour of being a nephew of his I have particularly questioned him
concerning this passage in Langsdorff He substantiates every word The ship
however was by no means a large one a Russian craft built on the Siberian
coast and purchased by my uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he
sailed from home
In that up and down manly book of oldfashioned adventure so full too of
honest wonders the voyage of Lionel Wafer one of ancient Dampiers old chums
I found a little matter set down so like that just quoted from Langsdorff
that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a corroborative example if such be
needed
Lionel it seems was on his way to »John Ferdinando« as he calls the
modern Juan Fernandez »In our way thither« he says »about four oclock in the
morning when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues from the Main of
America our ship felt a terrible shock which put our men in such consternation
that they could hardly tell where they were or what to think but everyone began
to prepare for death And indeed the shock was so sudden and violent that we
took it for granted the ship had struck against a rock but when the amazement
was a little over we cast the lead and sounded but found no ground The
suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages and several of
the men were shaken out of their hammocks Captain Davis who lay with his head
on a gun was thrown out of his cabin« Lionel then goes on to impute the shock
to an earthquake and seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that a
great earthquake somewhere about that time did actually do great mischief
along the Spanish land But I should not much wonder if in the darkness of that
early hour of the morning the shock was after all caused by an unseen whale
vertically bumping the hull from beneath
I might proceed with several more examples one way or another known to me
of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale In more than one
instance he has been known not only to chase the assailing boats back to their
ships but to pursue the ship itself and long withstand all the lances hurled
at him from its decks The English ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that
head and as for his strength let me say that there have been examples where
the lines attached to a running sperm whale have in a calm been transferred to
the ship and secured there the whale towing her great hull through the water
as a horse walks off with a cart Again it is very often observed that if the
sperm whale once struck is allowed time to rally he then acts not so often
with blind rage as with wilful deliberate designs of destruction to his
pursuers nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his character
that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth and retain it in
that dread expansion for several consecutive minutes But I must be content with
only one more and a concluding illustration a remarkable and most significant
one by which you will not fail to see that not only is the most marvellous
event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day but that
these marvels like all marvels are mere repetitions of the ages so that for
the millionth time we say amen with Solomon Verily there is nothing new under
the sun
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius a Christian magistrate of
Constantinople in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius general
As many know he wrote the history of his own times a work every way of
uncommon value By the best authorities he has always been considered a most
trustworthy and unexaggerating historian except in some one or two particulars
not at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned
Now in this history of his Procopius mentions that during the term of his
prefecture at Constantinople a great seamonster was captured in the
neighbouring Propontis or Sea of Marmora after having destroyed vessels at
intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years A fact thus set
down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid Nor is there any reason
it should be Of what precise species this seamonster was is not mentioned
But as he destroyed ships as well as for other reasons he must have been a
whale and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale And I will tell you
why For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in
the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it Even now I am certain
that those seas are not and perhaps never can be in the present constitution
of things a place for his habitual gregarious resort But further
investigations have recently proved to me that in modern times there have been
isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean I am
told on good authority that on the Barbary coast a Commodore Davis of the
British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale Now as a vessel of war
readily passes through the Dardanelles hence a sperm whale could by the same
route pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis
In the Propontis as far as I can learn none of that peculiar substance
called brit is to be found the aliment of the right whale But I have every
reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale squid or cuttlefish
lurks at the bottom of that sea because large creatures but by no means the
largest of that sort have been found at its surface If then you properly put
these statements together and reason upon them a bit you will clearly perceive
that according to all human reasoning Procopiuss seamonster that for half a
century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor must in all probability have been a
sperm whale
Chapter XLVI
Surmises
Though consumed with the hot fire of his purpose Ahab in all his thoughts and
actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of MobyDick though he seemed
ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion nevertheless it may
have been that he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery
whalemans ways altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage
Or at least if this were otherwise there were not wanting other motives much
more influential with him It would be refining too much perhaps even
considering his monomania to hint that his vindictiveness toward the White
Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales
and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the
chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one
he hunted But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable there were still
additional considerations which though not so strictly according with the
wildness of his ruling passion yet were by no means incapable of swaying him
To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools and of all tools used in the
shadow of the moon men are most apt to get out of order He knew for example
that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck yet
that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere
corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership for to the purely
spiritual the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation
Starbucks body and Starbucks coerced will were Ahabs so long as Ahab kept
his magnet at Starbucks brain still he knew that for all this the chief mate
in his soul abhorred his captains quest and could he would joyfully
disintegrate himself from it or even frustrate it It might be that a long
interval would elapse ere the White Whale was seen During that long interval
Starbuck would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his
captains leadership unless some ordinary prudential circumstantial
influences were brought to bear upon him Not only that but the subtle insanity
of Ahab respecting MobyDick was no ways more significantly manifested than in
his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that for the present the
hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness
which naturally invested it that the full terror of the voyage must be kept
withdrawn into the obscure background for few mens courage is proof against
protracted meditation unrelieved by action that when they stood their long
nightwatches his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of
than MobyDick For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed
the announcement of his quest yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less
capricious and unreliable they live in the varying outer weather and they
inhale its fickleness and when retained for any object remote and blank in the
pursuit however promissory of life and passion in the end it is above all
things requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and
hold them healthily suspended for the final dash
Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing In times of strong emotion mankind
disdain all base considerations but such times are evanescent The permanent
constitutional condition of the manufactured man thought Ahab is sordidness
Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew
and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous
knighterrantism in them still while for the love of it they give chase to
MobyDick they must also have food for their more common daily appetites For
even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to
traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre without
committing burglaries picking pockets and gaining other pious perquisites by
the way Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object
that final and romantic object too many would have turned from in disgust I
will not strip these men thought Ahab of all hopes of cash ay cash They
may scorn cash now but let some months go by and no perspective promise of it
to them and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them this
same cash would soon cashier Ahab
Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to
Ahab personally Having impulsively it is probable and perhaps somewhat
prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequods voyage Ahab
was now entirely conscious that in so doing he had indirectly laid himself
open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation and with perfect impunity both
moral and legal his crew if so disposed and to that end competent could
refuse all further obedience to him and even violently wrest from him the
command From even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation and the possible
consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground Ahab must of course
have been most anxious to protect himself That protection could only consist in
his own predominating brain and heart and hand backed by a heedful closely
calculating attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was
possible for his crew to be subjected to
For all these reasons then and others perhaps too analytic to be verbally
developed here Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good degree continue
true to the natural nominal purpose of the Pequods voyage observe all
customary usages and not only that but force himself to evince all his
wellknown passionate interest in the general pursuit of his profession
Be all this as it may his voice was now often heard hailing the three
mastheads and admonishing them to keep a bright lookout and not omit
reporting even a porpoise This vigilance was not long without reward
Chapter XLVII
The MatMaker
It was a cloudy sultry afternoon the seamen were lazily lounging about the
decks or vacantly gazing over into the leadcoloured waters Queequeg and I
were mildly employed weaving what is called a swordmat for an additional
lashing to our boat So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the
scene and such an incantation of revelry lurked in the air that each silent
sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self
I was the attendant or page of Queequeg while busy at the mat As I kept
passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of
the warp using my own hand for the shuttle and as Queequeg standing sideways
ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads and idly looking
off upon the water carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn I say so
strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the
sea only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword that it seemed as
if this were the Loom of Time and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving
and weaving away at the Fates There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject
to but one single ever returning unchanging vibration and that vibration
merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its
own This warp seemed necessity and here thought I with my own hand I ply my
own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads Meantime
Queequegs impulsive indifferent sword sometimes hitting the woof slantingly
or crookedly or strongly or weakly as the case might be and by this
difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the
final aspect of the completed fabric this savages sword thought I which thus
finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof this easy indifferent sword
must be chance ay chance free will and necessity no wise incompatible
all interweavingly working together The straight warp of necessity not to be
swerved from its ultimate course its every alternating vibration indeed only
tending to that free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads
and chance though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity
and sideways in its motions directed by free will though thus prescribed to by
both chance by turns rules either and has the last featuring blow at events
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so strange long
drawn and musically wild and unearthly that the ball of free will dropped from
my hand and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a
wing High aloft in the crosstrees was that mad GayHeader Tashtego His body
was reaching eagerly forward his hand stretched out like a wand and at brief
sudden intervals he continued his cries To be sure the same sound was that
very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas from hundreds of whalemens
lookouts perched as high in the air but from few of those lungs could that
accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the
Indians
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air so wildly and eagerly
peering toward the horizon you would have thought him some prophet or seer
beholding the shadows of Fate and by those wild cries announcing their coming
»There she blows there there there she blows she blows«
»Where away«
»On the leebeam about two miles off a school of them«
Instantly all was commotion
The sperm whale blows as a clock ticks with the same undeviating and
reliable uniformity And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other
tribes of his genus
»There go flukes« was now the cry from Tashtego and the whales
disappeared
»Quick steward« cried Ahab »Time time«
DoughBoy hurried below glanced at the watch and reported the exact minute
to Ahab
The ship was now kept away from the wind and she went gently rolling before
it Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to leeward we
confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of our bows For that
singular craft at times evinced by the sperm whale when sounding with his head
in one direction he nevertheless while concealed beneath the surface mills
round and swiftly swims off in the opposite quarter this deceitfulness of his
could not now be in action for there was no reason to suppose that the fish
seen by Tashtego had been in any way alarmed or indeed knew at all of our
vicinity One of the men selected for shipkeepers that is those not
appointed to the boats by this time relieved the Indian at the mainmasthead
The sailors at the fore and mizen had come down the linetubs were fixed in
their places the cranes were thrust out the mainyard was backed and the
three boats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs
Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail while
one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale So look the long line of
manofwars men about to throw themselves on board an enemys ship
But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took every
eye from the whale With a start all glared at dark Ahab who was surrounded by
five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air
Chapter XLVIII
The First Lowering
The phantoms for so they then seemed were flitting on the other side of the
deck and with a noiseless celerity were casting loose the tackles and bands
of the boat which swung there This boat had always been deemed one of the spare
boats though technically called the captains on account of its hanging from
the starboard quarter The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart
with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steellike lips A rumpled
Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him with wide black trowsers
of the same dark stuff But strangely crowning this ebonness was a glistening
white plaited turban the living hair braided and coiled round and round upon
his head Less swart in aspect the companions of this figure were of that
vivid tigeryellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the
Manillas a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtlety and by some
honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential
agents on the water of the devil their lord whose countingroom they suppose
to be elsewhere
While yet the wondering ships company were gazing upon these strangers
Ahab cried out to the whiteturbaned old man at their head »All ready there
Fedallah«
»Ready« was the halfhissed reply
»Lower away then d ye hear« shouting across the deck »Lower away there
I say«
Such was the thunder of his voice that spite of their amazement the men
sprang over the rail the sheaves whirled round in the blocks with a wallow
the three boats dropped into the sea while with a dexterous offhanded daring
unknown in any other vocation the sailors goatlike leaped down the rolling
ships side into the tossed boats below
Hardly had they pulled out from under the ships lee when a fourth keel
coming from the windward side pulled round under the stern and showed the five
strangers rowing Ahab who standing erect in the stern loudly hailed Starbuck
Stubb and Flask to spread themselves widely so as to cover a large expanse of
water But with all their eyes again riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his
crew the inmates of the other boats obeyed not the command
»Captain Ahab « said Starbuck
»Spread yourselves« cried Ahab »give way all four boats Thou Flask
pull out more to leeward«
»Ay ay sir« cheerily cried little KingPost sweeping round his great
steeringoar »Lay back« addressing his crew »There there there again
There she blows right ahead boys lay back«
»Never heed yonder yellow boys Archy«
»Oh I dont mind em sir« said Archy »I knew it all before now Didnt I
hear em in the hold And didnt I tell Cabaco here of it What say ye Cabaco
They are stowaways Mr Flask«
»Pull pull my fine heartsalive pull my children pull my little ones«
drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew some of whom still showed
signs of uneasiness »Why dont you break your backbones my boys What is it
you stare at Those chaps in yonder boat Tut They are only five more hands
come to help us never mind from where the more the merrier Pull then do
pull never mind the brimstone devils are good fellows enough So so there
you are now that s the stroke for a thousand pounds that s the stroke to
sweep the stakes Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil my heroes Three cheers
men all heartsalive Easy easy dont be in a hurry dont be in a hurry
Why dont you snap your oars you rascals Bite something you dogs So so so
then softly softly That s it that s it long and strong Give way
there give way The devil fetch ye ye ragamuffin rapscallions ye are all
asleep Stop snoring ye sleepers and pull Pull will ye pull cant ye
pull wont ye Why in the name of gudgeons and gingercakes dont ye pull
pull and break something pull and start your eyes out Here« whipping out the
sharp knife from his girdle »every mothers son of ye draw his knife and pull
with the blade between his teeth That s it that s it Now ye do something
that looks like it my steelbits Start her start her my silverspoons
Start her marlingspikes«
Stubbs exordium to his crew is given here at large because he had rather a
peculiar way of talking to them in general and especially in inculcating the
religion of rowing But you must not suppose from this specimen of his
sermonisings that he ever flew into downright passions with his congregation
Not at all and therein consisted his chief peculiarity He would say the most
terrific things to his crew in a tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury
and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a spice to the fun that no oarsman
could hear such queer invocations without pulling for dear life and yet pulling
for the mere joke of the thing Besides he all the time looked so easy and
indolent himself so loungingly managed his steeringoar and so broadly gaped
openmouthed at times that the mere sight of such a yawning commander by
sheer force of contrast acted like a charm upon the crew Then again Stubb was
one of those odd sort of humorists whose jollity is sometimes so curiously
ambiguous as to put all inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them
In obedience to a sign from Ahab Starbuck was now pulling obliquely across
Stubbs bow and when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty near to each
other Stubb hailed the mate
»Mr Starbuck larboard boat there ahoy a word with ye sir if ye
please«
»Halloa« returned Starbuck turning round not a single inch as he spoke
still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew his face set like a flint from
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 then speaking out loud again »A sad business
Mr Stubb Seethe her seethe her my lads but never mind Mr Stubb all for
the best Let all your crew pull strong come what will Spring my men
spring There s hogsheads of sperm ahead Mr Stubb and that s what ye came
for Pull my boys Sperm sperms the play This at least is duty duty and
profit hand in hand«
»Ay ay I thought as much« soliloquised Stubb when the boats diverged
»as soon as I clapt eye on em I thought so Ay and that s what he went into
the afterhold for so often as DoughBoy long suspected They were hidden down
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 today Give way«
Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant as
the lowering of the boats from the deck this had not unreasonably awakened a
sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ships company but Archys
fancied discovery having some time previous got abroad among them though indeed
not credited then this had in some small measure prepared them for the event
It took off the extreme edge of their wonder and so what with all this and
Stubbs confident way of accounting for their appearance they were for the time
freed from superstitious surmisings though the affair still left abundant room
for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahabs precise agency in the
matter from the beginning For me I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I
had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn as well as
the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah
Meantime Ahab out of hearing of his officers having sided the furthest to
windward was still ranging ahead of the other boats a circumstance bespeaking
how potent a crew was pulling him Those tigeryellow creatures of his seemed
all steel and whalebone like five triphammers they rose and fell with regular
strokes of strength which periodically started the boat along the water like a
horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer As for Fedallah who was
seen pulling the harpooneeroar he had thrown aside his black jacket and
displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale
clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon while at
the other end of the boat Ahab with one arm like a fencers thrown half
backward into the air as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip Ahab was
seen steadily managing his steeringoar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the
White Whale had torn him All at once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar
motion and then remained fixed while the boats five oars were seen
simultaneously peaked Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea Instantly the
three spread boats in the rear paused on their way The whales had irregularly
settled bodily down into the blue thus giving no distantly discernible token of
the movement though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it
»Every man look out along his oars« cried Starbuck »Thou Queequeg stand
up«
Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow the savage
stood erect there and with intensely eager eyes gazed off toward the spot where
the chase had last been descried Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat
where it was also triangularly platformed level with the gunwale Starbuck
himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings
of his chip of a craft and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea
Not very far distant Flasks boat was also lying breathlessly still its
commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead a stout sort of
post rooted in the keel and rising some two feet above the level of the stern
platform It is used for catching turns with the whaleline Its top is not more
spacious than the palm of a mans hand and standing upon such a base as that
Flask seemed perched at the masthead of some ship which had sunk to all but her
trucks But little KingPost was small and short and at the same time little
KingPost was full of a large and tall ambition so that this loggerhead
standpoint of his did by no means satisfy KingPost
»I cant see three seas off tip us up an oar there and let me on to that«
Upon this Daggoo with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way
swiftly slid aft and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders for
a pedestal
»Good a masthead as any sir Will you mount«
»That I will and thank ye very much my fine fellow only I wish you fifty
feet taller«
Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the boat
the gigantic negro stooping a little presented his flat palm to Flasks foot
and then putting Flasks hand on his hearseplumed head and bidding him spring
as he himself should toss with one dexterous fling landed the little man high
and dry on his shoulders And here was Flask now standing Daggoo with one
lifted arm furnishing him with a breastband to lean against and steady himself
by
At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous
habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect posture in his
boat even when pitched about by the most riotously perverse and crossrunning
seas Still more strange to see him giddily perched upon the loggerhead itself
under such circumstances But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic
Daggoo was yet more curious for sustaining himself with a cool indifferent
easy unthoughtof barbaric majesty the noble negro to every roll of the sea
harmoniously rolled his fine form On his broad back flaxenhaired Flask seemed
a snowflake The bearer looked nobler than the rider Though truly vivacious
tumultuous ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience
but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negros lordly chest So have
I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth but the earth
did not alter her tides and her seasons for that
Meanwhile Stubb the third mate betrayed no such fargazing solicitudes
The whales might have made one of their regular soundings not a temporary dive
from mere fright and if that were the case Stubb as his wont in such cases
it seems was resolved to solace the languishing interval with his pipe He
withdrew it from his hatband where he always wore it aslant like a feather He
loaded it and rammed home the loading with his thumbend but hardly had he
ignited his match across the rough sandpaper of his hand when Tashtego his
harpooneer whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars
suddenly dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat crying out in a
quick frenzy of hurry »Down down all and give way there they are«
To a landsman no whale nor any sign of a herring would have been visible
at that moment nothing but a troubled bit of greenishwhite water and thin
scattered puffs of vapour hovering over it and suffusingly blowing off to
leeward like the confused scud from white rolling billows The air around
suddenly vibrated and tingled as it were like the air over intensely heated
plates of iron Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling and partially
beneath a thin layer of water also the whales were swimming Seen in advance
of all the other indications the puffs of vapour they spouted seemed their
forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders
All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled water
and air But it bade far to outstrip them it flew on and on as a mass of
interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the hills
»Pull pull my good boys« said Starbuck in the lowest possible but
intensest concentrated whisper to his men while the sharp fixed glance from his
eyes darted straight ahead of the bow almost seemed as two visible needles in
two unerring binnacle compasses He did not say much to his crew though nor
did his crew say anything to him Only the silence of the boat was at intervals
startlingly pierced by one of his peculiar whispers now harsh with command now
soft with entreaty
How different the loud little KingPost »Sing out and say something my
hearties Roar and pull my thunderbolts Beach me beach me on their black
backs boys only do that for me and I ll sign over to you my Marthas
Vineyard plantation boys including wife and children boys Lay me on lay me
on O Lord Lord but I shall go stark staring mad See see that white water«
And so shouting he pulled his hat from his head and stamped up and down on it
then picking it up flirted it far off upon the sea and finally fell to rearing
and plunging in the boats stern like a crazed colt from the prairie
»Look at that chap now« philosophically drawled Stubb who with his
unlighted short pipe mechanically retained between his teeth at a short
distance followed after »He s got fits that Flask has Fits yes give him
fits that s the very word pitch fits into em Merrily merrily
heartsalive Pudding for supper you know merrys the word Pull babes
pull sucklings pull all But what the devil are you hurrying about Softly
softly and steadily my men Only pull and keep pulling nothing more Crack
all your backbones and bite your knives in two that s all Take it easy
why dont ye take it easy I say and burst all your livers and lungs«
But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tigeryellow crew of his
these were words best omitted here for you live under the blessed light of
the evangelical land Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear
to such words when with tornado brow and eyes of red murder and foamglued
lips Ahab leaped after his prey
Meanwhile all the boats tore on The repeated specific allusions of Flask
to that whale as he called the fictitious monster which he declared to be
incessantly tantalising his boats bow with his tail these allusions of his
were at times so vivid and lifelike that they would cause some one or two of
his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder But this was against all
rule for the oarsmen must put out their eyes and ram a skewer through their
necks usage pronouncing that they must have no organs but ears and no limbs
but arms in these critical moments
It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe The vast swells of the
omnipotent sea the surging hollow roar they made as they rolled along the
eight gunwales like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowlinggreen the brief
suspended agony of the boat as it would tip for an instant on the knifelike
edge of the sharper waves that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two the
sudden profound dip into the watery glens and hollows the keen spurrings and
goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill the headlong sledlike slide
down its other side all these with the cries of the headsmen and
harpooneers and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen with the wondrous sight of
the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails like a
wild hen after her screaming brood all this was thrilling Not the raw
recruit marching from the bosom of his wife into the feverheat of his first
battle not the dead mans ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in the
other world neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than
that man does who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed
churned circle of the hunted sperm whale
The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and more
visible owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloudshadows flung upon
the sea The jets of vapour no longer blended but tilted everywhere to right
and left the whales seemed separating their wakes The boats were pulled more
apart Starbuck giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward Our sail
was now set and with the still rising wind we rushed along the boat going
with such madness through the water that the leeoars could scarcely be worked
rapidly enough to escape being torn from the rowlocks
Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist neither ship nor
boat to be seen
»Give way men« whispered Starbuck drawing still further aft the sheet of
his sail »there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes There s
white water again close to Spring«
Soon after two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted that
the other boats had got fast but hardly were they overheard when with a
lightninglike hurtling whisper Starbuck said »Stand up« and Queequeg harpoon
in hand sprang to his feet
Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so
close to them ahead yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate
in the stern of the boat they knew that the imminent instant had come they
heard too an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their
litter Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist the waves curling
and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents
»That s his hump There there give it to him« whispered Starbuck
A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat it was the darted iron of
Queequeg Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from astern
while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge the sail collapsed and
exploded a gush of scalding vapour shot up near by something rolled and
tumbled like an earthquake beneath us The whole crew were half suffocated as
they were tossed helterskelter into the white curdling cream of the squall
Squall whale and harpoon had all blended together and the whale merely
grazed by the iron escaped
Though completely swamped the boat was nearly unharmed Swimming round it
we picked up the floating oars and lashing them across the gunwale tumbled
back to our places There we sat up to our knees in the sea the water covering
every rib and plank so that to our downwardgazing eyes the suspended craft
seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean
The wind increased to a howl the waves dashed their bucklers together the
whole squall roared forked and crackled around us like a white fire upon the
prairie in which unconsumed we were burning immortal in these jaws of death
In vain we hailed the other boats as well roar to the live coals down the
chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm Meanwhile the
driving scud rack and mist grew darker with the shadows of night no sign of
the ship could be seen The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the
boat The oars were useless as propellers performing now the office of
lifepreservers So cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg after many
failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern then stretching
it on a waifpole handed it to Queequeg as the standardbearer of this forlorn
hope There then he sat holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that
almighty forlornness There then he sat the sign and symbol of a man without
faith hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair
Wet drenched through and shivering cold despairing of ship or boat we
lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on The mist still spread over the sea the
empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat Suddenly Queequeg started
to his feet hollowing his hand to his ear We all heard a faint creaking as of
ropes and yards hitherto muffled by the storm The sound came nearer and nearer
the thick mists were dimly parted by a huge vague form Affrighted we all
sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view bearing right down
upon us within a distance of not much more than its length
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat as for one instant it
tossed and gaped beneath the ships bows like a chip at the base of a cataract
and then the vast hull rolled over it and it was seen no more till it came up
weltering astern Again we swam for it were dashed against it by the seas and
were at last taken up and safely landed on board Ere the squall came close to
the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good
time The ship had given us up but was still cruising if haply it might light
upon some token of our perishing an oar or a lance pole
Chapter XLIX
The Hyena
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call
life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke though the
wit thereof he but dimly discerns and more than suspects that the joke is at
nobodys expense but his own However nothing dispirits and nothing seems
worth while disputing He bolts down all events all creeds and beliefs and
persuasions all hard things visible and invisible never mind how knobby as an
ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints And as for
small difficulties and worryings prospects of sudden disaster peril of life
and limb all these and death itself seem to him only sly goodnatured hits
and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old
joker That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of comes over a man only in
some time of extreme tribulation it comes in the very midst of his earnestness
so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous now
seems but a part of the general joke There is nothing like the perils of
whaling to breed this freeandeasy sort of genial desperado philosophy and
with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod and the great White
Whale its object
»Queequeg« said I when they had dragged me the last man to the deck and
I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water »Queequeg my
fine friend does this sort of thing often happen« Without much emotion though
soaked through just like me he gave me to understand that such things did often
happen
»Mr Stubb« said I turning to that worthy who buttoned up in his
oiljacket was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain »Mr Stubb I think I
have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met our chief mate Mr
Starbuck is by far the most careful and prudent I suppose then that going
plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a
whalemans discretion«
»Certain Ive lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape
Horn«
»Mr Flask« said I turning to little KingPost who was standing close by
»you are experienced in these things and I am not Will you tell me whether it
is an unalterable law in this fishery Mr Flask for an oarsman to break his
own back pulling himself backforemost into deaths jaws«
»Cant you twist that smaller« said Flask »Yes that s the law I should
like to see a boats crew backing water up to a whale face foremost Ha ha the
whale would give them squint for squint mind that«
Here then from three impartial witnesses I had a deliberate statement of
the entire case Considering therefore that squalls and capsizings in the
water and consequent bivouacks on the deep were matters of common occurrence in
this kind of life considering that at the superlatively critical instant of
going on to the whale I must resign my life into the hands of him who steered
the boat oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his impetuousness
upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings
considering that the particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly
to be imputed to Starbucks driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a
squall and considering that Starbuck notwithstanding was famous for his great
heedfulness in the fishery considering that I belonged to this uncommonly
prudent Starbucks boat and finally considering 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 draft of my will »Queequeg«
said I »come along you shall be my lawyer executor and legatee«
It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their
last wills and testaments but there are no people in the world more fond of
that diversion This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I had done the
same thing After the ceremony was concluded upon the present occasion I felt
all the easier a stone was rolled away from my heart Besides all the days I
should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his
resurrection a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case
might be I survived myself my death and burial were locked up in my chest I
looked round me tranquilly and contentedly like a quiet ghost with a clean
conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault
Now then thought I unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock here
goes for a cool collected dive at death and destruction and the devil fetch
the hindmost
Chapter L
Ahabs Boat and Crew Fedallah
»Who would have thought it Flask« cried Stubb »If I had but one leg you would
not catch me in a boat unless maybe to stop the plughole with my timber toe
Oh he s a wonderful old man«
»I dont think it so strange after all on that account« said Flask »If
his leg were off at the hip now it would be a different thing That would
disable him but he has one knee and good part of the other left you know«
»I dont know that my little man I never yet saw him kneel«
Among whalewise people it has often been argued whether considering the
paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage it is right for a
whalingcaptain to jeopardise that life in the active perils of the chase So
Tamerlanes soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes whether that
invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight
But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect Considering that with
two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger considering that
the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties that
every individual moment indeed then comprises a peril under these
circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whaleboat in the hunt
As a general thing the jointowners of the Pequod must have plainly thought
not
Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of his
entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the chase for
the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his orders in person yet
for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him as a regular
headsman in the hunt above all for Captain Ahab to be supplied with five
extra men as that same boats crew he well knew that such generous conceits
never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod Therefore he had not
solicited a boats crew from them nor had he in any way hinted his desires on
that head Nevertheless he had taken private measure of his own touching all
that matter Until Cabacos published discovery the sailors had little foreseen
it though to be sure when after being a little while out of port all hands
had concluded the customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service
when some time after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the
matter of making tholepins with his own hands for what was thought to be one of
the spare boats and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers which
when the line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow when all
this was observed in him and particularly his solicitude in having an extra
coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat as if to make it better withstand
the pointed pressure of his ivory limb and also the anxiety he evinced in
exactly shaping the thighboard or clumsy cleat as it is sometimes called the
horizontal piece in the boats bow for bracing the knee against in darting or
stabbing at the whale when it was observed how often he stood up in that boat
with his solitary knee fixed in the semicircular depression in the cleat and
with the carpenters chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a
little there all these things I say had awakened much interest and curiosity
at the time But almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative
heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of MobyDick
for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person
But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any
boats crew being assigned to that boat
Now with the subordinate phantoms what wonder remained soon waned away
for in a whaler wonders soon wane Besides now and then such unaccountable odds
and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ashholes of the
earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers and the ships themselves often
pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on
planks bits of wreck oars whaleboats canoes blownoff Japanese junks and
what not that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the
cabin to chat with the captain and it would not create any unsubduable
excitement in the forecastle
But be all this as it may certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms
soon found their place among the crew though still as it were somehow distinct
from them yet that hairturbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the
last Whence he came in a mannerly world like this by what sort of
unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with Ahabs peculiar
fortunes nay so far as to have some sort of a halfhinted influence Heaven
knows but it might have been even authority over him all this none knew But
one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah He was such a
creature as civilised domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
dreams and that but dimly but the like of whom now and then glide among the
unchanging Asiatic communities especially the oriental isles to the east of the
continent those insulated immemorial unalterable countries which even in
these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earths
primal generations when the memory of the first man was a distinct
recollection and all men his descendants unknowing whence he came eyed each
other as real phantoms and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created
and to what end when though according to Genesis the angels indeed consorted
with the daughters of men the devils also add the uncanonical Rabbins
indulged in mundane amours
Chapter LI
The SpiritSpout
Days weeks passed and under easy sail the ivory Pequod had slowly swept
across four several cruisinggrounds that off the Azores off the Cape de
Verdes on the Plate so called being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata
and the Carrol ground an unstaked watery locality southerly from St Helena
It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver and by
their soft suffusing seethings made what seemed a silvery silence not a
solitude on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the
white bubbles at the bow Lit up by the moon it looked celestial seemed some
plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea Fedallah first descried this
jet For of these moonlight nights it was his wont to mount to the
mainmasthead and stand a lookout there with the same precision as if it had
been day And yet though herds of whales were seen by night not one whalemen
in a hundred would venture a lowering for them You may think with what
emotions then the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at such
unusual hours his turban and the moon companions in one sky But when after
spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights without
uttering a single sound when after all this silence his unearthly voice was
heard announcing that silvery moonlit jet every reclining mariner started to
his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging and hailed the
mortal crew »There she blows« Had the trump of judgment blown they could not
have quivered more yet still they felt no terror rather pleasure For though
it was a most unwonted hour yet so impressive was the cry and so deliriously
exciting that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering
Walking the deck with quick sidelunging strides Ahab commanded the
tgallantsails and royals to be set and every stunsail spread The best man
in the ship must take the helm Then with every masthead manned the piledup
craft rolled down before the wind The strange upheaving lifting tendency of
the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails made the buoyant
hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet while still she rushed along
as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her one to mount direct
to heaven the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal And had you
watched Ahabs face that night you would have thought that in him also two
different things were warring While his one live leg made lively echoes along
the deck every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffintap On life and
death this old man walked But though the ship so swiftly sped and though from
every eye like arrows the eager glances shot yet the silvery jet was no more
seen that night Every sailor swore he saw it once but not a second time
This midnightspout had almost grown a forgotten thing when some days
after lo at the same silent hour it was again announced again it was
descried by all but upon making sail to overtake it once more it disappeared
as if it had never been And so it served us night after night till no one
heeded it but to wonder at it Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight or
starlight as the case might be disappearing again for one whole day or two
days or three and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing
still further and further in our van this solitary jet seemed forever alluring
us on
Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race and in accordance with
the preternaturalness as it seemed which in many things invested the Pequod
were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and wherever
descried at however remote times or in however far apart latitudes and
longitudes that unnearable spout was cast by one selfsame whale and that
whale MobyDick For a time there reigned too a sense of peculiar dread at
this flitting apparition as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on in
order that the monster might turn round upon us and rend us at last in the
remotest and most savage seas
These temporary apprehensions so vague but so awful derived a wondrous
potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather in which beneath all its
blue blandness some thought there lurked a devilish charm as for days and days
we voyaged along through seas so wearily lonesomely mild that all space in
repugnance to our vengeful errand seemed vacating itself of life before our
urnlike prow
But at last when turning to the eastward the Cape winds began howling
around us and we rose and fell upon the long troubled seas that are there
when the ivorytusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast and gored the dark
waves in her madness till like showers of silver chips the foamflakes flew
over her bulwarks then all this desolate vacuity of life went away but gave
place to sights more dismal than before
Close to our bows strange forms in the water darted hither and thither
before us while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable searavens And every
morning perched on our stays rows of these birds were seen and spite of our
hootings for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp as though they deemed
our ship some drifting uninhabited craft a thing appointed to desolation and
therefore fit roostingplace for their homeless selves And heaved and heaved
still unrestingly heaved the black sea as if its vast tides were a conscience
and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and
suffering it had bred
Cape of Good Hope do they call ye Rather Cape Tormentoto as called of
yore for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended us
we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea where guilty beings
transformed into those fowls and these fish seemed condemned to swim on
everlastingly without any haven in store or beat that black air without any
horizon But calm snowwhite and unvarying still directing its fountain of
feathers to the sky still beckoning us on from before the solitary jet would
at times be descried
During all this blackness of the elements Ahab though assuming for the
time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck manifested
the gloomiest reserve and more seldom than ever addressed his mates In
tempestuous times like these after everything above and aloft has been secured
nothing more can be done but passively to await the issue of the gale Then
captain and crew become practical fatalists So with his ivory leg inserted
into its accustomed hole and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud Ahab for
hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward while an occasional squall
of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very eyelashes together Meantime
the crew driven from the forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that
burstingly broke over its bows stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist
and the better to guard against the leaping waves each man had slipped himself
into a sort of bowline secured to the rail in which he swung as in a loosened
belt Few or no words were spoken and the silent ship as if manned by painted
sailors in wax day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness
of the demoniac waves By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks
of the ocean prevailed still in silence the men swung in the bowlines still
wordless Ahab stood up to the blast Even when wearied nature seemed demanding
repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock Never could Starbuck
forget the old mans aspect when one night going down into the cabin to mark
how the barometer stood he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his
floorscrewed chair the rain and halfmelted sleet of the storm from which he
had some time before emerged still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and
coat On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and
currents which have previously been spoken of His lantern swung from his
tightly clenched hand Though the body was erect the head was thrown back so
that the closed eyes were pointed toward the needle of the telltale that swung
from a beam in the ceiling8
Terrible old man thought Starbuck with a shudder sleeping in this gale
still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose
Chapter LII
The Albatross
Southeastward from the Cape off the distant Crozetts a good cruisingground
for right whalemen a sail loomed ahead the Goney Albatross by name As she
slowly drew nigh from my lofty perch at the foremasthead I had a good view of
that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean fisheries a whaler at sea
and long absent from home
As if the waves had been fullers this craft was bleached like the skeleton
of a stranded walrus All down her sides this spectral appearance was traced
with long channels of reddened rust while all her spars and her rigging were
like the thick branches of trees furred over with hoarfrost Only her lower
sails were set A wild sight it was to see her longbearded lookouts at those
three mastheads They seemed clad in the skins of beasts so torn and bepatched
the raiment that had survived nearly four years of cruising Standing in iron
hoops nailed to the mast they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea and
though when the ship slowly glided close under our stern we six men in the air
came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the mastheads
of one ship to those of the other yet those forlornlooking fishermen mildly
eyeing us as they passed said not one word to our own lookouts while the
quarterdeck hail was being heard from below
»Ship ahoy Have ye seen the White Whale«
But as the strange captain leaning over the pallid bulwarks was in the act
of putting his trumpet to his mouth it somehow fell from his hand into the
sea and the wind now rising amain he in vain strove to make himself heard
without it Meantime his ship was still increasing the distance between While
in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance
of this ominous incident at the first mere mention of the White Whales name to
another ship Ahab for a moment paused it almost seemed as though he would have
lowered a boat to board the stranger had not the threatening wind forbade But
taking advantage of his windward position he again seized his trumpet and
knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly
bound home he loudly hailed »Ahoy there This is the Pequod bound round the
world Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific Ocean and this
time three years if I am not at home tell them to address them to «
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed and instantly then in
accordance with their singular ways shoals of small harmless fish that for
some days before had been placidly swimming by our side darted away with what
seemed shuddering fins and ranged themselves fore and aft with the strangers
flanks Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before
have noticed a similar sight yet to any monomaniac man the veriest trifles
capriciously carry meanings
»Swim away from me do ye« murmured Ahab gazing over into the water There
seemed but little in the words but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless
sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced But turning to the
steersman who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish her
headway he cried out in his old lion voice »Up helm Keep her off round the
world«
Round the world There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings but
whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct Only through numberless perils
to the very point whence we started where those that we left behind secure
were all the time before us
Were this world an endless plain and by sailing eastward we could forever
reach new distances and discover sights more sweet and strange than any
Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon then there were promise in the voyage But
in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of or in tormented chase of that
demon phantom that some time or other swims before all human hearts while
chasing such over this round globe they either lead us on in barren mazes or
midway leave us whelmed
Chapter LIII
The Gam
The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had spoken
was this the wind and sea betokened storms But even had this not been the
case he would not after all perhaps have boarded her judging by his
subsequent conduct on similar occasions if so it had been that by the process
of hailing he had obtained a negative answer to the question he put For as it
eventually turned out he cared not to consort even for five minutes with any
stranger captain except he could contribute some of that information he so
absorbingly sought But all this might remain inadequately estimated were not
something said here of the peculiar usages of whalingvessels when meeting each
other in foreign seas and especially on a common cruisingground
If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State or the equally
desolate Salisbury Plain in England if casually encountering each other in such
inhospitable wilds these twain for the life of them cannot well avoid a
mutual salutation and stopping for a moment to interchange the news and
perhaps sitting down for a while and resting in concert then how much more
natural that upon the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea
two whalingvessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth off lone
Fannings Island or the far away Kings Mills how much more natural I say
that under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails but
come into still closer more friendly and sociable contact And especially would
this seem to be a matter of course in the case of vessels owned in one seaport
and whose captains officers and not a few of the men are personally known to
each other and consequently have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk
about
For the long absent ship the outwardbounder perhaps has letters on
board at any rate she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date a
year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumbworn files And in
return for that courtesy the outwardbound ship would receive the latest
whaling intelligence from the cruisingground to which she may be destined a
thing of the utmost importance to her And in degree all this will hold true
concerning whalingvessels crossing each others track on the cruisingground
itself even though they are equally long absent from home For one of them may
have received a transfer of letters from some third and now far remote vessel
and some of those letters may be for the people of the ship she now meets
Besides they would exchange the whaling news and have an agreeable chat For
not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors but likewise with
all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually
shared privations and perils
Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference that is
so long as both parties speak one language as is the case with Americans and
English Though to be sure from the small number of English whalers such
meetings do not very often occur and when they do occur there is too apt to be
a sort of shyness between them for your Englishman is rather reserved and your
Yankee he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself Besides
the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the
American whalers regarding the long lean Nantucketer with his nondescript
provincialisms as a sort of seapeasant But where this superiority in the
English whalemen does really consist it would be hard to say seeing that the
Yankees in one day collectively kill more whales than all the English
collectively in ten years But this is a harmless little foible in the English
whalehunters which the Nantucketer does not take much to heart probably
because he knows that he has a few foibles himself
So then we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea the whalers
have most reason to be sociable and they are so Whereas some merchant ships
crossing each others wake in the midAtlantic will oftentimes pass on without
so much as a single word of recognition mutually cutting each other on the high
seas like a brace of dandies in Broadway and all the time indulging perhaps
in finical criticism upon each others rig As for menofwar when they chance
to meet at sea they first go through such a string of silly bowings and
scrapings such a ducking of ensigns that there does not seem to be much
rightdown hearty goodwill and brotherly love about it at all As touching
slaveships meeting why they are in such a prodigious hurry they run away
from each other as soon as possible And as for pirates when they chance to
cross each others crossbones the first hail is How many skulls the same
way that whalers hail How many barrels And that question once answered
pirates straightway steer apart for they are infernal villains on both sides
and dont like to see overmuch of each others villainous likenesses
But look at the godly honest unostentatious hospitable sociable
freeandeasy whaler What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in
any sort of decent weather She has a Gam a thing so utterly unknown to all
other ships that they never heard of the name even and if by chance they should
hear of it they only grin at it and repeat gamesome stuff about spouters and
blubberboilers and such like pretty exclamations Why it is that all merchant
seamen and also all pirates and manofwars men and slaveship sailors
cherish such a scornful feeling toward whaleships this is a question it would
be hard to answer Because in the case of pirates say I should like to know
whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it It sometimes
ends in uncommon elevation indeed but only at the gallows And besides when a
man is elevated in that odd fashion he has no proper foundation for his
superior altitude Hence I conclude that in boasting himself to be high lifted
above a whaleman in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on
But what is a Gam You might wear out your index finger running up and down
the columns of dictionaries and never find the word Dr Johnson never attained
to that erudition Noah Websters ark does not hold it Nevertheless this same
expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen
thousand trueborn Yankees Certainly it needs a definition and should be
incorporated into the Lexicon With that view let me learnedly define it
GAM NOUN A social meeting of two or more whaleships generally on a
cruisingground when after exchanging hails they exchange visits by boats
crews the two captains remaining for the time on board of one ship and the
two chief mates on the other
There is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten here
All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail so has the
whalefishery In a pirate manofwar or slaveship when the captain is rowed
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 tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons But the whaleboat has
no seat astern no sofa of that sort whatever and no tiller at all High times
indeed if whalingcaptains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty
old aldermen in patent chairs And as for a tiller the whaleboat never admits
of any such effeminacy and therefore as in gamming a complete boats crew must
leave the ship and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number
that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion and the captain having no
place to sit in is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pinetree And
often you will notice that being conscious of the eyes of the whole visible
world resting on him from the sides of the two ships this standing captain is
all alive to the importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs
Nor is this any very easy matter for in his rear is the immense projecting
steeringoar hitting him now and then in the small of his back the afteroar
reciprocating by rapping his knees in front He is thus completely wedged before
and behind and can only expand himself sideways by settling down on his
stretched legs but a sudden violent pitch of the boat will often go far to
topple him because length of foundation is nothing without corresponding
breadth Merely make a spread angle of two poles and you cannot stand them up
Then again it would never do in plain sight of the worlds riveted eyes it
would never do I say for this straddling captain to be seen steadying himself
the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his hands indeed as
token of his entire buoyant selfcommand he generally carries his hands in his
trowsers pockets but perhaps being generally very large heavy hands he
carries them there for ballast Nevertheless there have occurred instances well
authenticated ones too where the captain has been known for an uncommonly
critical moment or two in a sudden squall say to seize hold of the nearest
oarsmans hair and hold on there like grim death
Chapter LIV
The TownHos Story
As told at the Golden Inn
The Cape of Good Hope and all the watery region round about there is much like
some noted four corners of a great highway where you meet more travellers than
in any other part
It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homewardbound
whaleman the TownHo9 was encountered She was manned almost wholly by
Polynesians In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of MobyDick
To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a
circumstance of the TownHos story which seemed obscurely to involve with the
whale a certain wondrous inverted visitation of one of those socalled
judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men This latter
circumstance with its own particular accompaniments forming what may be called
the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated never reached the ears of
Captain Ahab or his mates For that secret part of the story was unknown to the
captain of the TownHo himself It was the private property of three confederate
white seamen of that ship one of whom it seems communicated it to Tashtego
with Romish injunctions of secrecy but the following night Tashtego rambled in
his sleep and revealed so much of it in that way that when he was wakened he
could not well withhold the rest Nevertheless so potent an influence did this
thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it
and by such a strange delicacy to call it so were they governed in this
matter that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired
abaft the Pequods mainmast Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread
with the story as publicly narrated on the ship the whole of this strange
affair I now proceed to put on lasting record
For my humours sake I shall preserve the style in which I once narrated it
at Lima to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends one saints eve smoking
upon the thickgilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn Of those fine cavaliers the
young Dons Pedro and Sebastian were on the closer terms with me and hence the
interluding questions they occasionally put and which are duly answered at the
time
»Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about
rehearsing to you gentlemen the TownHo sperm whaler of Nantucket was
cruising in your Pacific here not very many days sail westward from the eaves
of this good Golden Inn She was somewhere to the northward of the Line One
morning upon handling the pumps according to daily usage it was observed that
she made more water in her hold than common They supposed a swordfish had
stabbed her gentlemen But the captain having some unusual reason for
believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes and therefore
being very averse to quit them and the leak not being then considered at all
dangerous though indeed they could not find it after searching the hold as
low down as was possible in rather heavy weather the ship still continued her
cruisings the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals but no
good luck came more days went by and not only was the leak yet undiscovered
but it sensibly increased So much so that now taking some alarm the captain
making all sail stood away for the nearest harbour among the islands there to
have his hull hove out and repaired
Though no small passage was before her yet if the commonest chance
favoured he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way because
his pumps were of the best and being periodically relieved at them those
sixandthirty men of his could easily keep the ship free never mind if the
leak should double on her In truth wellnigh the whole of this passage being
attended by very prosperous breezes the TownHo had all but certainly arrived
in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality had
it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney the mate a Vineyarder and
the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt a Lakeman and desperado from
Buffalo
Lakeman Buffalo Pray what is a Lakeman and where is Buffalo said Don
Sebastian rising in his swinging mat of grass
On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie Don but I crave your courtesy
maybe you shall soon hear further of all that Now gentlemen in squaresail
brigs and threemasted ships wellnigh as large and stout as any that ever
sailed out of your old Callao to far Manilla this Lakeman in the landlocked
heart of our America had yet been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting
impressions popularly connected with the open ocean For in their interflowing
aggregate those grand freshwater seas of ours Erie and Ontario and Huron
and Superior and Michigan possess an oceanlike expansiveness with many of
the oceans noblest traits with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of
climes They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles even as the
Polynesian waters do in large part are shored by two great contrasting
nations as the Atlantic is they furnish long maritime approaches to our
numerous territorial colonies from the East dotted all round their banks here
and there are frowned upon by batteries and by the goatlike craggy guns of
lofty Mackinaw they have heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories at
intervals they yield their beaches to wild barbarians whose redpainted faces
flash from out their peltry wigwams for leagues and leagues are flanked by
ancient and unentered forests where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of
kings in Gothic genealogies those same woods harbouring wild Afric beasts of
prey and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar emperors
they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland as well as Winnebago
villages they float alike the fullrigged merchant ship the armed cruiser of
the State the steamer and the beech canoe they are swept by Borean and
dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave they know what
shipwrecks are for out of sight of land however inland they have drowned full
many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew Thus gentlemen though an
inlander Steelkilt was wildocean born and wildocean nurtured as much of an
audacious mariner as any And for Radney though in his infancy he may have laid
him down on the lone Nantucket beach to nurse at his maternal sea though in
after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative
Pacific yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the
backwoods seaman fresh from the latitudes of buckhorn handled bowieknives
Yet was this Nantucketer a man with some goodhearted traits and this Lakeman
a mariner who though a sort of devil indeed might yet by inflexible firmness
only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest
slaves right thus treated this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and
docile At all events he had proved so thus far but Radney was doomed and made
mad and Steelkilt but gentlemen you shall hear
It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her prow
for her island haven that the TownHos leak seemed again increasing but only
so as to require an hour or more at the pumps every day You must know that in a
settled and civilised ocean like our Atlantic for example some skippers think
little of pumping their whole way across it though of a still sleepy night
should the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect the
probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it on
account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom Nor in the solitary and
savage seas far from you to the westward gentlemen is it altogether unusual
for ships to keep clanging at their pumphandles in full chorus even for a
voyage of considerable length that is if it lie along a tolerably accessible
coast or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them It is only when a
leaky vessel is in some very outoftheway part of those waters some really
landless latitude that her captain begins to feel a little anxious
Much this way had it been with the TownHo so when her leak was found
gaining once more there was in truth some small concern manifested by several
of her company especially by Radney the mate He commanded the upper sails to
be well hoisted sheeted home anew and every way expanded to the breeze Now
this Radney I suppose was as little of a coward and as little inclined to any
sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless
unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently imagine
gentlemen Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about the safety of the
ship some of the seamen declared that it was only on account of his being a
part owner in her So when they were working that evening at the pumps there
was on this head no small gamesomeness slyly going on among them as they stood
with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear water clear as
any mountain spring gentlemen that bubbling from the pumps ran across the
deck and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupperholes
Now as you well know it is not seldom the case in this conventional world
of ours watery or otherwise that when a person placed in command over his
fellowmen finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in general
pride of manhood straightway against that man he conceives an unconquerable
dislike and bitterness and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverise
that subalterns tower and make a little heap of dust of it Be this conceit of
mine as it may gentlemen at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal
with a head like a Roman and a flowing golden beard like the tasselled housings
of your last viceroys snorting charger and a brain and a heart and a soul in
him gentlemen which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne had he been born son to
Charlemagnes father But Radney the mate was ugly as a mule yet as hardy as
stubborn as malicious He did not love Steelkilt and Steelkilt knew it
Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest
the Lakeman affected not to notice him but unawed went on with his gay
banterings
Ay ay my merry lads it s a lively leak this hold a cannikin one of ye
and lets have a taste By the Lord it s worth bottling I tell ye what men
old Rads investment must go for it he had best cut away his part of the hull
and tow it home The fact is boys that swordfish only began the job he s
come back again with a gang of shipcarpenters sawfish and filefish and
what not and the whole posse of em are now hard at work cutting and slashing
at the bottom making improvements I suppose If old Rad were here now I d
tell him to jump overboard and scatter em They re playing the devil with his
estate I can tell him But he s a simple old soul Rad and a beauty too
Boys they say the rest of his property is invested in lookingglasses I wonder
if he d give a poor devil like me the model of his nose
Damn your eyes what s that pump stopping for roared Radney pretending
not to have heard the sailors talk Thunder away at it
Ay ay sir said Steelkilt merry as a cricket Lively boys lively now
And with that the pump clanged like fifty fireengines the men tossed their
hats off to it and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard which
denotes the fullest tension of lifes utmost energies
Quitting the pump at last with the rest of his band the Lakeman went
forward all panting and sat himself down on the windlass his face fiery red
his eyes bloodshot and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow Now what
cozening fiend it was gentlemen that possessed Radney to meddle with such a
man in that corporeally exasperated state I know not but so it happened
Intolerably striding along the deck the mate commanded him to get a broom and
sweep down the planks and also a shovel and remove some offensive matters
consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large
Now gentlemen sweeping a ships deck at sea is a piece of household work
which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening it
has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time
Such gentlemen is the inflexibility of seausages and the instinctive love of
neatness in seamen some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing
their faces But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province
of the boys if boys there be aboard Besides it was the stronger men in the
TownHo that had been divided into gangs taking turns at the pumps and being
the most athletic seaman of them all Steelkilt had been regularly assigned
captain of one of the gangs consequently he should have been freed from any
trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties such being the case
with his comrades I mention all these particulars so that you may understand
exactly how this affair stood between the two men
But there was more than this the order about the shovel was almost as
plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt as though Radney had spat in his
face Any man who has gone sailor in a whaleship will understand this and all
this and doubtless much more the Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate
uttered his command But as he sat still for a moment and as he steadfastly
looked into the mates malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powdercasks
heaped up in him and the slowmatch silently burning along toward them as he
instinctively saw all this that strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir
up the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being a repugnance most
felt when felt at all by really valiant men even when aggrieved this
nameless phantom feeling gentlemen stole over Steelkilt
Therefore in his ordinary tone only a little broken by the bodily
exhaustion he was temporarily in he answered him saying that sweeping the deck
was not his business and he would not do it And then without at all alluding
to the shovel he pointed to three lads as the customary sweepers who not
being billeted at the pumps had done little or nothing all day To this Radney
replied with an oath in a most domineering and outrageous manner
unconditionally reiterating his command meanwhile advancing upon the still
seated Lakeman with an uplifted coopers club hammer which he had snatched
from a cask near by
Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps for all
his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill
brook this bearing in the mate but somehow still smothering the conflagration
within him without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat till at
last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face
furiously commanding him to do his bidding
Steelkilt rose and slowly retreating round the windlass steadily followed
by the mate with his menacing hammer deliberately repeated his intention not to
obey Seeing however that his forbearance had not the slightest effect by an
awful and unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish
and infatuated man but it was to no purpose And in this way the two went once
slowly round the windlass when resolved at last no longer to retreat
bethinking him that he had now forborne as much as comported with his humour
the Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer
Mr Radney I will not obey you Take that hammer away or look to yourself
But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him where the Lakeman stood
fixed now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth meanwhile
repeating a string of insufferable maledictions Retreating not the thousandth
part of an inch stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his
glance Steelkilt clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it
back told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he Steelkilt
would murder him But gentlemen the fool had been branded for the slaughter by
the gods Immediately the hammer touched the cheek the next instant the lower
jaw of the mate was stove in his head he fell on the hatch spouting blood like
a whale
Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays leading
far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their mastheads They were
both Canallers
Canallers cried Don Pedro We have seen many whaleships in our harbours
but never heard of your Canallers Pardon who and what are they
Canallers Don are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal You must
have heard of it
Nay Senor hereabouts in this dull warm most lazy and hereditary land
we know but little of your vigorous North
Ay Well then Don refill my cup Your chicha s very fine and ere
proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are for such information
may throw sidelight upon my story
For three hundred and sixty miles gentlemen through the entire breadth of
the state of New York through numerous populous cities and most thriving
villages through long dismal uninhabited swamps and affluent cultivated
fields unrivalled for fertility by billiardroom and barroom through the
holyofholies of great forests on Roman arches over Indian rivers through sun
and shade by happy hearts or broken through all the wide contrasting scenery
of those noble Mohawk counties and especially by rows of snowwhite chapels
whose spires stand almost like milestones flows one continual stream of
Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life There s your true Ashantee
gentlemen there howl your pagans where you ever find them next door to you
under the longflung shadow and the snug patronising lee of churches For by
some curious fatality as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters
that they ever encamp around the halls of justice so sinners gentlemen most
abound in holiest vicinities
Is that a friar passing said Don Pedro looking downward into the crowded
plaza with humorous concern
Well for our northern friend Dame Isabellas Inquisition wanes in Lima
laughed Don Sebastian Proceed Senor
A moment Pardon cried another of the company In the name of all us
Limeese I but desire to express to you sir sailor that we have by no means
overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Venice in
your corrupt comparison Oh do not bow and look surprised you know the proverb
all along this coast »Corrupt as Lima« It but bears out your saying too
churches more plentiful than billiardtables and forever open and »Corrupt as
Lima« So too Venice I have been there the holy city of the blessed
evangelist St Mark St Dominic purge it Your cup Thanks here I refill
now you pour out again
Freely depicted in his own vocation gentlemen the Canaller would make a
fine dramatic hero so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he Like Mark
Antony for days and days along his greenturfed flowery Nile he indolently
floats openly toying with his redcheeked Cleopatra ripening his apricot thigh
upon the sunny deck But ashore all this effeminacy is dashed The brigandish
guise which the Canaller so proudly sports his slouched and gailyribboned hat
betoken his grand features A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages
through which he floats his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in
cities Once a vagabond on his own canal I have received good turns from one of
these Canallers I thank him heartily would fain be not ungrateful but it is
often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence that at
times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait as to plunder
a wealthy one In sum gentlemen what the wildness of this canal life is is
emphatically evinced by this that our wild whalefishery contains so many of
its most finished graduates and that scarce any race of mankind except Sydney
men are so much distrusted by our whalingcaptains Nor does it at all diminish
the curiousness of this matter that to many thousands of our rural boys and
young men born along its line the probationary life of the Grand Canal
furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian cornfield
and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas
I see I see impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro spilling his chicha upon his
silvery ruffles No need to travel The worlds one Lima I had thought now
that at your temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the hills
But the story
I left off gentlemen where the Lakeman shook the backstay Hardly had he
done so when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four
harpooneers who all crowded him to the deck But sliding down the ropes like
baleful comets the two Canallers rushed into the uproar and sought to drag
their man out of it toward the forecastle Others of the sailors joined with
them in this attempt and a twisted turmoil ensued while standing out of harms
way the valiant captain danced up and down with a whalepike calling upon his
officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel and smoke him along to the
quarterdeck At intervals he ran close up to the revolving border of the
confusion and prying into the heart of it with his pike sought to prick out
the object of his resentment But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much
for them all they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck where hastily
slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass these
seaParisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade
Come out of that ye pirates roared the captain now menacing them with a
pistol in each hand just brought to him by the steward Come out of that ye
cutthroats
Steelkilt leaped on the barricade and striding up and down there defied
the worst the pistols could do but gave the captain to understand distinctly
that his Steelkilts death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the
part of all hands Fearing in his heart lest this might prove but too true the
captain a little desisted but still commanded the insurgents instantly to
return to their duty
Will you promise not to touch us if we do demanded their ringleader
Turn to turn to I make no promise to your duty Do you want to sink
the ship by knocking off at a time like this Turn to and he once more raised
a pistol
Sink the ship cried Steelkilt Ay let her sink Not a man of us turns to
unless you swear not to raise a ropeyarn against us What say ye men turning
to his comrades A fierce cheer was their response
The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade all the while keeping his eye on
the captain and jerking out such sentences as these It s not our fault we
didnt want it I told him to take his hammer away it was boys business he
might have known me before this I told him not to prick the buffalo I believe
I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw aint those mincingknives
down in the forecastle there men look to those handspikes my hearties
Captain by God look to yourself say the word dont be a fool forget it all
we are ready to turn to treat us decently and we re 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 arm toward him there are
a few of us here and I am one of them who have shipped for the cruise d ye
see now as you well know sir we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor
is down so we dont want a row it s not our interest 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 tell you what it is
now captain rather than kill ye and be hung for such a shabby rascal we
wont lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us but till you say the word
about not flogging us we dont do a hands turn
Down into the forecastle then down with ye Ill keep ye there till yere
sick of it Down ye go
Shall we cried the ringleader to his men Most of them were against it but
at length in obedience to Steelkilt they preceded him down into their dark
den growlingly disappearing like bears into a cave
As the Lakemans bare head was just level with the planks the captain and
his posse leaped the barricade and rapidly drawing over the slide of the
scuttle planted their group of hands upon it and loudly called for the steward
to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the companionway Then opening
the slide a little the captain whispered something down the crack closed it
and turned the key upon them ten in number leaving on deck some twenty or
more who thus far had remained neutral
All night a wideawake watch was kept by all the officers forward and aft
especially about the forecastle scuttle and forehatchway at which last place
it was feared the insurgents might emerge after breaking through the bulkhead
below But the hours of darkness passed in peace the men who still remained at
their duty toiling hard at the pumps whose clinking and clanking at intervals
through the dreary night dismally resounded through the ship
At sunrise the captain went forward and knocking on the deck summoned the
prisoners to work but with a yell they refused Water was then lowered down to
them and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it when again
turning the key upon them and pocketing it the captain returned to the
quarterdeck Twice every day for three days this was repeated but on the
fourth morning a confused wrangling and then a scuffling was heard as the
customary summons was delivered and suddenly four men burst up from the
forecastle saying they were ready to turn to The fetid closeness of the air
and a famishing diet united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution had
constrained them to surrender at discretion Emboldened by this the captain
reiterated his demand to the rest but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific
hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged On the fifth
morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate
arms below that sought to restrain them Only three were left
Better turn to now said the captain with a heartless jeer
Shut us up again will ye cried Steelkilt
Oh certainly said the captain and the key clicked
It was at this point gentlemen that enraged by the defection of seven of
his former associates and stung by the mocking voice that had last hailed him
and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of
despair it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two Canallers thus far
apparently of one mind with him to burst out of their hole at the next
summoning of the garrison and armed with their keen mincingknives long
crescentic heavy implements with a handle at each end run amuck from the
bowsprit to the taffrail and if by any devilishness of desperation possible
seize the ship For himself he would do this he said whether they joined him
or not That was the last night he should spend in that den But the scheme met
with no opposition on the part of the other two they swore they were ready for
that or for any other mad thing for anything in short but a surrender And
what was more they each insisted upon being the first man on deck when the
time to make the rush should come But to this their leader as fiercely
objected reserving that priority for himself particularly as his two comrades
would not yield the one to the other in the matter and both of them could not
be first for the ladder would but admit one man at a time And here gentlemen
the foul play of these miscreants must come out
Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader each in his own separate
soul had suddenly lighted it would seem upon the same piece of treachery
namely to be foremost in breaking out in order to be the first of the three
though the last of the ten to surrender and thereby secure whatever small
chance of pardon such conduct might merit But when Steelkilt made known his
determination still to lead them to the last they in some way by some subtle
chemistry of villainy mixed their before secret treacheries together and when
their leader fell into a doze verbally opened their souls to each other in
three sentences and bound the sleeper with cords and gagged him with cords
and shrieked out for the captain at midnight
Thinking murder at hand and smelling in the dark for the blood he and all
his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle In a few minutes the
scuttle was opened and bound hand and foot the still struggling ringleader
was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies who at once claimed the
honour of securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder But all these were
collared and dragged along the deck like dead cattle and side by side were
seized up into the mizen rigging like three quarters of meat and there they
hung till morning Damn ye cried the captain pacing to and fro before them
the vultures would not touch ye ye villains
At sunrise he summoned all hands and separating those who had rebelled from
those who had taken no part in the mutiny he told the former that he had a good
mind to flog them all round thought upon the whole he would do so he ought
to justice demanded it but for the present considering their timely
surrender he would let them go with a reprimand which he accordingly
administered in the vernacular
But as for you ye carrion rogues turning to the three men in the rigging
for you I mean to mince ye up for the trypots and seizing a rope he applied
it with all his might to the backs of the two traitors till they yelled no
more but lifelessly hung their heads sideways as the two crucified thieves are
drawn
My wrist is sprained with ye he cried at last but there is still rope
enough left for you my fine bantam that wouldnt give up Take that gag from
his mouth and let us hear what he can say for himself
For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped
jaws and then painfully twisting round his head said in a sort of hiss What I
say is this and mind it well if you flog me I murder you
Say ye so then see how ye frighten me and the captain drew off with the
rope to strike
Best not hissed the Lakeman
But I must and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke
Steelkilt here hissed out something inaudible to all but the captain who
to the amazement of all hands started back paced the deck rapidly two or three
times and then suddenly throwing down his rope said I wont do it let him
go cut him down d ye hear
But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order a pale man with
a bandaged head arrested them Radney the chief mate Ever since the blow he
had lain in his berth but that morning hearing the tumult on the deck he had
crept out and thus far had watched the whole scene Such was the state of his
mouth that he could hardly speak but mumbling something about his being
willing and able to do what the captain dared not attempt he snatched the rope
and advanced to his pinioned foe
You are a coward hissed the Lakeman
So I am but take that The mate was in the very act of striking when
another hiss stayed his uplifted arm He paused and then pausing no more made
good his word spite of Steelkilts threat whatever that might have been The
three men were then cut down all hands were turned to and sullenly worked by
the moody seamen the iron pumps clanged as before
Just after dark that day when one watch had retired below a clamour was
heard in the forecastle and the two trembling traitors running up besieged the
cabin door saying they durst not consort with the crew Entreaties cuffs and
kicks could not drive them back so at their own instance they were put down in
the ships run for salvation Still no sign of mutiny reappeared among the
rest On the contrary it seemed that mainly at Steelkilts instigation they
had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness obey all orders to the
last and when the ship reached port desert her in a body But in order to
ensure the speediest end to the voyage they all agreed to another thing
namely not to sing out for whales in case any should be discovered For spite
of her leak and spite of all her other perils the TownHo still maintained her
mastheads and her captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment
as on the day his craft first struck the cruisingground and Radney the mate
was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat and with his bandaged mouth
seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale
But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
passiveness in their conduct he kept his own counsel at least till all was
over concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung
him in the ventricles of his heart He was in Radney the chief mates watch and
as if the infatuated man sought to run more than halfway to meet his doom
after the scene at the rigging he insisted against the express counsel of the
captain upon resuming the head of his watch at night Upon this and one or two
other circumstances Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge
During the night Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the bulwarks
of the quarterdeck and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the boat which was
hoisted up there a little above the ships side In this attitude it was well
known he sometimes dozed There was a considerable vacancy between the boat and
the ship and down between this was the sea Steelkilt calculated his time and
found that his next trick at the helm would come round at two oclock in the
morning of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed At his
leisure he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his
watches below
What are you making there said a shipmate
What do you think what does it look like
Like a lanyard for your bag but it s an odd one seems to me
Yes rather oddish said the Lakeman holding it at arms length before him
but I think it will answer Shipmate I havent 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 abegging to him said a sailor
Why not Do you think he wont do me a turn when it s to help himself in
the end shipmate and going to the mate he looked at him quietly and asked
him for some twine to mend his hammock It was given him neither twine nor
lanyard were seen again but the next night an iron ball closely netted partly
rolled from the pocket of the Lakemans monkeyjacket as he was tucking the
coat into his hammock for a pillow Twentyfour hours after his trick at the
silent helm nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready
dug to the seamans hand that fatal hour was then to come and in the
foreordaining soul of Steelkilt the mate was already stark and stretched as a
corpse with his forehead crushed in
But gentlemen a fool saved the wouldbe murderer from the bloody deed he
had planned Yet complete revenge he had and without being the avenger For by
a mysterious fatality Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands
into its own the damning thing he would have done
It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second day
when they were washing down the decks that a stupid Teneriffe man drawing
water in the mainchains all at once shouted out There she rolls there she
rolls Jesu what a whale It was MobyDick
MobyDick cried Don Sebastian St Dominic sir sailor but do whales have
christenings Whom call you MobyDick
A very white and famous and most deadly immortal monster Don but that
would be too long a story
How how cried all the young Spaniards crowding
Nay Dons Dons nay nay I cannot rehearse that now Let me get more into
the air sirs
Chicha the chicha cried Don Pedro our vigorous friend looks faint fill
up his empty glass
No need gentlemen one moment and I proceed Now gentlemen so suddenly
perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship forgetful of the
compact among the crew in the excitement of the moment the Teneriffe man had
instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster though for
some little time past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen
mastheads All was now a frenzy The White Whale the White Whale was the cry
from captain mates and harpooneers who undeterred by fearful rumours were
all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish while the dogged crew eyed
askance and with curses the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass that lit
up by a horizontal spangling sun shifted and glistened like a living opal in
the blue morning sea Gentlemen a strange fatality pervades the whole career of
these events as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted The
mutineer was the bowsman of the mate and when fast to a fish it was his duty
to sit next him while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow and haul in
or slacken the line at the word of command Moreover when the four boats were
lowered the mates got the start and none howled more fiercely with delight
than did Steelkilt as he strained at his oar After a stiff pull their
harpooneer got fast and spear in hand Radney sprang to the bow He was always
a furious man it seems in a boat And now his bandaged cry was to beach him
on the whales topmost back Nothing loath his bowsman hauled him up and up
through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together till of a sudden
the boat struck as against a sunken ledge and keeling over spilled out the
standing mate That instant as he fell on the whales slippery back the boat
righted and was dashed aside by the swell while Radney was tossed over into
the sea on the other flank of the whale He struck out through the spray and
for an instant was dimly seen through that veil wildly seeking to remove
himself from the eye of MobyDick But the whale rushed round in a sudden
maelstrom seized the swimmer between his jaws and rearing high up with him
plunged headlong again and went down
Meantime at the first tap of the boats bottom the Lakeman had slackened
the line so as to drop astern from the whirlpool calmly looking on he thought
his own thoughts But a sudden terrific downward jerking of the boat quickly
brought his knife to the line He cut it and the whale was free But at some
distance MobyDick rose again with some tatters of Radneys red woollen shirt
caught in the teeth that had destroyed him All four boats gave chase again but
the whale eluded them and finally wholly disappeared
In good time the TownHo reached her port a savage solitary place
where no civilised creature resided There headed by the Lakeman all but five
or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted among the palms eventually as
it turned out seizing a large double warcanoe of the savages and setting sail
for some other harbour
The ships company being reduced to but a handful the captain called upon
the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving down the ship
to stop the leak But to such unresting vigilance over their dangerous allies
was this small band of whites necessitated both by night and by day and so
extreme was the hard work they underwent that upon the vessel being ready again
for sea they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put
off with them in so heavy a vessel After taking counsel with his officers he
anchored the ship as far off shore as possible loaded and ran out his two
cannon from the bows stacked his muskets on the poop and warning the Islanders
not to approach the ship at their peril took one man with him and setting the
sail of his best whaleboat steered straight before the wind for Tahiti five
hundred miles distant to procure a reinforcement to his crew
On the fourth day of the sail a large canoe was descried which seemed to
have touched at a low isle of corals He steered away from it but the savage
craft bore down on him and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to
or he would run him under water The captain presented a pistol With one foot
on each prow of the yoked warcanoes the Lakeman laughed him to scorn assuring
him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock he would bury him in
bubbles and foam
What do you want of me cried the captain
Where are you bound and for what are you bound demanded Steelkilt no
lies
I am bound to Tahiti for more men
Very good Let me board you a moment I come in peace With that he leaped
from the canoe swam to the boat and climbing the gunwale stood face to face
with the captain
Cross your arms sir throw back your head Now repeat after me As soon as
Steelkilt leaves me I swear to beach this boat on yonder island and remain
there six days If I do not may lightnings strike me
A pretty scholar laughed the Lakeman Adios Senor and leaping into the
sea he swam back to his comrades
Watching the boat till it was fairly beached and drawn up to the roots of
the cocoanut trees Steelkilt made sail again and in due time arrived at
Tahiti his own place of destination There luck befriended him two ships were
about to sail for France and were providentially in want of precisely that
number of men which the sailor headed They embarked and so forever got the
start of their former captain had he been at all minded to work them legal
retribution
Some ten days after the French ships sailed the whaleboat arrived and the
captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilised Tahitians who had been
somewhat used to the sea Chartering a small native schooner he returned with
them to his vessel and finding all right there again resumed his cruisings
Where Steelkilt now is gentlemen none know but upon the island of
Nantucket the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to give up
its dead still in dreams sees the awful White Whale that destroyed him
Are you through said Don Sebastian quietly
I am Don
Then I entreat you tell me if to the best of your own convictions this
your story is in substance really true It is so passing wonderful Did you get
it from an unquestionable source Bear with me if I seem to press
Also bear with all of us sir sailor for we all join in Don Sebastians
suit cried the company with exceeding interest
Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn gentlemen
Nay said Don Sebastian but I know a worthy priest near by who will
quickly procure one for me I go for it but are you well advised this may grow
too serious
Will you be so good as to bring the priest also Don
Though there are no AutodaFés in Lima now said one of the company to
another I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy Let us
withdraw more out of the moonlight I see no need of this
Excuse me for running after you Don Sebastian but may I also beg that you
will be particular in procuring the largestsized Evangelists you can
This is the priest he brings you the Evangelists said Don Sebastian gravely
returning with a tall and solemn figure
Let me remove my hat Now venerable priest further into the light and
hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it
So help me Heaven and on my honour the story I have told ye gentlemen is
in substance and its great items true I know it to be true it happened on
this ball I trod the ship I knew the crew I have seen and talked with
Steelkilt since the death of Radney«
Chapter LV
Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales
I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas something like
the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman
when in his own absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whaleship so
that he can be fairly stepped upon there It may be worth while therefore
previously to advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down
to the present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman It is time
to set the world right in this matter by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will be
found among the oldest Hindu Egyptian and Grecian sculptures For ever since
those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of temples
the pedestals of statues and on shields medallions cups and coins the
dolphin was drawn in scales of chainarmour like Saladins and a helmeted head
like St Georges ever since then has something of the same sort of licence
prevailed not only in most popular pictures of the whale but in many
scientific presentations of him
Now by all odds the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be
the whales is to be found in the famous cavernpagoda of Elephanta in India
The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial
pagoda all the trades and pursuits every conceivable avocation of man were
prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being No wonder then
that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there
shadowed forth The Hindu whale referred to occurs in a separate department of
the wall depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan
learnedly known as the Matse Avatar But though this sculpture is half man and
half whale so as only to give the tail of the latter yet that small section of
him is all wrong It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda than the
broad palms of the true whales majestic flukes
But go to the old galleries and look now at a great Christian painters
portrait of this fish for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian Hindu It
is Guidos picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the seamonster or whale
Where did Guido get the model of such a strange creature as that Nor does
Hogarth in painting the same scene in his own Perseus Descending make out one
whit better The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the
surface scarcely drawing one inch of water It has a sort of howdah on its
back and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling might
be taken for the Traitors Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower
Then there are the Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald and Jonahs whale
as depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers What shall
be said of these As for the bookbinders whale winding like a vinestalk round
the stock of a descending anchor as stamped and gilded on the backs and
titlepages of many books both old and new that is a very picturesque but
purely fabulous creature imitated I take it from the like figures on antique
vases Though universally denominated a dolphin I nevertheless call this
bookbinders fish an attempt at a whale because it was so intended when the
device was first introduced It was introduced by an old Italian publisher
somewhere about the 15th century during the Revival of Learning and in those
days and even down to a comparatively late period dolphins were popularly
supposed to be a species of the leviathan
In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you will at
times meet with very curious touches at the whale where all manner of spouts
jets deau hot springs and cold Saratoga and BadenBaden come bubbling up
from his unexhausted brain In the titlepage of the original edition of the
Advancement of Learning you will find some curious whales
But quitting all these unprofessional attempts let us glance at those
pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober scientific delineations by those
who know In old Harriss collection of voyages there are some plates of whales
extracted from a Dutch book of voyages AD 1671 entitled A Whaling Voyage to
Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale Peter Peterson of Friesland master
In one of those plates the whales like great rafts of logs are represented
lying among iceisles with white bears running over their living backs In
another plate the prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with
perpendicular flukes
Then again there is an imposing quarto written by one Captain Colnett a
postcaptain in the English navy entitled A Voyage round Cape Horn into the
South Seas for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries In this
book is an outline purporting to be a Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale
drawn by scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico August 1793 and hoisted
on deck I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for the
benefit of his marines To mention but one thing about it let me say that it
has an eye which applied according to the accompanying scale to a fullgrown
sperm whale would make the eye of that whale a bowwindow some five feet long
Ah my gallant captain why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye
Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the
benefit of the young and tender free from the same heinousness of mistake Look
at that popular work Goldsmiths Animated Nature In the abridged London edition
of 18O7 there are plates of an alleged whale and a narwhale I do not wish to
seem inelegant but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow and
as for the narwhale one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one that in this
nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any
intelligent public of schoolboys
Then again in 1825 Bernard Germain Count de Lacépède a great
naturalist published a scientific systematised whale book wherein are several
pictures of the different species of the leviathan All these are not only
incorrect but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale that is to say
the right whale even Scoresby a longexperienced man as touching that
species declares not to have its counterpart in nature
But the placing of the capsheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier brother to the famous Baron In
1836 he published a Natural History of Whales in which he gives what he calls
a picture of the sperm whale Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer
you had best provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket In a word
Frederick Cuviers sperm whale is not a sperm whale but a squash Of course he
never had the benefit of a whaling voyage such men seldom have but whence he
derived that picture who can tell Perhaps he got it as his scientific
predecessor in the same field Desmarest got one of his authentic abortions
that is from a Chinese drawing And what sort of lively lads with the pencil
those Chinese are many queer cups and saucers inform us
As for the signpainters whales seen in the streets hanging over the shops
of oildealers what shall be said of them They are generally Richard III
whales with dromedary humps and very savage breakfasting on three or four
sailor tarts that is whaleboats full of mariners their deformities
floundering in seas of blood and blue paint
But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
surprising after all Consider Most of the scientific drawings have been taken
from the stranded fish and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked
ship with broken back would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all
its undashed pride of hull and spars Though elephants have stood for their
fulllengths the living leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for his
portrait The living whale in his full majesty and significance is only to be
seen at sea in unfathomable waters and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of
sight like a launched lineofbattle ship and out of that element it is a
thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air so
as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations And not to speak of the
highly presumable difference of contour between a young sucking whale and a
fullgrown Platonian leviathan yet even in the case of one of those young
sucking whales hoisted to a ships deck such is then the outlandish eellike
limbered varying shape of him that his precise expression the devil himself
could not catch
But it may be fancied that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale
accurate hints may be derived touching his true form Not at all For it is one
of the more curious things about this leviathan that his skeleton gives very
little idea of his general shape Though Jeremy Benthams skeleton which hangs
for candelabra in the library of one of his executors correctly conveys the
idea of a burlybrowed utilitarian old gentleman with all Jeremys other
leading personal characteristics yet nothing of this kind could be inferred
from any leviathans articulated bones In fact as the great Hunter says the
mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and
padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelops
it This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head as in some part of this
book will be incidentally shown It is also very curiously displayed in the side
fin the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand
minus only the thumb This fin has four regular bonefingers the index middle
ring and little finger But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy
covering as the human fingers in an artificial covering »However recklessly
the whale may sometimes serve us« said humorous Stubb one day »he can never be
truly said to handle us without mittens«
For all these reasons then any way you may look at it you must needs
conclude that the great leviathan is that one creature in the world which must
remain unpainted to the last True one portrait may hit the mark much nearer
than another but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of
exactness So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale
really looks like And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable
idea of his living contour is by going awhaling yourself but by so doing you
run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him Wherefore it seems
to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this
leviathan
Chapter LVI
Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales and the True Pictures of Whaling
Scenes
In connection with the monstrous pictures of whales I am strongly tempted here
to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to be found
in certain books both ancient and modern especially in Pliny Purchas
Hakluyt Harris Cuvier etc But I pass that matter by
I know of only four published outlines of the great sperm whale Colnetts
Hugginss Frederick Cuviers and Beales In the previous chapter Colnett and
Cuvier have been referred to Hugginss is far better than theirs but by great
odds Beales is the best All Beales drawings of this whale are good
excepting the middle figure in the picture of three whales in various attitudes
capping his second chapter His frontispiece boats attacking sperm whales
though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlour men
is admirably correct and lifelike in its general effect Some of the sperm whale
drawings in J Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour but they are
wretchedly engraved That is not his fault though
Of the right whale the best outline pictures are in Scoresby but they are
drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression He has but one
picture of whaling scenes and this is a sad deficiency because it is by such
pictures only when at all well done that you can derive anything like a
truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living hunters
But taken for all in all by far the finest though in some details not the
most correct presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be anywhere found
are two large French engravings well executed and taken from paintings by one
Garnery Respectively they represent attacks on the sperm and right whale In
the first engraving a noble sperm whale is depicted in full majesty of might
just risen beneath the boat from the profundities of the ocean and bearing high
in the air upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks The prow of
the boat is partially unbroken and is drawn just balancing upon the monsters
spine and standing in that prow for that one single incomputable flash of
time you behold an oarsman half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the
whale and in the act of leaping as if from a precipice The action of the
whole thing is wonderfully good and true The halfemptied linetub floats on
the whitened sea the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it
the heads of the swimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting
expressions of affright while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing
down upon the scene Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details of
this whale but let that pass since for the life of me I could not draw so
good a one
In the second engraving the boat is in the act of drawing alongside the
barnacled flank of a large running right whale that rolls his black weedy bulk
in the sea like some mossy rockslide from the Patagonian cliffs His jets are
erect full and black like soot so that from so abounding a smoke in the
chimney you would think there must be a brave supper cooking in the great
bowels below Seafowls are pecking at the small crabs shellfish and other
seacandies and macaroni which the right whale sometimes carries on his
pestilent back And all the while the thicklipped leviathan is rushing through
the deep leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake and causing the
slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddlewheels of
an ocean steamer Thus the foreground is all raging commotion but behind in
admirable artistic contrast is the glassy level of a sea becalmed the drooping
unstarched sails of the powerless ship and the inert mass of a dead whale a
conquered fortress with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whalepole
inserted into his spouthole
Who Garnery the painter is or was I know not But my life for it he was
either practically conversant with his subject or else marvellously tutored by
some experienced whaleman The French are the lads for painting action Go and
gaze upon all the paintings of Europe and where will you find such a gallery of
living and breathing commotion on canvas as in that triumphal hall at
Versailles where the beholder fights his way pellmell through the
consecutive great battles of France where every sword seems a flash of the
Northern Lights and the successive armed kings and emperors dash by like a
charge of crowned centaurs Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery are
those seabattle pieces of Garnery
The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of things
seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of
their whaling scenes With not one tenth of Englands experience in the fishery
and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans they have nevertheless
furnished both nations with the only finished sketches at all capable of
conveying the real spirit of the whalehunt For the most part the English and
American whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical
outline of things such as the vacant profile of the whale which so far as
picturesqueness of effect is concerned is about tantamount to sketching the
profile of a pyramid Even Scoresby the justly renowned right whaleman after
giving us a stiff fulllength of the Greenland whale and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises treats us to a series of classical
engravings of boathooks choppingknives and grapnels and with the
microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering
world ninetysix facsimiles of magnified Arctic snow crystals I mean no
disparagement to the excellent voyager I honour him for a veteran but in so
important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every
crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace
In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery there are two other
French engravings worthy of note by 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 a quiet noonscene among the isles of
the Pacific a French whaler anchored inshore in a calm and lazily taking
water on board the loosened sails of the ship and the long leaves of the palms
in the background both drooping together in the breezeless air The effect is
very fine when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen
under one of their few aspects of oriental repose The other engraving is quite
a different affair the ship hoveto upon the open sea and in the very heart of
the leviathanic life with a right whale alongside the vessel in the act of
cuttingin hove over to the monster as if to a quay and a boat hurriedly
pushing off from this scene of activity is about giving chase to whales in the
distance The harpoons and lances lie levelled for use three oarsmen are just
setting the mast in its hole while from a sudden roll of the sea the little
craft stands halferect out of the water like a rearing horse From the ship
the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a
village of smithies and to windward a black cloud rising up with earnest of
squalls and rains seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen
Chapter LVII
Of Whales in Paint in Teeth in Wood in SheetIron in Stone in Mountains in
Stars
On Tower Hill as you go down to the London docks you may have seen a crippled
beggar or kedger as the sailors say holding a painted board before him
representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg There are three whales
and three boats and one of the boats presumed to contain the missing leg in
all its original integrity is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale
Any time these ten years they tell me has that man held up that picture and
exhibited that stump to an incredulous world But the time of his justification
has now come His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in
Wapping at any rate and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will
find in the Western clearings But though forever mounted on that stump never
a stumpspeech does the poor whaleman make but with downcast eyes stands
ruefully contemplating his own amputation
Throughout the Pacific and also in Nantucket and New Bedford and Sag
Harbour you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling scenes
graven by the fishermen themselves on sperm whaleteeth or ladies busks
wrought out of the right whalebone and other like skrimshander articles as the
whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve
out of the rough material in their hours of ocean leisure Some of them have
little boxes of dentisticallooking implements specially intended for the
skrimshandering business But in general they toil with their jackknives
alone and with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor they will turn you
out anything you please in the way of a mariners fancy
Long exile from Christendom and civilisation inevitably restores a man to
that condition in which God placed him ie what is called savagery Your true
whalehunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois I myself am a savage owning no
allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals and ready at any moment to rebel
against him
Now one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic
hours is his wonderful patience of industry An ancient Hawaiian warclub or
spearpaddle in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving is as great a
trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon For with but a bit of broken
seashell or a sharks tooth that miraculous intricacy of wooden network has
been achieved and it has cost steady years of steady application
As with the Hawaiian savage so with the white sailorsavage With the same
marvellous patience and with the same single sharks tooth of his one poor
jackknife he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture not quite as workmanlike
but as close packed in its maziness of design as the Greek savage Achilless
shield and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness as the prints of that
fine old Dutch savage Albert Durer
Wooden whales or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the
noble South Sea warwood are frequently met with in the forecastles of American
whalers Some of them are done with much accuracy
At some old gableroofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by
the tail for knockers to the roadside door When the porter is sleepy the
anvilheaded whale would be best But these knocking whales are seldom
remarkable as faithful essays On the spires of some oldfashioned churches you
will see sheetiron whales placed there for weathercocks but they are so
elevated and besides that are to all intents and purposes so labelled with
Hands off you cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit
In bony ribby regions of the earth where at the base of high broken cliffs
masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain you will often
discover images as of the petrified forms of the leviathan partly merged in
grass which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges
Then again in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually
girdled by amphitheatrical heights here and there from some lucky point of view
you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the
undulating ridges But you must be a thorough whaleman to see these sights and
not only that but if you wish to return to such a sight again you must be sure
and take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first standpoint
else so chancelike are such observations of the hills that your precise
previous standpoint would require a laborious rediscovery like the Soloma
islands which still remain incognita though once highruffed Mendanna trod
them and old Figuera chronicled them
Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject can you fail to trace out great
whales in the starry heavens and boats in pursuit of them as when long filled
with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in battle among the
clouds Thus at the North have I chased leviathan round and round the Pole with
the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to me And beneath
the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the ArgoNavis and joined the
chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the
Flying Fish
With a frigates anchors for my bridlebits and fasces of harpoons for
spurs would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies to see whether
the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my
mortal sight
Chapter LVIII
Brit
Steering northeastward from the Crozetts we fell in with vast meadows of brit
the minute yellow substance upon which the right whale largely feeds For
leagues and leagues it undulated round us so that we seemed to be sailing
through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat
On the second day numbers of right whales were seen who secure from the
attack of a sperm whaler like the Pequod with open jaws sluggishly swam through
the brit which adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind
in their mouths was in that manner separated from the water that escaped at the
lip
As morning mowers who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their
scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads even so these monsters swam
making a strange grassy cutting sound and leaving behind them endless swaths
of blue upon the yellow sea10
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all
reminded one of mowers Seen from the mastheads especially when they paused
and were stationary for a while their vast black forms looked more like
lifeless masses of rock than anything else And as in the great hunting
countries of India the stranger at a distance will sometimes pass on the plains
recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such taking them for bare
blackened elevations of the soil even so often with him who for the first
time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea And even when recognised
at last their immense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that
such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct in all parts with the
same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse
Indeed in other respects you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep
with the same feelings that you do those of the shore For though some old
naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind in
the sea and though taking a broad general view of the thing this may very well
be yet coming to specialities where for example does the ocean furnish any
fish that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog The
accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear comparative
analogy to him
But though to landsmen in general the native inhabitants of the seas have
ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling though we
know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita so that Columbus sailed over
numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one though
by vast odds the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and
indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone
upon the waters though but a moments consideration will teach that however
baby man may brag of his science and skill and however much in a flattering
future that science and skill may augment yet forever and forever to the
crack of doom the sea will insult and murder him and pulverise the stateliest
stiffest frigate he can make nevertheless by the continual repetition of these
very impressions man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which
aboriginally belongs to it
The first boat we read of floated on an ocean that with Portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a widow That
same ocean rolls now that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships of last year
Yea foolish mortals Noahs flood is not yet subsided twothirds of the fair
world it yet covers
Wherein differ the sea and the land that a miracle upon one is not a
miracle upon the other Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews when
under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened and swallowed
them up forever yet not a modern sun ever sets but in precisely the same
manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews
But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it but it is
also a fiend to its own offspring worse than the Persian host who murdered his
own guests sparing not the creatures which itself hath spawned Like a savage
tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs so the sea dashes even
the mightiest whales against the rocks and leaves them there side by side with
the split wrecks of ships No mercy no power but its own controls it Panting
and snorting like a mad battlesteed that has lost its rider the masterless
ocean overruns the globe
Consider the subtleness of the sea how its most dreaded creatures glide
under water unapparent for the most part and treacherously hidden beneath the
loveliest tints of azure Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of
many of its most remorseless tribes as the dainty embellished shape of many
species of sharks Consider once more the universal cannibalism of the sea
all whose creatures prey upon each other carrying on eternal war since the
world began
Consider all this and then turn to this green gentle and most docile
earth consider them both the sea and the land and do you not find a strange
analogy to something in yourself For as this appalling ocean surrounds the
verdant land so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti full of peace
and joy but encompassed by all the horrors of the halfknown life God keep
thee Push not off from that isle thou canst never return
Chapter LIX
Squid
Slowly wading through the meadows of brit the Pequod still held on her way
northeastward toward the island of Java a gentle air impelling her keel so
that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to
that languid breeze as three mild palms on a plain And still at wide
intervals in the silvery night the lonely alluring jet would be seen
But one transparent blue morning when a stillness almost preternatural
spread over the sea however unattended with any stagnant calm when the long
burnished sunglade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid across them
enjoining some secrecy when the slippered waves whispered together as they
softly ran on in this profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was
seen by Daggoo from the mainmasthead
In the distance a great white mass lazily rose and rising higher and
higher and disentangling itself from the azure at last gleamed before our prow
like a snowslide new slid from the hills Thus glistening for a moment as
slowly it subsided and sank Then once more arose and silently gleamed It
seemed not a whale and yet is this MobyDick thought Daggoo Again the phantom
went down but on reappearing once more with a stilettolike cry that startled
every man from his nod the negro yelled out There there again there she
breaches right ahead The White Whale the White Whale
Upon this the seamen rushed to the yardarms as in swarmingtime the bees
rush to the boughs Bareheaded in the sultry sun Ahab stood on the bowsprit
and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave his orders to the
helmsman cast his eager glance in the direction indicated aloft by the
outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo
Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
gradually worked upon Ahab so that he was now prepared to connect the ideas of
mildness and repose with the first sight of the particular whale he pursued
however this was or whether his eagerness betrayed him whichever way it might
have been no sooner did he distinctly perceive the white mass than with a
quick intensity he instantly gave orders for lowering
The four boats were soon on the water Ahabs in advance and all swiftly
pulling toward their prey Soon it went down and while with oars suspended we
were awaiting its reappearance lo in the same spot where it sank once more it
slowly rose Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of MobyDick we now
gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto
revealed to mankind A vast pulpy mass furlongs in length and breadth of a
glancing creamcolour lay floating on the water innumerable long arms
radiating from its centre and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas as
if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach No perceptible face or
front did it have no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct but
undulated there on the billows an unearthly formless chancelike apparition
of life
As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again Starbuck still
gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk with a wild voice exclaimed
»Almost rather had I seen MobyDick and fought him than to have seen thee thou
white ghost«
»What was it sir« said Flask
»The great live squid which they say few whaleships ever beheld and
returned to their ports to tell of it«
But Ahab said nothing turning his boat he sailed back to the vessel the
rest as silently following
Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected with the
sight of this object certain it is that a glimpse of it being so very unusual
that circumstance has gone far to invest it with portentousness So rarely is it
beheld that though one and all of them declare it to be the largest animated
thing in the ocean yet very few of them have any but the most vague ideas
concerning its true nature and form notwithstanding they believe it to furnish
to the sperm whale his only food For though other species of whales find their
food above water and may be seen by man in the act of feeding the spermaceti
whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones below the surface and only by
inference is it that any one can tell of what precisely that food consists At
times when closely pursued he will disgorge what are supposed to be the
detached arms of the squid some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and
thirty feet in length They fancy that the monster to which these arms belonged
ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean and that the sperm whale
unlike other species is supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it
There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop
Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid The manner in which the
Bishop describes it as alternately rising and sinking with some other
particulars he narrates in all this the two correspond But much abatement is
necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he assigns it
By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumours of the mysterious
creature here spoken of it is included among the class of cuttlefish to
which indeed in certain external respects it would seem to belong but only as
the Anak of the tribe
Chapter LX
The Line
With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described as well as for the
better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented I have here to
speak of the magical sometimes horrible whaleline
The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp slightly
vapoured with tar not impregnated with it as in the case of ordinary ropes
for while tar as ordinarily used makes the hemp more pliable to the
ropemaker and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for
common ship use yet not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the
whaleline for the close coiling to which it must be subjected but as most
seamen are beginning to learn tar in general by no means adds to the ropes
durability or strength however much it may give it compactness and gloss
Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely
superseded hemp as a material for whalelines for though not so durable as
hemp it is stronger and far more soft and elastic and I will add since there
is an æsthetics in all things is much more handsome and becoming to the boat
than hemp Hemp is a dusky dark fellow a sort of Indian but Manilla is as a
goldenhaired Circassian to behold
The whaleline is only twothirds of an inch in thickness At first sight
you would not think it so strong as it really is By experiment its one and
fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds so that
the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons In length the
common sperm whaleline measures something over two hundred fathoms Toward the
stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub not like the wormpipe
of a still though but so as to form one round cheeseshaped mass of densely
bedded sheaves or layers of concentric spiralisations without any hollow but
the heart or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese As the
least tangle or kink in the coiling would in running out infallibly take
somebodys arm leg or entire body off the utmost precaution is used in
stowing the line in its tub Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire
morning in this business carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it
downward through a block toward the tub so as in the act of coiling to free it
from all possible wrinkles and twists
In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one the same line being
continuously coiled in both tubs There is some advantage in this because these
twintubs being so small they fit more readily into the boat and do not strain
it so much whereas the American tub nearly three feet in diameter and of
proportionate depth makes a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are
but one halfinch in thickness for the bottom of the whaleboat is like
critical ice which will bear up a considerable distributed weight but not very
much of a concentrated one When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the
American linetub the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious
great weddingcake to present to the whales
Both ends of the line are exposed the lower end terminating in an
eyesplice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub and
hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything This arrangement of
the lower end is necessary on two accounts First In order to facilitate the
fastening to it of an additional line from a neighbouring boat in case the
stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line
originally attached to the harpoon In these instances the whale of course is
shifted like a mug of ale as it were from the one boat to the other though
the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort Second This
arrangement is indispensable for common safetys sake for were the lower end of
the line in any way attached to the boat and were the whale then to run the
line out to the end almost in a single smoking minute as he sometimes does he
would not stop there for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after
him into the profundity of the sea and in that case no towncrier would ever
find her again
Before lowering the boat for the chase the upper end of the line is taken
aft from the tub and passing round the loggerhead there is again carried
forward the entire length of the boat resting crosswise upon the loom or handle
of every mans oar so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing and also
passing between the men as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales to
the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat where a
wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill prevents it from slipping out
From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows and is then passed
inside the boat again and some ten or twenty fathoms called boxline being
coiled upon the box in the bows it continues its way to the gunwale still a
little further aft and is then attached to the shortwarp the rope which is
immediately connected with the harpoon but previous to that connection the
shortwarp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail
Thus the whaleline folds the whole boat in its complicated coils twisting
and writhing around it in almost every direction All the oarsmen are involved
in its perilous contortions so that to the timid eye of the landsman they seem
as Indian jugglers with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs
Nor can any son of mortal woman for the first time seat himself amid those
hempen intricacies and while straining his utmost at the oar bethink him that
at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted and all these horrible
contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings he cannot be thus
circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to
quiver in him like a shaken jelly Yet habit strange thing what cannot habit
accomplish Gayer sallies more merry mirth better jokes and brighter
repartees you never heard over your mahogany than you will hear over the
halfinch white cedar of the whaleboat when thus hung in hangmans nooses
and like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward the six men composing
the crew pull into the jaws of death with a halter around every neck as you
may say
Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those
repeated whaling disasters some few of which are casually chronicled of this
man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line and lost For when the
line is darting out to be seated then in the boat is like being seated in the
midst of the manifold whizzings of a steamengine in full play when every
flying beam and shaft and wheel is grazing you It is worse for you cannot
sit motionless in the heart of these perils because the boat is rocking like a
cradle and you are pitched one way and the other without the slightest
warning and only by a certain selfadjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of
volition and action can you escape being made a Mazeppa of and run away with
where the allseeing sun himself could never pierce you out
Again as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of
the storm is perhaps more awful than the storm itself for indeed the calm is
but the wrapper and envelope of the storm and contains it in itself as the
seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder and the ball and the
explosion so the graceful repose of the line as it silently serpentines about
the oarsmen before being brought into actual play this is a thing which
carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair But
why say more All men live enveloped in whalelines All are born with halters
round their necks but it is only when caught in the swift sudden turn of
death that mortals realise the silent subtle everpresent perils of life And
if you be a philosopher though seated in the whaleboat 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 LXI
Stubb Kills a Whale
If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents to Queequeg
it was quite a different object
»When you see him quid« said the savage honing his harpoon in the bow of
his hoisted boat »then you quick see him parm whale«
The next day was exceedingly still and sultry and with nothing special to
engage them the Pequods crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by
such a vacant sea For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were
voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground that is it affords fewer
glimpses of porpoises dolphins flyingfish and other vivacious denizens of
more stirring waters than those off the Rio de la Plata or the inshore ground
off Peru
It was my turn to stand at the foremasthead and with my shoulders leaning
against the slackened royal shrouds to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an
enchanted air No resolution could withstand it in that dreamy mood losing all
consciousness at last my soul went out of my body though my body still
continued to sway as a pendulum will long after the power which first moved it
is withdrawn
Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me I had noticed that the seamen at
the main and mizen mastheads were already drowsy So that at last all three of
us lifelessly swung from the spars and for every swing that we made there was a
nod from below from the slumbering helmsman The waves too nodded their
indolent crests and across the wide trance of the sea east nodded to west and
the sun over all
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes like vices my hands
grasped the shrouds some invisible gracious agency preserved me with a shock
I came back to life And lo close under our lee not forty fathoms off a
gigantic sperm whale lay rolling in the water like the capsized hull of a
frigate his broad glossy back of an Ethiopian hue glistening in the suns
rays like a mirror But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea and ever and
anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet the whale looked like a portly burgher
smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon But that pipe poor whale was thy last
As if struck by some enchanters wand the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it
all at once started into wakefulness and more than a score of voices from all
parts of the vessel simultaneously with the three notes from aloft shouted
forth the accustomed cry as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the
sparkling brine into the air
»Clear away the boats Luff« cried Ahab And obeying his own order he
dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes
The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale and ere the
boats were down majestically turning he swam away to the leeward but with
such a steady tranquillity and making so few ripples as he swam that thinking
after all he might not as yet be alarmed Ahab gave orders that not an oar
should be used and no man must speak but in whispers So seated like Ontario
Indians on the gunwales of the boats we swiftly but silently paddled along the
calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set Presently as we thus
glided in chase the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into
the air and then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up
»There go flukes« was the cry an announcement immediately followed by
Stubbs producing his match and igniting his pipe for now a respite was
granted After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed the whale rose
again and being now in advance of the smokers boat and much nearer to it than
to any of the others Stubb counted upon the honour of the capture It was
obvious now that the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers All
silence of cautiousness was therefore no longer of use Paddles were dropped
and oars came loudly into play And still puffing at his pipe Stubb cheered on
his crew to the assault
Yes a mighty change had come over the fish All alive to his jeopardy he
was going head out that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he
brewed11
»Start her start her my men Dont hurry yourselves take plenty of time
but start her start her like thunderclaps that s all« cried Stubb
spluttering out the smoke as he spoke »Start her now give em the long and
strong stroke Tashtego Start her Tash my boy start her all but keep
cool keep cool cucumbers is the word easy easy only start her like grim
death and grinning devils and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their
graves boys that s all Start her«
»Woohoo Wahee« screamed the GayHeader in reply raising some old
warwhoop to the skies as every oarsman in the strained boat involuntarily
bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke which the eager Indian
gave
But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild »Keehee
Keehee« yelled Daggoo straining forward and backward on his seat like a
pacing tiger in his cage
»Kala Kooloo« howled Queequeg as if smacking his lips over a mouthful
of Grenadiers steak And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea
Meanwhile Stubb retaining his place in the van still encouraged his men to the
onset all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth Like desperadoes they
tugged and they strained till the welcome cry was heard »Stand up Tashtego
give it to him« The harpoon was hurled »Stern all« The oarsmen backed
water the same moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their
wrists It was the magical line An instant before Stubb had swiftly caught two
additional turns with it round the loggerhead whence by reason of its
increased rapid circlings a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with
the steady fumes from his pipe As the line passed round and round the
loggerhead so also just before reaching that point it blisteringly passed
through and through both of Stubbs hands from which the handcloths or
squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times had accidentally
dropped It was like holding an enemys sharp twoedged sword by the blade and
that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch
»Wet the line wet the line« cried Stubb to the tub oarsman him seated by
the tub who snatching off his hat dashed the seawater into it12 More turns
were taken so that the line began holding its place The boat now flew through
the boiling water like a shark all fins Stubb and Tashtego here changed places
stem for stern a staggering business truly in that rocking commotion
From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of the
boat and from its now being more tight than a harpstring you would have
thought the craft had two keels one cleaving the water the other the air as
the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once A continual cascade
played at the bows a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake and at the slightest
motion from within even but of a little finger the vibrating cracking craft
canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea Thus they rushed each man with
might and main clinging to his seat to prevent being tossed to the foam and
the tall form of Tashtego at the steeringoar crouching almost double in order
to bring down his centre of gravity Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed
as they shot on their way till at length the whale somewhat slackened his
flight
»Haul in haul in« cried Stubb to the bowsman and facing round toward
the whale all hands began pulling the boat up to him while yet the boat was
being towed on Soon ranging up by his flank Stubb firmly planting his knee in
the clumsy cleat darted dart after dart into the flying fish at the word of
command the boat alternately sterning out of the way of the whales horrible
wallow and then ranging up for another fling
The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a
hill His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood which bubbled and
seethed for furlongs behind in their wake The slanting sun playing upon this
crimson pond in the sea sent back its reflection into every face so that they
all glowed to each other like red men And all the while jet after jet of white
smoke was agonisingly shot from the spiracle of the whale and vehement puff
after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman as at every dart hauling in
upon his crooked lance by the line attached to it Stubb straightened it again
and again by a few rapid blows against the gunwale then again and again sent
it into the whale
»Pull up pull up« he now cried to the bowsman as the waning whale
relaxed in his wrath »Pull up close to« and the boat ranged along the
fishs flank When reaching far over the bow Stubb slowly churned his long
sharp lance into the fish and kept it there carefully churning and churning
as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have
swallowed and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out But
that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish And now it is
struck for starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his
flurry the monster horribly wallowed in his blood overwrapped himself in
impenetrable mad boiling spray so that the imperilled craft instantly
dropping astern had much ado blindly to struggle out from that frenzied
twilight into the clear air of the day
And now abating in his flurry the whale once more rolled out into view
surging from side to side spasmodically dilating and contracting his
spouthole with sharp cracking agonised respirations At last gush after
gush of clotted red gore as if it had been the purple lees of red wine shot
into the frighted air and falling back again ran dripping down his motionless
flanks into the sea His heart had burst
»He s dead Mr Stubb« said Daggoo
»Yes both pipes smoked out« and withdrawing his own from his mouth Stubb
scattered the dead ashes over the water and for a moment stood thoughtfully
eyeing the vast corpse he had made
Chapter LXII
The Dart
A word concerning an incident in the last chapter
According to the invariable usage of the fishery the whaleboat pushes off
from the ship with the headsman or whalekiller as temporary steersman and the
harpooneer or whalefastener pulling the foremost oar the one known as the
harpooneeroar Now it needs a strong nervous arm to strike the first iron into
the fish for often in what is called a long dart the heavy implement has to
be flung to the distance of twenty or thirty feet But however prolonged and
exhausting the chase the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to
the uttermost indeed he is expected to set an example of superhuman activity
to the rest not only by incredible rowing but by repeated loud and intrepid
exclamations and what it is to keep shouting at the top of ones compass while
all the other muscles are strained and half started what that is none know but
those who have tried it For one I cannot bawl very heartily and work very
recklessly at one and the same time In this straining bawling state then
with his back to the fish all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the
exciting cry »Stand up and give it to him« He now has to drop and secure his
oar turn round on his centre halfway seize his harpoon from the crotch and
with what little strength may remain he essays to pitch it somehow into the
whale No wonder taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body that out of
fifty fair chances for a dart not five are successful no wonder that so many
hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated no wonder that some of them
actually burst their bloodvessels in the boat no wonder that some sperm
whalemen are absent four years with four barrels no wonder that to many
shipowners whaling is but a losing concern for it is the harpooneer that makes
the voyage and if you take the breath out of his body how can you expect to
find it there when most wanted
Again if the dart be successful then at the second critical instant that
is when the whale starts to run the boatheader and harpooneer likewise start
to running fore and aft to the imminent jeopardy of themselves and everyone
else It is then they change places and the headsman the chief officer of the
little craft takes his proper station in the bows of the boat
Now I care not who maintains the contrary but all this is both foolish and
unnecessary The headsman should stay in the bows from first to last he should
both dart the harpoon and the lance and no rowing whatever should be expected
of him except under circumstances obvious to any fisherman I know that this
would sometimes involve a slight loss of speed in the chase but long experience
in various whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery it has not by any means been so much the
speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that has
caused them
To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart the harpooneers of this world
must start to their feet from out of idleness and not from out of toil
Chapter LXIII
The Crotch
Out of the trunk the branches grow out of them the twigs So in productive
subjects grow the chapters
The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention It is
a notched stick of a peculiar form some two feet in length which is
perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow for the
purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoon whose
other naked barbed end slopingly projects from the prow Thereby the weapon is
instantly at hand to its hurler who snatches it up as readily from its rest as
a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall It is customary to have two
harpoons reposing in the crotch respectively called the first and second irons
But these two harpoons each by its own cord are both connected with the
line the object being this to dart them both if possible one instantly after
the other into the same whale so that if in the coming drag one should draw
out the other may still retain a hold It is a doubling of the chances But it
very often happens that owing to the instantaneous violent convulsive running
of the whale upon receiving the first iron it becomes impossible for the
harpooneer however lightninglike in his movements to pitch the second iron
into him Nevertheless as the second iron is already connected with the line
and the line is running hence that weapon must at all events be
anticipatingly tossed out of the boat somehow and somewhere else the most
terrible jeopardy would involve all hands Tumbled into the water it accordingly
is in such cases the spare coils of boxline mentioned in a preceding chapter
making this feat in most instances prudently practicable But this critical
act is not always unattended with the saddest and most fatal casualties
Furthermore you must know that when the second iron is thrown overboard it
thenceforth becomes a dangling sharpedged terror skittishly curvetting about
both boat and whale entangling the lines or cutting them and making a
prodigious sensation in all directions Nor in general is it possible to
secure it again until the whale is fairly captured and a corpse
Consider now how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging one
unusually strong active and knowing whale when owing to these qualities in
him as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of such an audacious
enterprise eight or ten loose second irons may be simultaneously dangling about
him For of course each boat is supplied with several harpoons to bend on to
the line should the first one be ineffectually darted without recovery All
these particulars are faithfully narrated here as they will not fail to
elucidate several most important however intricate passages in scenes
hereafter to be painted
Chapter LXIV
Stubbs Supper
Stubbs whale had been killed some distance from the ship It was a calm so
forming a tandem of three boats we commenced the slow business of towing the
trophy to the Pequod And now as we eighteen men with our thirtysix arms and
one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers slowly toiled hour after hour upon
that inert sluggish corpse in the sea and it seemed hardly to budge at all
except at long intervals good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness
of the mass we moved For upon the great canal of HangHo or whatever they
call it in China four or five labourers on the footpath will draw a bulky
freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour but this grand argosy we towed
heavily forged along as if laden with piglead in bulk
Darkness came on but three lights up and down in the Peguods mainrigging
dimly guided our way till drawing nearer we saw Ahab dropping one of several
more lanterns over the bulwarks Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment
he issued the usual orders for securing it for the night and then handing his
lantern to a seaman went his way into the cabin and did not come forward again
until morning
Though in overseeing the pursuit of this whale Captain Ahab had evinced
his customary activity to call it so yet now that the creature was dead some
vague dissatisfaction or impatience or despair seemed working in him as if
the sight of that dead body reminded him that MobyDick was yet to be slain and
though a thousand other whales were brought to his ship all that would not one
jot advance his grand monomaniac object Very soon you would have thought from
the sound on the Pequods decks that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in
the deep for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck and thrust rattling
out of the portholes But by those clanking links the vast corpse itself not
the ship is to be moored Tied by the head to the stern and by the tail to the
bows the whale now lies with its black hull close to the vessels and seen
through the darkness of the night which obscured the spars and rigging aloft
the two ship and whale seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks whereof
one reclines while the other remains standing13
If moody Ahab was now all quiescence at least so far as could be known on
deck Stubb his second mate flushed with conquest betrayed an unusual but
still goodnatured excitement Such an unwonted bustle was he in that the staid
Starbuck his official superior quietly resigned to him for the time the sole
management of affairs One small helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb
was soon made strangely manifest Stubb was a high liver he was somewhat
intemperately fond of the whale as a flavourish thing to his palate
»A steak a steak ere I sleep You Daggoo overboard you go and cut me
one from his small«
Here be it known that though these wild fishermen do not as a general
thing and according to the great military maxim make the enemy defray the
current expenses of the war at least before realising the proceeds of the
voyage yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers who have a genuine
relish for that particular part of the sperm whale designated by Stubb
comprising the tapering extremity of the body
About midnight that steak was cut and cooked and lighted by two lanterns of
sperm oil Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper at the capstanhead
as if that capstan were a sideboard Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on whales
flesh that night Mingling their mumblings with his own mastications thousands
on thousands of sharks swarming round the dead leviathan smackingly feasted on
its fatness The few sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the
sharp slapping of their tails against the hull within a few inches of the
sleepers hearts Peering over the side you could just see them as before you
heard them wallowing in the sullen black waters and turning over on their
backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a
human head This particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous How at
such an apparently unassailable surface they contrive to gouge out such
symmetrical mouthfuls remains a part of the universal problem of all things
The mark they thus leave on the whale may best be likened to the hollow made by
a carpenter in countersinking for a screw
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a seafight sharks will
be seen longingly gazing up to the ships decks like hungry dogs round a table
where red meat is being carved ready to bolt down every killed man that is
tossed to them and though while the valiant butchers over the decktable are
thus cannibally carving each others live meat with carvingknives all gilded
and tasselled the sharks also with their jewelhilted mouths are
quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat and though were
you to turn the whole affair upside down it would still be pretty much the same
thing that is to say a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties and
though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slaveships crossing the
Atlantic systematically trotting alongside to be handy in case a parcel is to
be carried anywhere or a dead slave to be decently buried and though one or
two other like instances might be set down touching the set terms places and
occasions when sharks do most socially congregate and most hilariously feast
yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such
countless numbers and in gayer or more jovial spirits than around a dead sperm
whale moored by night to a whaleship at sea If you have never seen that
sight then suspend your decision about the propriety of devilworship and the
expediency of conciliating the devil
But as yet Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was going on
so nigh him no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his own epicurean
lips
»Cook cook where s that old Fleece« he cried at length widening his
legs still further as if to form a more secure base for his supper and at the
same time darting his fork into the dish as if stabbing with his lance »cook
you cook sail this way cook«
The old black not in any very high glee at having been previously roused
from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour came shambling along from his
galley for like many old blacks there was something the matter with his
kneepans which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans this old
Fleece as they called him came shuffling and limping along assisting his step
with his tongs which after a clumsy fashion were made of straightened iron
hoops this old Ebony floundered along and in obedience to the word of command
came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubbs sideboard when with both
hands folded before him and resting on his twolegged cane he bowed his arched
back still further over at the same time sideways inclining his head so as to
bring his best ear into play
»Cook« said Stubb rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his mouth
»dont you think this steak is rather overdone You ve been beating this steak
too much cook it s too tender Dont I always say that to be good a
whalesteak must be tough There are those sharks now over the side dont you
see they prefer it tough and rare What a shindy they are kicking up Cook go
and talk to em tell em they are welcome to help themselves civilly and in
moderation but they must keep quiet Blast me if I can hear my own voice
Away cook and deliver my message Here take this lantern« snatching one from
his sideboard »now then go and preach to them«
Sullenly taking the offered lantern old Fleece limped across the deck to
the bulwarks and then with one hand dropping his light low over the sea so as
to get a good view of his congregation with the other hand he solemnly
flourished his tongs and leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began
addressing the sharks while Stubb softly crawling behind overheard all that
was said
»Fellowcritters Ise ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam noise
dare You hear Stop dat dam smackin ob de lip Massa Stubb say dat you can
fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings but by Gor you must stop dat dam
racket«
»Cook« here interposed Stubb accompanying the word with a sudden slap on
the shoulder »Cook why damn your eyes you mustnt swear that way when you
re preaching That s no way to convert sinners cook«
»Who dat Den preach to him yourself« sullenly turning to go
»No cook go on go on«
»Well den Belubed fellowcritters «
»Right« exclaimed Stubb approvingly »Coax em to it try that« and Fleece
continued
»Do you is all sharks and by natur wery woracious yet I zay to you
fellowcritters dat dat woraciousness top dat dam slappin ob de tail How
you tink to hear spose you keep up such a dam slappin and bitin dare«
»Cook« cried Stubb collaring him »I wont have that swearing Talk to em
gentlemanly«
Once more the sermon proceeded
»Your woraciousness fellowcritters I dont blame ye so much for dat is
natur and cant be helped but to gobern dat wicked natur dat is de pint You
is sharks sartin but if you gobern de shark in you why den you be angel for
all angel is noting more dan de shark well goberned Now look here bredren
just try wonst to be cibil ahelping yourselbs from dat whale Dont be tearin
de blubber out your neighbours mout I say Is not one shark dood right as
toder to dat whale And by Gor none on you has de right to dat whale dat
whale belong to someone else I know some o you has berry brig mout brigger
dan oders but then de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies so dat de
brigness ob de mout is not to swallar wid but to bite off de blubber for de
small fry ob sharks dat cant get into de scrouge to help demselves«
»Well done old Fleece« cried Stubb »that s Christianity go on«
»No use goin on de dam willains will keep ascrougin and slappin each
oder Massa Stubb dey dont hear one word no use apreachin to such dam
guttons as you call em till dare bellies is full and dare bellies is
bottomless and when dey do get em full dey wont hear you den for den dey
sink in de sea go fast to sleep on de coral and cant hear noting at all no
more for eber and eber«
»Upon my soul I am about of the same opinion so give the benediction
Fleece and I ll away to my supper«
Upon this Fleece holding both hands over the fishy mob raised his shrill
voice and cried
»Cussed fellowcritters Kick up de damndest row as ever you can fill your
dam bellies till dey bust and den die«
»Now cook« said Stubb resuming his supper at the capstan »stand just
where you stood before there over against me and pay particular attention«
»All dention« said Fleece again stooping over upon his tongs in the
desired position
»Well« said Stubb helping himself freely meanwhile »I shall now go back
to the subject of this steak In the first place how old are you cook«
»What dat do wid de teak« said the old black testily
»Silence How old are you cook«
»Bout ninety dey say« he gloomily muttered
»And have you lived in this world hard upon one hundred years cook and
dont know yet how to cook a whalesteak« rapidly bolting another mouthful at
the last word so that that morsel seemed a continuation of the question »Where
were you born cook«
»Hind de hatchway in ferryboat goin ober de Roanoke«
»Born in a ferryboat That s queer too But I want to know what country
you were born in cook«
»Didnt I say de Roanoke country« he cried sharply
»No you didnt cook but I ll tell you what I m coming to cook You
must go home and be born over again you dont know how to cook a whalesteak
yet«
»Bress my soul if I cook noder one« he growled angrily turning round to
depart
»Come back cook here hand me those tongs now take that bit of steak
there and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be Take it I
say« holding the tongs toward him »take it and taste it«
Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment the old negro
muttered »Best cooked teak I eber taste joosy berry joosy«
»Cook« said Stubb squaring himself once more »do you belong to the
church«
»Passed one once in CapeDown« said the old man sullenly
»And you have once in your life passed a holy church in CapeTown where you
doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his beloved
fellowcreatures have you cook And yet you come here and tell me such a
dreadful lie as you did just now eh« said Stubb »Where do you expect to go
to cook«
»Go to bed berry soon« he mumbled half turning as he spoke
»Avast heave to I mean when you die cook It s an awful question Now
what s your answer«
»When dis old brack man dies« said the negro slowly changing his whole air
and demeanour »he hisself wont go nowhere but some bressed angel will come
and fetch him«
»Fetch him How In a coach and four as they fetched Elijah And fetch him
where«
»Up dere« said Fleece holding his tongs straight over his head and
keeping it there very solemnly
»So then you expect to go up into our maintop do you cook when you are
dead But dont you know the higher you climb the colder it gets Maintop eh«
»Didnt say dat t all« 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 you expect to get into heaven by crawling
through the lubbers hole cook but no no cook you dont get there except
you go the regular way round by the rigging It s a ticklish business but
must be done or else it s no go But none of us are in heaven yet Drop your
tongs cook and hear my orders Do ye hear Hold your hat in one hand and clap
t other atop of your heart when I m giving my orders cook What that your
heart there that s your gizzard Aloft aloft that s it now you have
it Hold it there now and pay attention«
»All dention« said the old black with both hands placed as desired
vainly wriggling his grizzled head as if to get both ears in front at one and
the same time
»Well then cook you see this whalesteak of yours was so very bad that I
have put it out of sight as soon as possible you see that dont you Well for
the future when you cook another whalesteak for my private table here the
capstan I ll tell you what to do so as not to spoil it by overdoing Hold the
steak in one hand and show a live coal to it with the other that done dish
it d ye hear And now tomorrow cook when we are cutting in the fish be
sure you stand by to get the tips of his fins have them put in pickle As for
the ends of the flukes have them soused cook There now ye may go«
But Fleece had hardly got three paces off when he was recalled
»Cook give me cutlets for supper tomorrow night in the midwatch D ye
hear away you sail then Halloa stop make a bow before you go Avast
heaving again Whaleballs for breakfast dont forget«
»Wish by Gor whale eat him stead of him eat whale I m bressed if he
aint more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself« muttered the old man limping
away with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock
Chapter LXV
The Whale as a Dish
That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp and like
Stubb eat him by his own light as you may say this seems so outlandish a
thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it
It is upon record that three centuries ago the tongue of the right whale was
esteemed a great delicacy in France and commanded large prices there Also
that in Henry VIIIths time a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome
reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten with barbecued porpoises
which you remember are a species of whale Porpoises indeed are to this day
considered fine eating The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard
balls and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtleballs or
vealballs The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them They had a
great porpoise grant from the crown
The fact is that among his hunters at least the whale would by all hands
be considered a noble dish were there not so much of him but when you come to
sit down before a meatpie nearly one hundred feet long it takes away your
appetite Only the most unprejudiced of men like Stubb nowadays partake of
cooked whales but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious We all know how they
live upon whales and have rare old vintages of prime old train oil Zogranda
one of their most famous doctors recommends strips of blubber for infants as
being exceedingly juicy and nourishing And this reminds me that certain
Englishmen who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whalingvessel
that these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of
whales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber Among the Dutch
whalemen these scraps are called fritters which indeed they greatly resemble
being brown and crisp and smelling something like old Amsterdam housewives
doughnuts or olycooks when fresh They have such an eatable look that the
most selfdenying stranger can hardly keep his hands off
But what further depreciates the whale as a civilised dish is his exceeding
richness He is the great prize ox of the sea too fat to be delicately good
Look at his hump which would be as fine eating as the buffalos which is
esteemed a rare dish were it not such a solid pyramid of fat But the
spermaceti itself how bland and creamy that is like the transparent
halfjellied white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of its growth yet
far too rich to supply a substitute for butter Nevertheless many whalemen have
a method of absorbing it into some other substance and then partaking of it In
the long trywatches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip
their shipbiscuit into the huge oilpots and let them fry there a while Many a
good supper have I thus made
In the case of a small sperm whale the brains are accounted a fine dish The
casket of the skull is broken into with an axe and the two plump whitish lobes
being withdrawn precisely resembling two large puddings they are then mixed
with flour and cooked into a most delectable mess in flavour somewhat
resembling calfs head which is quite a dish among some epicures and everyone
knows that some young bucks among the epicures by continually dining upon
calves brains by and by get to have a little brains of their own so as to be
able to tell a calfs head from their own heads which indeed requires
uncommon discrimination And that is the reason why a young buck with an
intelligentlooking calfs head before him is somehow one of the saddest sights
you can see The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him with an Et tu
Brute expression
It is not perhaps entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous
that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence that appears to
result in some way from the consideration before mentioned ie that a man
should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea and eat it too by its own light
But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer
perhaps he was hung and if he had been put on his trial by oxen he certainly
would have been and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does Go to the
meatmarket of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at
the long rows of dead quadrupeds Does not that sight take a tooth out of the
cannibals jaw Cannibals who is not a cannibal I tell you it will be more
tolerable for the Feegee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar
against a coming famine it will be more tolerable for that provident Feegee I
say in the day of judgment than for thee civilised and enlightened gourmand
who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy
patédefoiegras
But Stubb he eats the whale by its own light does he and that is adding
insult to injury is it Look at your knifehandle there my civilised and
enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef what is that handle made of
what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating And what do you
pick your teeth with after devouring that fat goose With a feather of the same
fowl And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression
of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars It is only within the last
month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronise nothing but
steel pens
Chapter LXVI
The Shark Massacre
When in the Southern fishery a captured sperm whale after long and weary toil
is brought alongside late at night it is not as a general thing at least
customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in For that
business is an exceedingly laborious one is not very soon completed and
requires all hands to set about it Therefore the common usage is to take in
all sail lash the helm alee and then send everyone below to his hammock till
daylight with the reservation that until that time anchorwatches shall be
kept that is two and two for an hour each couple the crew in rotation shall
mount the deck to see that all goes well
But sometimes especially upon the Line in the Pacific this plan will not
answer at all because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather round the moored
carcase that were he left so for six hours say on a stretch little more than
the skeleton would be visible by morning In most other parts of the ocean
however where these fish do not so largely abound their wondrous voracity can
be at times considerably diminished by vigorously stirring them up with sharp
whalingspades a procedure notwithstanding which in some instances only
seems to tickle them into still greater activity But it was not thus in the
present case with the Pequods sharks though to be sure any man unaccustomed
to such sights to have looked over her side that night would have almost
thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese and those sharks the maggots in
it
Nevertheless upon Stubb setting the anchorwatch after his supper was
concluded and when accordingly Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck
no small excitement was created among the sharks for immediately suspending the
cutting stages over the side and lowering three lanterns so that they cast
long gleams of light over the turbid sea these two mariners darting their long
whalingspades kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks14 by striking the
keen steel deep into their skulls seemingly their only vital part But in the
foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts the marksmen could not
always hit their mark and this brought about new revelations of the incredible
ferocity of the foe They viciously snapped not only at each others
disembowelments but like flexible bows bent round and bit their own till
those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth to be
oppositely voided by the gaping wound Nor was this all It was unsafe to meddle
with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures A sort of generic or Pantheistic
vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones after what might be
called the individual life had departed Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake
of his skin one of these sharks almost took poor Queequegs hand off when he
tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw
»Queequeg no care what god made him shark« said the savage agonisingly
lifting his hand up and down »wedder Feegee god or Nantucket god but de god
wat made shark must be one dam Ingin«
Chapter LXVII
Cutting in
It was a Saturday night and such a Sabbath as followed Exofficio professors
of Sabbathbreaking are all whalemen The ivory Pequod was turned into what
seemed a shamble every sailor a butcher You would have thought we were
offering up ten thousand red oxen to the seagods
In the first place the enormous cutting tackles among other ponderous
things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green and which no
single man can possibly lift this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up to the
maintop and firmly lashed to the lower masthead the strongest point anywhere
above a ships deck The end of the hawserlike rope winding through these
intricacies was then conducted to the windlass and the huge lower block of the
tackles was swung over the whale to this block the great blubberhook weighing
some one hundred pounds was attached And now suspended in stages over the
side Starbuck and Stubb the mates armed with their long spades began cutting
a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the
two sidefins This done a broad semicircular line is cut round the hole the
hook is inserted and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus now
commence heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass When instantly the entire
ship careens over on her side every bolt in her starts like the nailheads of
an old house in frosty weather she trembles quivers and nods her frighted
mastheads to the sky More and more she leans over to the whale while every
gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows
till at last a swift startling snap is heard with a great swash the ship
rolls upward and backward from the whale and the triumphant tackle rises into
sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of
blubber Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an
orange so it is stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes
stripped by spiralising it For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass
continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the water and as the
blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the scarf
simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb the mates and just as
fast as it is thus peeled off and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the
time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the
maintop the men at the windlass then cease heaving and for a moment or two
the prodigious blooddripping mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky
and everyone present must take good heed to dodge it when it swings else it may
box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard
One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long keen weapon
called a boardingsword and watching his chance he dexterously slices out a
considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass Into this hole the end
of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked so as to retain a hold
upon the blubber in order to prepare for what follows Whereupon this
accomplished swordsman warning all hands to stand off once more makes a
scientific dash at the mass and with a few sidelong desperate lunging
slicings severs it completely in twain so that while the short lower part is
still fast the long upper strip called a blanketpiece swings clear and is
all ready for lowering The heavers forward now resume their song and while the
one tackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale the other is
slowly slackened away and down goes the first strip through the main hatchway
right beneath into an unfurnished parlour called the blubberroom Into this
twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long blanketpiece
as if it were a great live mass of plaited serpents And thus the work proceeds
the two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously both whale and windlass
heaving the heavers singing the blubberroom gentlemen coiling the mates
scarfing the ship straining and all hands swearing occasionally by way of
assuaging the general friction
Chapter LXVIII
The Blanket
I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject the skin of the
whale I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen afloat and
learned naturalists ashore My original opinion remains unchanged but it is
only an opinion
The question is what and where is the skin of the whale Already you know
what his blubber is That blubber is something of the consistence of firm
closegrained beef but tougher more elastic and compact and ranges from eight
or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness
Now however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creatures
skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness yet in point of fact
these are no arguments against such a presumption because you cannot raise any
other dense enveloping layer from the whales body but that same blubber and
the outermost enveloping layer of any animal if reasonably dense what can that
be but the skin True from the unmarred dead body of the whale you may scrape
off with your hand an infinitely thin transparent substance somewhat
resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass only it is almost as flexible and
soft as satin that is previous to being dried when it not only contracts and
thickens but becomes rather hard and brittle I have several such dried bits
which I use for marks in my whalebooks It is transparent as I said before
and being laid upon the printed page I have sometimes pleased myself with
fancying it exerted a magnifying influence At any rate it is pleasant to read
about whales through their own spectacles as you may say But what I am driving
at here is this That same infinitely thin isinglass substance which I admit
invests the entire body of the whale is not so much to be regarded as the skin
of the creature as the skin of the skin so to speak for it were simply
ridiculous to say that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and
more tender than the skin of a newborn child But no more of this
Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale then when this skin as
in the case of a very large sperm whale will yield the bulk of one hundred
barrels of oil and when it is considered that in quantity or rather weight
that oil in its expressed state is only threefourths and not the entire
substance of the coat some idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that
animated mass a mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid
as that Reckoning ten barrels to the ton you have ten tons for the net weight
of only threequarters of the stuff of the whales skin
In life the visible surface of the sperm whale is not the least among the
many marvels he presents Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and
recrossed with numberless straight marks in thick array something like those in
the finest Italian line engravings But these marks do not seem to be impressed
upon the isinglass substance above mentioned but seem to be seen through it as
if they were engraved upon the body itself Nor is this all In some instances
to the quick observant eye those linear marks as in a veritable engraving
but afford the ground for far other delineations These are hieroglyphical that
is if you call those mysterious ciphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics
then that is the proper word to use in the present connection By my retentive
memory of the hieroglyphics upon one sperm whale in particular I was much
struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the
famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi Like those
mystic rocks too the mysticmarked whale remains undecipherable This allusion
to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing Besides all the other phenomena
which the exterior of the sperm whale presents he not seldom displays the back
and more especially his flanks effaced in great part of the regular linear
appearance by reason of numerous rude scratches altogether of an irregular
random aspect I should say that those New England rocks on the seacoast which
Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent scraping contact with vast
floating icebergs I should say that those rocks must not a little resemble
the sperm whale in this particular It also seems to me that such scratches in
the whale are probably made by hostile contact with other whales for I have
most remarked them in the large fullgrown bulls of the species
A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the
whale It has already been said that it is stripped from him in long pieces
called blanketpieces Like most seaterms this one is very happy and
significant For the whale is indeed wrapped up in his blubber as in a real
blanket or counterpane or still better an Indian poncho slipped over his
head and skirting his extremity It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his
body that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers in
all seas times and tides What would become of a Greenland whale say in
those shuddering icy seas of the North if unsupplied with his cosy surtout
True other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters but
those be it observed are your coldblooded lungless fish whose very bellies
are refrigerators creatures that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg
as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire whereas like man the
whale has lungs and warm blood Freeze his blood and he dies How wonderful is
it then except after explanation that this great monster to whom corporeal
warmth is as indispensable as it is to man how wonderful that he should be
found at home immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters where when
seamen fall overboard they are sometimes found months afterward
perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice as a fly is found glued
in amber But more surprising is it to know as has been proved by experiment
that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer
It does seem to me that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong
individual vitality and the rare virtue of thick walls and the rare virtue of
interior spaciousness Oh man admire and model thyself after the whale Do
thou too remain warm among ice Do thou too live in this world without being
of it Be cool at the Equator keep thy blood fluid at the Pole Like the great
dome of St Peters and like the great whale retain O man in all seasons a
temperature of thine own
But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things Of erections how
few are domed like St Peters of creatures how few vast as the whale
Chapter LXIX
The Funeral
»Haul in the chains Let the carcase go astern«
The vast tackles have now done their duty The peeled white body of the
beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre though changed in hue it has
not perceptibly lost anything in bulk It is still colossal Slowly it floats
more and more away the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate
sharks and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls whose
beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale The vast white headless
phantom floats further and further from the ship and every rod that it so
floats what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls augment the
murderous din For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous
sight is seen Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky upon the fair face of
the pleasant sea wafted by the joyous breezes that great mass of death floats
on and on till lost in infinite perspectives
There s a most doleful and most mocking funeral The seavultures all in
pious mourning the airsharks all punctiliously in black or speckled In life
but few of them would have helped the whale I ween if peradventure he had
needed it but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce Oh
horrible vulturism of earth from which not the mightiest whale is free
Nor is this the end Desecrated as the body is a vengeful ghost survives
and hovers over it to scare Espied by some timid manofwar or blundering
discoveryvessel from afar when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls
nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun and the white spray
heaving high against it straightway the whales unharming corpse with
trembling fingers is set down in the log shoals rocks and breakers
hereabouts beware And for years afterward perhaps ships shun the place
leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum because their leader
originally leaped there when a stick was held There s your law of precedents
there s your utility of traditions there s the story of your obstinate
survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth and now not even hovering
in the air There s orthodoxy
Thus while in life the great whales body may have been a real terror to
his foes in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world
Are you a believer in ghosts my friend There are other ghosts than the
CockLane one and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them
Chapter LXX
The Sphinx
It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping the body
of the leviathan he was beheaded Now the beheading of the sperm whale is a
scientific anatomical feat upon which experienced whalesurgeons very much
pride themselves and not without reason
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck on
the contrary where his head and body seem to join there in that very place
is the thickest part of him Remember also that the surgeon must operate from
above some eight or ten feet intervening between him and his subject and that
subject almost hidden in a discoloured rolling and oftentimes tumultuous and
bursting sea Bear in mind too that under these untoward circumstances he has
to cut many feet deep in the flesh and in that subterraneous manner without so
much as getting one single peep into the evercontracting gash thus made he
must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent interdicted parts and exactly
divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into the skull Do
you not marvel then at Stubbs boast that he demanded but ten minutes to
behead a sperm whale
When first severed the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable
till the body is stripped That done if it belong to a small whale it is
hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of But with a fullgrown leviathan
this is impossible for the sperm whales head embraces nearly onethird of his
entire bulk and completely to suspend such a burden as that even by the
immense tackles of a whaler this were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a
Dutch barn in jewellers scales
The Pequods whale being decapitated and the body stripped the head was
hoisted against the ships side about halfway out of the sea so that it
might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element And there with the
strained craft steeply leaning over it by reason of the enormous downward drag
from the lower masthead and every yardarm on that side projecting like a crane
over the waves there that blooddripping head hung to the Pequods waist like
the giant Holoferness from the girdle of Judith
When this last task was accomplished it was noon and the seamen went below
to their dinner Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but now deserted
deck An intense copper calm like a universal yellow lotus was more and more
unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea
A short space elapsed and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone from
his cabin Taking a few turns on the quarterdeck he paused to gaze over the
side then slowly getting into the mainchains he took Stubbs long spade
still remaining there after the whales decapitation and striking it into the
lower part of the halfsuspended mass placed its other end crutchwise under
one arm and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head
It was a black and hooded head and hanging there in the midst of so intense
a calm it seemed the Sphinxs in the desert »Speak thou vast and venerable
head« muttered Ahab »which though ungarnished with a beard yet here and
there lookest hoary with mosses speak mighty head and tell us the secret
thing that is in thee Of all divers thou hast dived the deepest That head
upon which the upper sun now gleams has moved amid this worlds foundations
Where unrecorded names and navies rust and untold hopes and anchors rot where
in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of
the drowned there in that awful waterland there was thy most familiar home
Thou hast been where bell or diver never went hast slept by many a sailors
side where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down Thou
sawst the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship heart to heart
they sank beneath the exulting wave true to each other when heaven seemed
false to them Thou sawst the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the
midnight deck for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw
and his murderers still sailed on unharmed while swift lightnings shivered the
neighbouring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched
longing arms O head thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an
infidel of Abraham and not one syllable is thine«
»Sail ho« cried a triumphant voice from the mainmasthead
»Ay Well now that s cheering« cried Ahab suddenly erecting himself
while whole thunderclouds swept aside from his brow »That lively cry upon this
deadly calm might almost convert a better man Where away«
»Three points on the starboard bow sir and bringing down her breeze to
us«
»Better and better man Would now St Paul would come along that way and
to my breezelessness bring his breeze O Nature and O soul of man how far
beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the smallest atom stirs or
lives on matter but has its cunning duplicate in mind«
Chapter LXXI
The Jeroboams Story
Hand in hand ship and breeze blew on but the breeze came faster than the ship
and soon the Pequod began to rock
By and by through the glass the strangers boats and manned mastheads
proved her a whaleship But as she was so far to windward and shooting by
apparently making a passage to some other ground the Pequod could not hope to
reach her So the signal was set to see what response would be made
Here be it said that like the vessels of military marines the ships of the
American Whale Fleet have each a private signal all which signals being
collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels attached every
captain is provided with it Thereby the whalecommanders are enabled to
recognise each other upon the ocean even at considerable distances and with no
small facility
The Pequods signal was at last responded to by the strangers setting her
own which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket Squaring her yards
she bore down ranged abeam under the Pequods lee and lowered a boat it soon
drew nigh but as the sideladder was being rigged by Starbucks order to
accommodate the visiting captain the stranger in question waved his hand from
his boats stern in token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary It
turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board and that Mayhew
her captain was fearful of infecting the Pequods company For though himself
and boats crew remained untainted and though his ship was half a rifleshot
off and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between yet
conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the land he peremptorily
refused to come into direct contact with the Pequod
But this did by no means prevent all communication Preserving an interval
of some few yards between itself and the ship the Jeroboams boat by the
occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to the Pequod as she
heavily forged through the sea for by this time it blew very fresh with her
maintopsail aback though indeed at times by the sudden onset of a large
rolling wave the boat would be pushed some way ahead but would be soon
skilfully brought to her proper bearings again Subject to this and other the
like interruptions now and then a conversation was sustained between the two
parties but at intervals not without still another interruption of a very
different sort
Pulling an oar in the Jeroboams boat was a man of a singular appearance
even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities make up all
totalities He was a small short youngish man sprinkled all over his face
with freckles and wearing redundant yellow hair A longskirted
cabalisticallycut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped him the overlapping
sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists A deep settled fanatic delirium
was in his eyes
So soon as this figure had been first descried Stubb had exclaimed »That
s he that s he the longtogged scaramouch the TownHos company told us
of« Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam and a certain
man among her crew some time previous when the Pequod spoke the TownHo
According to this account and what was subsequently learned it seemed that the
scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody
in the Jeroboam His story was this
He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna
Shakers where he had been a great prophet in their cracked secret meetings
having several times descended from heaven by the way of a trapdoor announcing
the speedy opening of the seventh vial which he carried in his vestpocket but
which instead of containing gunpowder was supposed to be charged with
laudanum A strange apostolic whim having seized him he had left Neskyeuna for
Nantucket where with that cunning peculiar to craziness he assumed a steady
commonsense exterior and offered himself as a greenhand candidate for the
Jeroboams whaling voyage They engaged him but straightway upon the ships
getting out of sight of land his insanity broke out in a freshet He announced
himself as the archangel Gabriel and commanded the captain to jump overboard
He published his manifesto whereby he set himself forth as the deliverer of the
isles of the sea and vicargeneral of all Oceanica The unflinching earnestness
with which he declared these things the dark daring play of his sleepless
excited imagination and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium united
to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew with an
atmosphere of sacredness Moreover they were afraid of him As such a man
however was not of much practical use in the ship especially as he refused to
work except when he pleased the incredulous captain would fain have been rid of
him but apprised that that individuals intention was to land him in the first
convenient port the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and vials
devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition in case this
intention was carried out So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the
crew that at last in a body they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel
was sent from the ship not a man of them would remain He was therefore forced
to relinquish his plan Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated
say or do what he would so that it came to pass that Gabriel had the complete
freedom of the ship The consequence of all this was that the archangel cared
little or nothing for the captain and mates and since the epidemic had broken
out he carried a higher hand than ever declaring that the plague as he called
it was at his sole command nor should it be stayed but according to his good
pleasure The sailors mostly poor devils cringed and some of them fawned
before him in obedience to his instructions sometimes rendering him personal
homage as to a god Such things may seem incredible but however wondrous
they are true Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the
measureless selfdeception of the fanatic himself as his measureless power of
deceiving and bedevilling so many others But it is time to return to the
Pequod
»I fear not thy epidemic man« said Ahab from the bulwarks to Captain
Mayhew who stood in the boats stern »come on board«
But now Gabriel started to his feet
»Think think of the fevers yellow and bilious Beware of the horrible
plague«
»Gabriel Gabriel« cried Captain Mayhew »thou must either « But that
instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead and its seethings drowned all
speech
»Hast thou seen the White Whale« demanded Ahab when the boat drifted back
»Think think of thy whaleboat stoven and sunk Beware of the horrible
tail«
»I tell thee again Gabriel that « But again the boat tore ahead as if
dragged by fiends Nothing was said for some moments while a succession of
riotous waves rolled by which by one of those occasional caprices of the seas
were tumbling not heaving it Meantime the hoisted sperm whales head jogged
about very violently and Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more
apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to warrant
When this interlude was over Captain Mayhew began a dark story concerning
MobyDick not however without frequent interruptions from Gabriel whenever
his name was mentioned and the crazy sea that seemed leagued with him
It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home when upon speaking a
whaleship her people were reliably apprised of the existence of MobyDick and
the havoc he had made Greedily sucking in this intelligence Gabriel solemnly
warned the captain against attacking the White Whale in case the monster should
be seen in his gibbering insanity pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a
being than the Shaker God incarnated the Shakers receiving the Bible But when
some year or two afterward MobyDick was fairly sighted from the mastheads
Macey the chief mate burned with ardour to encounter him and the captain
himself being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity despite all the
archangels denunciations and forewarnings Macey succeeded in persuading five
men to man his boat With them he pushed off and after much weary pulling and
many perilous unsuccessful onsets he at last succeeded in getting one iron
fast Meantime Gabriel ascending to the mainroyal masthead was tossing one
arm in frantic gestures and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the
sacrilegious assailants of his divinity Now while Macey the mate was
standing up in his boats bow and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was
venting his wild exclamations upon the whale and essaying to get a fair chance
for his poised lance lo a broad white shadow rose from the sea by its quick
fanning motion temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen
Next instant the luckless mate so full of furious life was smitten bodily
into the air and making a long arc in his descent fell into the sea at the
distance of about fifty yards Not a chip of the boat was harmed nor a hair of
any oarsmans head but the mate forever sank
It is well to parenthesise here that of the fatal accidents in the sperm
whale fishery this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any Sometimes
nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated oftener the boats bow
is knocked off or the thighboard in which the headsman stands is torn from
its place and accompanies the body But strangest of all is the circumstance
that in more instances than one when the body has been recovered not a single
mark of violence is discernible the man being stark dead
The whole calamity with the falling form of Macey was plainly descried
from the ship Raising a piercing shriek »The vial the vial« Gabriel called
off the terrorstricken crew from the further hunting of the whale This
terrible event clothed the archangel with added influence because his credulous
disciples believed that he had specifically foreannounced it instead of only
making a general prophecy which anyone might have done and so have chanced to
hit one of many marks in the wide margin allowed He became a nameless terror to
the ship
Mayhew having concluded his narration Ahab put such questions to him that
the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he intended to hunt the
White Whale if opportunity should offer To which Ahab answered »Ay«
Straightway then Gabriel once more started to his feet glaring upon the old
man and vehemently exclaimed with downwardpointed finger »Think think of
the blasphemer dead and down there beware of the blasphemers end«
Ahab stolidly turned aside then said to Mayhew »Captain I have just
bethought me of my letterbag there is a letter for one of thy officers if I
mistake not Starbuck look over the bag«
Every whaleship takes out a goodly number of letters for various ships
whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed depends upon the
mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans Thus most letters never
reach their mark and many are only received after attaining an age of two or
three years or more
Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand It was sorely tumbled
damp and covered with a dull spotted green mould in consequence of being
kept in a dark locker of the cabin Of such a letter Death himself might well
have been the postboy
»Canst not read it« cried Ahab »Give it me man Ay ay it s but a dim
scrawl what s this« As he was studying it out Starbuck took a long
cuttingspade pole and with his knife slightly split the end to insert the
letter there and in that way hand it to the boat without its coming any
closer to the ship
Meantime Ahab holding the letter muttered »Mr Har yes Mr Harry a
womans pinny hand the mans wife I ll wager Ay Mr Harry Macey Ship
Jeroboam why it s Macey and he s dead«
»Poor fellow poor fellow and from his wife« sighed Mayhew »but let me
have it«
»Nay keep it thyself« cried Gabriel to Ahab »thou art soon going that
way«
»Curses throttle thee« yelled Ahab »Captain Mayhew stand by now to
receive it« and taking the fatal missive from Starbucks hands he caught it in
the slit of the pole and reached it over toward the boat But as he did so the
oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing the boat drifted a little toward the
ships stern so that as if by magic the letter suddenly ranged along with
Gabriels eager hand He clutched it in an instant seized the boatknife and
impaling the letter on it sent it thus loaded back into the ship It fell at
Ahabs feet Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their
oars and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod
As after this interlude the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of
the whale many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild affair
Chapter LXXII
The MonkeyRope
In the tumultuous business of cutting in and attending to a whale there is much
running backward and forward among the crew Now hands are wanted here and then
again hands are wanted there There is no staying in any one place for at one
and the same time everything has to be done everywhere It is much the same with
him who endeavours the description of the scene We must now retrace our way a
little It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whales back
the blubberhook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of
the mates But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed
in that hole It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg whose duty
it was as harpooneer to descend upon the monsters back for the special
purpose referred to But in very many cases circumstances require that the
harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping
operation is concluded The whale be it observed lies almost entirely
submerged excepting the immediate parts operated upon So down there some ten
feet below the level of the deck the poor harpooneer flounders about half on
the whale and half in the water as the vast mass revolves like a treadmill
beneath him On the occasion in question Queequeg figured in the Highland
costume a shirt and socks in which to my eyes at least he appeared to
uncommon advantage and no one had a better chance to observe him as will
presently be seen
Being the savages bowsman that is the person who pulled the bowoar in
his boat the second one from forward it was my cheerful duty to attend upon
him while taking that hardscrabble scramble upon the dead whales back You
have seen Italian organboys holding a dancingape by a long cord Just so from
the ships steep side did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea by what is
technically called in the fishery a monkeyrope attached to a strong strip of
canvas belted round his waist
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us For before we proceed
further it must be said that the monkeyrope was fast at both ends fast to
Queequegs broad canvas belt and fast to my narrow leather one So that for
better or for worse we two for the time were wedded and should poor Queequeg
sink to rise no more then both usage and honour demanded that instead of
cutting the cord it should drag me down in his wake So then an elongated
Siamese ligature united us Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother nor
could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond
entailed
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then that
while earnestly watching his motions I seemed distinctly to perceive that my
own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two that my free
will had received a mortal wound and that anothers mistake or misfortune might
plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death Therefore I saw that here
was a sort of interregnum in Providence for its evenhanded equity never could
have sanctioned so gross an injustice And yet still further pondering while I
jerked him now and then from between the whale and the ship which would
threaten to jam him still further pondering I say I saw that this situation
of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes only in most
cases he one way or other has this Siamese connection with a plurality of
other mortals If your banker breaks you snap if your apothecary by mistake
sends you poison in your pills you die True you may say that by exceeding
caution you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances
of life But handle Queequegs monkeyrope needfully as I would sometimes he
jerked it so that I came very near sliding overboard Nor could I possibly
forget that do what I would I only had the management of one end of it15
I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the whale
and the ship where he would occasionally fall from the incessant rolling and
swaying of both But this was not the only jamming jeopardy he was exposed to
Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the night the sharks now
freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent blood which began to flow
from the carcase the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive
And right in among those sharks was Queequeg who often pushed them aside
with his floundering feet A thing altogether incredible were it not that
attracted by such prey as a dead whale the otherwise miscellaneously
carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man
Nevertheless it may well be believed that since they have such a ravenous
finger in the pie it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them Accordingly
besides the monkeyrope with which I now and then jerked the poor fellow from
too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark he
was provided with still another protection Suspended over the side in one of
the stages Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of
keen whalespades wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could
reach This procedure of theirs to be sure was very disinterested and
benevolent of them They meant Queequegs best happiness I admit but in their
hasty zeal to befriend him and from the circumstance that both he and the
sharks were at times half hidden by the bloodmuddied water those indiscreet
spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tail But poor
Queequeg I suppose straining and gasping there with that great iron hook
poor Queequeg I suppose only prayed to his Yojo and gave up his life into the
hands of his gods
Well well my dear comrade and twinbrother thought I as I drew in and
then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea what matters it after
all Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling
world That unsounded ocean you gasp in is Life those sharks your foes those
spades your friends and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle
and peril poor lad
But courage there is good cheer in store for you Queequeg For now as
with blue lips and bloodshot eyes the exhausted savage at last climbs up the
chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling over the side the
steward advances and with a benevolent consolatory glance hands him what
Some hot Cognac No hands him ye gods hands him a cup of tepid ginger and
water
»Ginger Do I smell ginger« suspiciously asked Stubb coming near »Yes
this must be ginger« peering into the as yet untasted cup Then standing as if
incredulous for a while he calmly walked toward the astonished steward slowly
saying »Ginger ginger and will you have the goodness to tell me Mr
DoughBoy where lies the virtue of ginger Ginger is ginger the sort of fuel
you use DoughBoy to kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal Ginger what
the devil is ginger seacoal firewood lucifer matches tinder
gunpowder what the devil is ginger I say that you offer this cup to our
poor Queequeg here«
»There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this business« he
suddenly added now approaching Starbuck who had just come from forward »Will
you look at that cannikin sir smell of it if you please« Then watching the
mates countenance he added »The steward Mr Starbuck had the face to offer
that calomel and jalap to Queequeg there this instant off the whale Is the
steward an apothecary sir and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters by
which he blows back the life into a halfdrowned man«
»I trust not« said Starbuck »it is poor stuff enough«
»Ay ay steward« cried Stubb »we ll teach you to drug a harpooneer none
of your apothecarys medicine here you want to poison us do ye You have got
out insurances on our lives and want to murder us all and pocket the proceeds
do ye«
»It was not me« cried DoughBoy »it was Aunt Charity that brought the
ginger on board and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits but only
this gingerjub so she called it«
»Gingerjub you gingerly rascal take that and run along with ye to the
lockers and get something better I hope I do no wrong Mr Starbuck It is the
captains orders grog for the harpooneer on a whale«
»Enough« replied Starbuck »only dont hit him again but «
»Oh I never hurt when I hit except when I hit a whale or something of that
sort and this fellow s a weasel What were you about saying sir«
»Only this go down with him and get what thou wantest thyself«
When Stubb reappeared he came with a dark flask in one hand and a sort of
teacaddy in the other The first contained strong spirits and was handed to
Queequeg the second was Aunt Charitys gift and that was freely given to the
waves
Chapter LXXIII
Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale and then Have a Talk Over Him
It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a sperm whales prodigious
head hanging to the Pequods side But we must let it continue hanging there a
while till we can get a chance to attend to it For the present other matters
press and the best we can do now for the head is to pray heaven the tackles may
hold
Now during the past night and forenoon the Pequod had gradually drifted
into a sea which by its occasional patches of yellow brit gave unusual tokens
of the vicinity of right whales a species of the leviathan that but few
supposed to be at this particular time lurking anywhere near And though all
hands commonly disdained the capture of those inferior creatures and though the
Pequod was not commissioned to cruise for them at all and though she had passed
numbers of them near the Crozetts without lowering a boat yet now that a sperm
whale had been brought alongside and beheaded to the surprise of all the
announcement was made that a right whale should be captured that day if
opportunity offered
Nor was this long wanting Tall spouts were seen to leeward and two boats
Stubbs and Flasks were detached in pursuit Pulling further and further away
they at last became almost invisible to the men at the masthead But suddenly
in the distance they saw a great heap of tumultuous white water and soon after
news came from aloft that one or both the boats must be fast An interval passed
and the boats were in plain sight in the act of being dragged right toward the
ship by the towing whale So close did the monster come to the hull that at
first it seemed as if he meant it malice but suddenly going down in a
maelstrom within three rods of the planks he wholly disappeared from view as
if diving under the keel »Cut cut« was the cry from the ship to the boats
which for one instant seemed on the point of being brought with a deadly dash
against the vessels side But having plenty of line yet in the tubs and the
whale not sounding very rapidly they paid out abundance of rope and at the
same time pulled with all their might so as to get ahead of the ship For a few
minutes the struggle was intensely critical for while they still slacked out
the tightened line in one direction and still plied their oars in another the
contending strain threatened to take them under But it was only a few feet
advance they sought to gain And they stuck to it till they did gain it when
instantly a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel as the
strained line scraping beneath the ship suddenly rose to view under her bows
snapping and quivering and so flinging off its drippings that the drops fell
like bits of broken glass on the water while the whale beyond also rose to
sight and once more the boats were free to fly But the fagged whale abated his
speed and blindly altering his course went round the stern of the ship towing
the two boats after him so that they performed a complete circuit
Meantime they hauled more and more upon their lines till close flanking
him on both sides Stubb answered Flask with lance for lance and thus round and
round the Pequod the battle went while the multitudes of sharks that had before
swum round the sperm whales body rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled
thirstily drinking at every new gash as the eager Israelites did at the new
bursting fountains that poured from the smitten rock
At last his spout grew thick and with a frightful roll and vomit he turned
upon his back a corpse
While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his flukes and
in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing some conversation ensued
between them
»I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard« said Stubb
not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so ignoble a
leviathan
»Wants with it« said Flask coiling some spare line in the boats bow »did
you never hear that the ship which but once has a sperm whales head hoisted on
her starboard side and at the same time a right whales on the larboard did
you never hear Stubb that that ship can never afterward capsize«
»Why not«
»I dont know but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so and
he seems to know all about ships charms But I sometimes think he ll charm the
ship to no good at last I dont half like that chap Stubb Did you ever notice
how 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 get a chance of a dark
night and he standing hard by the bulwarks and no one by look down there
Flask« pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of both hands »Ay will
I Flask I take that Fedallah to be the devil in disguise Do you believe that
cockandbull story about his having been stowed away on board ship He s the
devil I say The reason why you dont see his tail is because he tucks it up
out of sight he carries it coiled away in his pocket I guess Blast him now
that I think of it he s always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his
boots«
»He sleeps in his boots dont he He hasnt got any hammock but I ve seen
him lay of nights in a coil of rigging«
»No doubt and it s because of his cursed tail he coils it down do ye
see in the eye of the rigging«
»What s the old man have so much to do with him for«
»Striking up a swap or a bargain I suppose«
»Bargain about what«
»Why do ye see the old man is hard bent after that White Whale and the
devil there is trying to come round him and get him to swap away his silver
watch or his soul or something of that sort and then he ll surrender
MobyDick«
»Pooh Stubb you are skylarking how can Fedallah do that«
»I dont know Flask but the devil is a curious chap and a wicked one I
tell ye Why they say as how he went asauntering into the old flagship once
switching his tail about devilish easy and gentlemanlike and inquiring if the
old governor was at home Well he was at home and asked the devil what he
wanted The devil switching his hoofs up and says I want John What for says
the old governor What business is that of yours says the devil getting mad
I want to use him Take him says the governor and by the Lord Flask if the
devil didnt give John the Asiatic cholera before he got through with him I ll
eat this whale in one mouthful But look sharp aint 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 slowly advancing with their burden toward the ship
»but I cant remember where«
»Three Spaniards Adventures of those three bloodyminded soldadoes Did ye
read it there Flask I guess ye did«
»No never saw such a book heard of it though But now tell me Stubb do
you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now was the same you say
is now on board the Pequod«
»Am I the same man that helped kill this whale Doesnt the devil live
forever who ever heard that the devil was dead Did you ever see any parson
awearing mourning for the devil And if the devil has a latchkey to get into
the admirals cabin dont you suppose he can crawl into a porthole Tell me
that Mr Flask«
»How old do you suppose Fedallah is Stubb«
»Do you see that mainmast there« pointing to the ship »well that s the
figure one now take all the hoops in the Pequods hold and string em 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 enough to
make oughts enough«
»But see here Stubb I thought you a little boasted just now that you
meant to give Fedallah a seatoss if you got a good chance Now if he s so
old as all those hoops of yours come to and if he is going to live forever
what good will it do to pitch him overboard tell me that«
»Give him a good ducking anyhow«
»But he d crawl back«
»Duck him again and keep ducking him«
»Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you though yes and
drown you what then«
»I should like to see him try it I d give him such a pair of black eyes
that he wouldnt dare to show his face in the admirals cabin again for a long
while let alone down in the orlop there where he lives and hereabouts on the
upper decks where he sneaks so much Damn the devil Flask do you suppose I m
afraid of the devil Who s afraid of him except the old governor who darent
catch him and put him in doubledarbies as he deserves but lets him go about
kidnapping people ay and signed a bond with him that all the people the devil
kidnapped he d roast for him There s a governor«
»Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab«
»Do I suppose it You ll know it before long Flask But I am going now to
keep a sharp lookout on him and if I see anything very suspicious going on I
ll just take him by the nape of his neck and say Look here Beelzebub you
dont do it and if he makes any fuss by the Lord I ll make a grab into his
pocket for his tail take it to the capstan and give him such a wrenching and
heaving that his tail will come short off at the stump do you see and then
I rather guess when he finds himself docked in that queer fashion he ll sneak
off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tail between his legs«
»And what will you do with the tail Stubb«
»Do with it Sell it for an ox whip when we get home what else«
»Now do you mean what you say and have been saying all along Stubb«
»Mean or not mean here we are at the ship«
The boats were here hailed to tow the whale on the larboard side where
fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing him
»Didnt I tell you so« said Flask »yes you ll soon see this right
whales head hoisted up opposite that parmacettis«
In good time Flasks saying proved true As before the Peguod steeply
leaned over toward the sperm whales head now by the counterpoise of both
heads she regained her even keel though sorely strained you may well believe
So when on one side you hoist in Lockes head you go over that way but now
on the other side hoist in Kants and you come back again but in very poor
plight Thus some minds forever keep trimming boat Oh ye foolish throw all
these thunderheads overboard and then you will float light and right
In disposing of the body of a right whale when brought alongside the ship
the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the case of a sperm
whale only in the latter instance the head is cut off whole but in the
former the lips and tongue are separately removed and hoisted on deck with all
the wellknown black bone attached to what is called the crownpiece But
nothing like this in the present case had been done The carcases of both
whales had dropped astern and the headladen ship not a little resembled a mule
carrying a pair of overburdening panniers
Meantime Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whales head and ever and
anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own hand And
Ahab chanced so to stand that the Parsee occupied his shadow while if the
Parsees shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with and lengthen
Ahabs As the crew toiled on Laplandish speculations were bandied among them
concerning all these passing things
Chapter LXXIV
The Sperm Whales Head Contrasted View
Here now are two great whales laying their heads together let us join them
and lay together our own
Of the grand order of folio leviathans the sperm whale and the right whale
are by far the most noteworthy They are the only whales regularly hunted by
man To the Nantucketer they present the two extremes of all the known
varieties of the whale As the external difference between them is mainly
observable in their heads and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the
Pequods side and as we may freely go from one to the other by merely stepping
across the deck where I should like to know will you obtain a better chance
to study practical cetology than here
In the first place you are struck by the general contrast between these
heads Both are massive enough in all conscience but there is a certain
mathematical symmetry in the sperm whales which the right whales sadly lacks
There is more character in the sperm whales head As you behold it you
involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him in point of pervading
dignity In the present instance too this dignity is heightened by the pepper
and salt colour of his head at the summit giving token of advanced age and
large experience In short he is what the fishermen technically call a
grayheaded whale
Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads namely the two
most important organs the eye and the ear Far back on the side of the head
and low down near the angle of either whales jaw if you narrowly search you
will at last see a lashless eye which you would fancy to be a young colts eye
so out of all proportion is it to the magnitude of the head
Now from this peculiar sideway position of the whales eyes it is plain
that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead no more than he can one
exactly astern In a word the position of the whales eyes corresponds to that
of a mans ears and you may fancy for yourself how it would fare with you
did you sideways survey objects through your ears You would find that you could
only command some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight sideline
of sight and about thirty more behind it If your bitterest foe were walking
straight toward you with dagger uplifted in broad day you would not be able to
see him any more than if he were stealing upon you from behind In a word you
would have two backs so to speak but at the same time also two fronts
sidefronts for what is it that makes the front of a man what indeed but
his eyes
Moreover while in most other animals that I can now think of the eyes are
so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power so as to produce one
picture and not two to the brain the peculiar position of the whales eyes
effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head which towers
between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys this of
course must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ
imparts The whale therefore must see one distinct picture on this side and
another distinct picture on that side while all between must be profound
darkness and nothingness to him Man may in effect be said to look out on the
world from a sentrybox with two joined sashes for his window But with the
whale these two sashes are separately inserted making two distinct windows
but sadly impairing the view This peculiarity of the whales eyes is a thing
always to be borne in mind in the fishery and to be remembered by the reader in
some subsequent scenes
A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this visual
matter as touching the leviathan But I must be content with a hint So long as
a mans eyes are open in the light the act of seeing is involuntary that is
he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever objects are before him
Nevertheless anyones experience will teach him that though he can take in an
undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance it is quite impossible for him
attentively and completely to examine any two things however large or
however small at one and the same instant of time never mind if they lie side
by side and touch each other But if you now come to separate these two objects
and surround each by a circle of profound darkness then in order to see one of
them in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it the other will be
utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness How is it then with the
whale True both his eyes in themselves must simultaneously act but is his
brain so much more comprehensive combining and subtle than mans that he can
at the same moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects one on
one side of him and the other in an exactly opposite direction If he can then
is it as marvellous a thing in him as if a man were able simultaneously to go
through the demonstrations of two distinct problems in Euclid Nor strictly
investigated is there any incongruity in this comparison
It may be but an idle whim but it has always seemed to me that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when beset by
three or four boats the timidity and liability to queer frights so common to
such whales I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the helpless
perplexity of volition in which their divided and diametrically opposite powers
of vision must involve them
But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye If you are an entire
stranger to their race you might hunt over these two heads for hours and never
discover that organ The ear has no external leaf whatever and into the hole
itself you can hardly insert a quill so wondrously minute is it It is lodged a
little behind the eye With respect to their ears this important difference is
to be observed between the sperm whale and the right While the ear of the
former has an external opening that of the latter is entirely and evenly
covered over with a membrane so as to be quite imperceptible from without
Is it not curious that so vast a being as the whale should see the world
through so small an eye and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller
than a hares But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschels great
telescope and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals would that make
him any longer of sight or sharper of hearing Not at all Why then do you
try to enlarge your mind Subtilise it
Let us now with whatever levers and steamengines we have at hand cant over
the sperm whales head so that it may lie bottom up then ascending by a
ladder to the summit have a peep down the mouth and were it not that the body
is now completely separated from it with a lantern we might descend into the
great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach But let us hold on here by this
tooth and look about us where we are What a really beautiful and
chastelooking mouth from floor to ceiling lined or rather papered with a
glistening white membrane glossy as bridal satin
But come out now and look at this portentous lower jaw which seems like
the long narrow lid of an immense snuffbox with the hinge at one end instead
of one side If you pry it up so as to get it overhead and expose its rows of
teeth it seems a terrific portcullis and such alas it proves to many a poor
wight in the fishery upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force But far
more terrible is it to behold when fathoms down in the sea you see some sulky
whale floating there suspended with his prodigious jaw some fifteen feet
long hanging straight down at rightangles with his body for all the world
like a ships jibboom This whale is not dead he is only dispirited out of
sorts perhaps hypochondriac and so supine that the hinges of his jaw have
relaxed leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight a reproach to all
his tribe who must no doubt imprecate lockjaws upon him
In most cases this lower jaw being easily unhinged by a practised artist
is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth
and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen
fashion all sorts of curious articles including canes umbrellastocks and
handles to ridingwhips
With a long weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board as if it were an
anchor and when the proper time comes some few days after the other work
Queequeg Daggoo and Tashtego being all accomplished dentists are set to
drawing teeth With a keen cuttingspade Queequeg lances the gums then the jaw
is lashed down to ringbolts and a tackle being rigged from aloft they drag
out these teeth as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild woodlands
There are generally fortytwo teeth in all in old whales much worn down but
undecayed nor filled after our artificial fashion The jaw is afterward sawn
into slabs and piled away like joists for building houses
Chapter LXXV
The Right Whales Head Contrasted View
Crossing the deck let us now have a good long look at the right whales head
As in general shape the noble sperm whales head may be compared to a Roman
warchariot especially in front where it is so broadly rounded so at a
broad view the right whales head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a
gigantic galliottoed shoe Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened
its shape to that of a shoemakers last And in this same last or shoe that old
woman of the nursery tale with the swarming brood might very comfortably be
lodged she and all her progeny
But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different
aspects according to your point of view If you stand on its summit and look at
these two fshaped spoutholes you would take the whole head for an enormous
bassviol and these spiracles the apertures in its soundingboard Then
again if you fix your eye upon this strange crested comblike incrustation on
the top of the mass this green barnacled thing which the Greenlanders call
the crown and the Southern fishers the bonnet of the right whale fixing your
eyes solely on this you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak
with a birds nest in its crotch At any rate when you watch those live crabs
that nestle here on this bonnet such an idea will be almost sure to occur to
you unless indeed your fancy has been fixed by the technical term crown also
bestowed upon it in which case you will take great interest in thinking how
this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the sea whose green crown
has been put together for him in this marvellous manner But if this whale be a
king he is a very sulkylooking fellow to grace a diadem Look at that hanging
lower lip what a huge sulk and pout is there a sulk and pout by carpenters
measurement about twenty feet long and five feet deep a sulk and pout that
will yield you some five hundred gallons of oil and more
A great pity now that this unfortunate whale should be harelipped The
fissure is about a foot across Probably the mother during an important interval
was sailing down the Peruvian coast when earthquakes caused the beach to gape
Over this lip as over a slippery threshold we now slide into the mouth Upon
my word were I at Mackinaw I should take this to be the inside of an Indian
wigwam Good Lord is this the road that Jonah went The roof is about twelve
feet high and runs to a pretty sharp angle as if there were a regular
ridgepole there while these ribbed arched hairy sides present us with those
wondrous halfvertical scimitar shaped slats of whalebone say three hundred
on a side which depending from the upper part of the head or crown bone form
those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned The edges
of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres through which the right whale
strains the water and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish when
openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feedingtime In the central
blinds of bone as they stand in their natural order there are certain curious
marks curves hollows and ridges whereby some whalemen calculate the
creatures age as the age of an oak by its circular rings Though the certainty
of this criterion is far from demonstrable yet it has the savour of analogical
probability At any rate if we yield to it we must grant a far greater age to
the right whale than at first glance will seem reasonable
In old times there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies
concerning these blinds One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous whiskers
inside of the whales mouth16 another hogs bristles a third old gentleman in
Hakluyt uses the following elegant language »There are about two hundred and
fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop which arch over his tongue on
each side of his mouth«
As everyone knows these same hogs bristles fins whiskers blinds or
whatever you please furnish to the ladies their busks and other stiffening
contrivances But in this particular the demand has long been on the decline
It was in Queen Annes time that the bone was in its glory the farthingale
being then all the fashion And as those ancient dames moved about gaily though
in the jaws of the whale as you may say even so in a shower with the like
thoughtlessness do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection the
umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone
But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment and standing in
the right whales mouth look around you afresh Seeing all these colonnades of
bone so methodically ranged about would you not think you were inside of the
great Haarlem organ and gazing upon its thousand pipes For a carpet to the
organ we have a rug of the softest Turkey the tongue which is glued as it
were to the floor of the mouth It is very fat and tender and apt to tear in
pieces in hoisting it on deck This particular tongue now before us at a
passing glance I should say it was a sixbarreler that is it will yield you
about that amount of oil
Ere this you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started with that
the sperm whale and the right whale have almost entirely different heads To sum
up then in the right whales there is no great well of sperm no ivory teeth
at all no long slender mandible of a lower jaw like the sperm whales Nor in
the sperm whale are there any of those blinds of bone no huge lower lip and
scarcely anything of a tongue Again the right whale has two external
spoutholes the sperm whale only one
Look your last now on these venerable hooded heads while they yet lie
together for one will soon sink unrecorded in the sea the other will not be
very long in following
Can you catch the expression of the sperm whales there It is the same he
died with only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away
I think his broad brow to be full of a prairielike placidity born of a
speculative indifference as to death But mark the other heads expression See
that amazing lower lip pressed by accident against the vessels side so as
firmly to embrace the jaw Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous
practical resolution in facing death This right whale I take to have been a
Stoic the sperm whale a Platonian who might have taken up Spinoza in his
latter years
Chapter LXXVI
The BatteringRam
Ere quitting for the nonce the sperm whales head I would have you as a
sensible physiologist simply particularly remark its front aspect in all its
compacted collectedness I would have you investigate it now with the sole view
of forming to yourself some unexaggerated intelligent estimate of whatever
batteringram power may be lodged there Here is a vital point for you must
either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself or forever remain an
infidel as to one of the most appalling but not the less true events perhaps
anywhere to be found in all recorded history
You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the sperm whale the
front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the water you
observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably backward so as to
furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which receives the boomlike
lower jaw you observe that the mouth is entirely under the head much in the
same way indeed as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin
Moreover you observe that the whale has no external nose and that what nose he
has his spouthole is on the top of his head you observe that his eyes and
ears are at the sides of his head nearly onethird of his entire length from
the front Wherefore you must now have perceived that the front of the sperm
whales head is a dead blind wall without a single organ or tender prominence
of any sort whatsoever Furthermore you are now to consider that only in the
extreme lower backward sloping part of the front of the head is there the
slightest vestige of bone and not till you get near twenty feet from the
forehead do you come to the full cranial development So that this whole
enormous boneless mass is as one wad Finally though as will soon be revealed
its contents partly comprise the most delicate oil yet you are now to be
apprised of the nature of the substance which so impregnably invests all that
apparent effeminacy In some previous place I have described to you how the
blubber wraps the body of the whale as the rind wraps an orange Just so with
the head but with this difference about the head this envelope though not so
thick is of a boneless toughness inestimable by any man who has not handled
it The severest pointed harpoon the sharpest lance darted by the strongest
human arm impotently rebounds from it It is as though the forehead of the
sperm whale were paved with horses hoofs I do not think that any sensation
lurks in it
Bethink yourself also of another thing When two large loaded Indiamen
chance to crowd and crush toward each other in the docks what do the sailors
do They do not suspend between them at the point of coming contact any merely
hard substance like iron or wood No they hold there a large round wad of tow
and cork enveloped in the thickest and toughest of oxhide That bravely and
uninjured takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and
iron crowbars By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive
at But supplementary to this it has hypothetically occurred to me that as
ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them capable at
will of distension or contraction and as the sperm whale as far as I know
has no such provision in him considering too the otherwise inexplicable
manner in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the surface and
anon swims with it high elevated out of the water considering the unobstructed
elasticity of its envelope considering the unique interior of his head it has
hypothetically occurred to me I say that those mystical lungcelled honeycombs
there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connection with
the outer air so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and
contraction If this be so fancy the irresistibleness of that might to which
the most impalpable and destructive of all elements contributes
Now mark Unerringly impelling this dead impregnable uninjurable wall
and this most buoyant thing within there swims behind it all a mass of
tremendous life only to be adequately estimated as piled wood is by the cord
and all obedient to one volition as the smallest insect So that when I shall
hereafter detail to you all the specialities and concentrations of potency
everywhere lurking in this expansive monster when I shall show you some of his
more inconsiderable braining feats I trust you will have renounced all ignorant
incredulity and be ready to abide by this that though the sperm whale stove a
passage through the Isthmus of Darien and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific
you would not elevate one hair of your eyebrow For unless you own the whale
you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth But clear Truth is a thing
for salamander giants only to encounter how small the chances for the
provincials then What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddesss
veil at Lais
Chapter LXXVII
The Great Heidelburgh Tun
Now comes the Baling of the Case But to comprehend it aright you must know
something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated upon
Regarding the sperm whales head as a solid oblong you may on an inclined
plane sideways divide it into two quoins17 whereof the lower is the bony
structure forming the cranium and jaws and the upper an unctuous mass wholly
free from bones its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent
forehead of the whale At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this
upper quoin and then you have two almost equal parts which before were
naturally divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance
The lower subdivided part called the junk is one immense honeycomb of oil
formed by the crossing and recrossing into ten thousand infiltrated cells of
tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole extent The upper part known as
the Case may be regarded as the great Heidelburgh Tun of the sperm whale And
as that famous great tierce is mystically carved in front so the whales vast
plaited forehead forms innumerable strange devices for emblematical adornment of
his wondrous tun Moreover as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished with
the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys so the tun of the whale
contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages namely the highly
prized spermaceti in its absolutely pure limpid and odoriferous state Nor is
this precious substance found unalloyed in any other part of the creature
Though in life it remains perfectly fluid yet upon exposure to the air after
death it soon begins to concrete sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots
as when the first thin delicate ice is just forming in water A large whales
case generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm though from
unavoidable circumstances considerable of it is spilled leaks and dribbles
away or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business of securing what
you can
I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun was coated
within but in superlative richness that coating could not possibly have
compared with the silken pearlcoloured membrane like the lining of a fine
pelisse forming the inner surface of the sperm whales case
It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the sperm whale embraces
the entire length of the entire top of the head and since as has been
elsewhere set forth the head embraces onethird of the whole length of the
creature then setting that length down at eighty feet for a goodsized whale
you have more than twentysix feet for the depth of the tun when it is
lengthwise hoisted up and down against a ships side
As in decapitating the whale the operators instrument is brought close to
the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the spermaceti magazine
he has therefore to be uncommonly heedful lest a careless untimely stroke
should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out its invaluable contents It is
this decapitated end of the head also which is at last elevated out of the
water and retained in that position by the enormous cutting tackles whose
hempen combinations on one side make quite a wilderness of ropes in that
quarter
Thus much being said attend now I pray you to that marvellous and in
this particular instance almost fatal operation whereby the sperm whales
great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped
Chapter LXXVIII
Cistern and Buckets
Nimble as a cat Tashtego mounts aloft and without altering his erect posture
runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyardarm to the part where it
exactly projects over the hoisted tun He has carried with him a light tackle
called a whip consisting of only two parts travelling through a singlesheaved
block Securing this block so that it hangs down from the yardarm he swings
one end of the rope till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck Then
hand over hand down the other part the Indian drops through the air till
dexterously he lands on the summit of the head There still high elevated
above the rest of the company to whom he vivaciously cries he seems some
Turkish Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower A
shorthandled sharp spade being sent up to him he diligently searches for the
proper place to begin breaking into the tun In this business he proceeds very
heedfully like a treasurehunter in some old house sounding the walls to find
where the gold is masoned in By the time this cautious search is over a stout
ironbound bucket precisely like a wellbucket has been attached to one end of
the whip while the other end being stretched across the deck is there held by
two or three alert hands These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the
Indian to whom another person has reached up a very long pole Inserting this
pole into the bucket Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the tun till it
entirely disappears then giving the word to the seamen at the whip up comes
the bucket again all bubbling like a dairymaids pail of new milk Carefully
lowered from its height the fullfreighted vessel is caught by an appointed
hand and quickly emptied into a large tub Then remounting aloft it again goes
through the same round until the deep cistern will yield no more Toward the
end Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder and deeper and deeper
into the tun until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down
Now the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way several
tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm when all at once a queer accident
happened Whether it was that Tashtego that wild Indian was so heedless and
reckless as to let go for a moment his onehanded hold on the great cabled
tackles suspending the head or whether the place where he stood was so
treacherous and oozy or whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out
so without stating his particular reasons how it was exactly there is no
telling now but on a sudden as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came
suckingly up my God poor Tashtego like the twin reciprocating bucket in a
veritable well dropped headforemost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh
and with a horrible oily gurgling went clean out of sight
»Man overboard« cried Daggoo who amid the general consternation first came
to his senses »Swing the bucket this way« and putting one foot into it so as
the better to secure his slippery handhold on the whip itself the hoisters ran
him high up to the top of the head almost before Tashtego could have reached
its interior bottom Meantime there was a terrible tumult Looking over the
side they saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the
surface of the sea as if that moment seized with some momentous idea whereas
it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the
perilous depth to which he had sunk
At this instant while Daggoo on the summit of the head was clearing the
whip which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles a sharp
cracking noise was heard and to the unspeakable horror of all one of the two
enormous hooks suspending the head tore out and with a vast vibration the
enormous mass sideways swung till the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten
by an iceberg The one remaining hook upon which the entire strain now
depended seemed every instant to be on the point of giving way an event still
more likely from the violent motions of the head
»Come down come down« yelled the seamen to Daggoo but with one hand
holding on to the heavy tackles so that if the head should drop he would still
remain suspended the negro having cleared the foul line rammed down the bucket
into the now collapsed well meaning that the buried harpooneer should grasp it
and so be hoisted out
»In heavens name man« cried Starbuck »are you ramming home a cartridge
there Avast How will that help him jamming that ironbound bucket on top of
his head Avast will ye«
»Stand clear of the tackle« cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket
Almost in the same instant with a thunderboom the enormous mass dropped
into the sea like Niagaras TableRock into the whirlpool the suddenly
relieved hull rolled away from it to far down her glittering copper and all
caught their breath as half swinging now over the sailors heads and now
over the water Daggoo through a thick mist of spray was dimly beheld
clinging to the pendulous tackles while poor buriedalive Tashtego was sinking
utterly down to the bottom of the sea But hardly had the blinding vapour
cleared away when a naked figure with a boardingsword in its hand was for one
swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks The next a loud splash announced
that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue One packed rush was made to the
side and every eye counted every ripple as moment followed moment and no sign
of either the sinker or the diver could be seen Some hands now jumped into a
boat alongside and pushed a little off from the ship
»Ha ha« cried Daggoo all at once from his now quiet swinging perch
overhead and looking further off from the side we saw an arm thrust upright
from the blue waves a sight strange to see as an arm thrust forth from the
grass over a grave
»Both both it is both« cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout and soon
after Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand and with the other
clutching the long hair of the Indian Drawn into the waiting boat they were
quickly brought to the deck but Tashtego was long in coming to and Queequeg
did not look very brisk
Now how had this noble rescue been accomplished Why diving after the
slowly descending head Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near
its bottom so as to scuttle a large hole there then dropping his sword had
thrust his long arm far inward and upward and so hauled out our poor Tash by
the head He averred that upon first thrusting in for him a leg was presented
but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be and might occasion great
trouble he had thrust back the leg and by a dexterous heave and toss had
wrought a somerset upon the Indian so that with the next trial he came forth
in the good old way head foremost As for the great head itself that was
doing as well as could be expected
And thus through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg the
deliverance or rather delivery of Tashtego was successfully accomplished in
the teeth too of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments which
is a lesson by no means to be forgotten Midwifery should be taught in the same
course with fencing and boxing riding and rowing
I know that this queer adventure of the GayHeaders will be sure to seem
incredible to some landsmen though they themselves may have either seen or
heard of someones falling into a cistern ashore an accident which not seldom
happens and with much less reason too than the Indians considering the
exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the sperm whales well
But peradventure it may be sagaciously urged how is this We thought the
tissued infiltrated head of the sperm whale was the lightest and most corky
part about him and yet thou makest it sink in an element of a far greater
specific gravity than itself We have thee there Not at all but I have ye for
at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter
contents leaving little but the dense tendinous wall of the well a
doublewelded hammered substance as I have before said much heavier than the
seawater and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost But the tendency to
rapid sinking in this substance was in the present instance materially
counteracted by the other parts of the head remaining undetached from it so
that it sank very slowly and deliberately indeed affording Queequeg a fair
chance for performing his agile obstetrics on the run as you may say Yes it
was a running delivery so it was
Now had Tashtego perished in that head it had been a very precious
perishing smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti
coffined hearsed and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum
of the whale Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled the delicious death
of an Ohio honeyhunter who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree found
such exceeding store of it that leaning too far over it sucked him in so that
he died embalmed How many think ye have likewise fallen into Platos honey
head and sweetly perished there
Chapter LXXIX
The Praire
To scan the lines of his face or feel the bumps on the head of this leviathan
this is a thing which no physiognomist or phrenologist has as yet undertaken
Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to have
scrutinised the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar or for Gall to have mounted a
ladder and manipulated the dome of the Pantheon Still in that famous work of
his Lavater not only treats of the various faces of men but also attentively
studies the faces of horses birds serpents and fish and dwells in detail
upon the modifications of expression discernible therein Nor have Gall and his
disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the phrenological
characteristics of other beings than man Therefore though I am but ill
qualified for a pioneer in the application of these two semisciences to the
whale I will do my endeavour I try all things I achieve what I can
Physiognomically regarded the sperm whale is an anomalous creature He has
no proper nose And since the nose is the central and most conspicuous of the
features and since it perhaps most modifies and finally controls their combined
expression hence it would seem that its entire absence as an external
appendage must very largely affect the countenance of the whale For as in
landscapegardening a spire cupola monument or tower of some sort is deemed
almost indispensable to the completion of the scene so no face can be
physiognomically in keeping without the elevated openwork belfry of the nose
Dash the nose from Phidiass marble Jove and what a sorry remainder
Nevertheless Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude all his proportions are so
stately that the same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were hideous in
him is no blemish at all Nay it is an added grandeur A nose to the whale
would have been impertinent As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his
vast head in your jollyboat your noble conceptions of him are never insulted
by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled A pestilent conceit which so
often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal beadle
on his throne
In some particulars perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to be had
of the sperm whale is that of the full front of his head This aspect is
sublime
In thought a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the
morning In the repose of the pasture the curled brow of the bull has a touch
of the grand in it Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles the elephants
brow is majestic Human or animal the mystical brow is as that great golden
seal affixed by the German emperors to their decrees It signifies God done
this day by my hand But in most creatures nay in man himself very often the
brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snowline Few are the
foreheads which like Shakespeares or Melanchthons rise so high and descend so
low that the eyes themselves seem clear eternal tideless mountain lakes and
all above them in the foreheads wrinkles you seem to track the antlered
thoughts descending there to drink as the Highland hunters track the
snowprints of the deer But in the great sperm whale this high and mighty
godlike dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified that gazing on
it in that full front view you feel the Deity and the dread powers more
forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature For you see no one
point precisely not one distinct feature is revealed no nose eyes ears or
mouth no face he has none proper nothing but that one broad firmament of a
forehead plaited with riddles dumbly lowering with the doom of boats and
ships and men Nor in profile does this wondrous brow diminish though that
way viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so In profile you plainly
perceive that horizontal semicrescentic depression in the foreheads middle
which in man is Lavaters mark of genius
But how Genius in the sperm whale Has the sperm whale ever written a book
spoken a speech No his great genius is declared in his doing nothing
particular to prove it It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence And
this reminds me that had the great sperm whale been known to the young Orient
world he would have been deified by their childmagician thoughts They deified
the crocodile of the Nile because the crocodile is tongueless and the sperm
whale has no tongue or at least it is so exceedingly small as to be incapable
of protrusion If hereafter any highly cultured poetical nation shall lure back
to their birthright the merry Mayday gods of old and livingly enthrone them
again in the now egotistical sky in the now unhaunted hill then be sure
exalted to Joves high seat the great sperm whale shall lord it
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics But there is no
Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every 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 profounder and more subtle meanings how may unlettered
Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the sperm whales brow I but put that
brow before you Read it if you can
Chapter LXXX
The Nut
If the sperm whale be physiognomically a sphinx to the phrenologist his brain
seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square
In the fullgrown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in
length Unhinge the lower jaw and the side view of this skull is as the side
view of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base But in
life as we have elsewhere seen this inclined plane is angularly filled up
and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm At
the high end the skull forms a crater to bed that part of the mass while under
the long floor of this crater in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in
length and as many in depth reposes the mere handful of this monsters brain
The brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life it is
hidden away behind its vast outworks like the innermost citadel within the
amplified fortifications of Quebec So like a choice casket is it secreted in
him that I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny that the sperm whale
has any other brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the
cubicyards of his sperm magazine Lying in strange folds courses and
convolutions to their apprehensions it seems more in keeping with the idea of
his general might to regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his
intelligence
It is plain then that phrenologically the head of this leviathan in the
creatures living intact state is an entire delusion As for his true brain
you can then see no indications of it nor feel any The whale like all things
that are mighty wears a false bow to the common world
If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view of its
rear end which is the high end you will be struck by its resemblance to the
human skull beheld in the same situation and from the same point of view
Indeed place this reversed skull scaled down to the human magnitude among a
plate of mens skulls and you would involuntarily confound it with them and
remarking the depressions on one part of its summit in phrenological phrase you
would say This man had no selfesteem and no veneration And by those
negations considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and
power you can best form to yourself the truest though not the most
exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is
But if from the comparative dimensions of the whales proper brain you deem
it incapable of being adequately charted then I have another idea for you If
you attentively regard almost any quadrupeds spine you will be struck with the
resemblance of its vertebræ to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls all bearing
rudimental resemblance to the skull proper It is a German conceit that the
vertebræ are absolutely undeveloped skulls But the curious external
resemblance I take it the Germans were not the first men to perceive A foreign
friend once pointed it out to me in the skeleton of a foe he had slain and
with the vertebræ of which he was inlaying in a sort of bassorelievo the
beaked prow of his canoe Now I consider that the phrenologists have omitted an
important thing in not pushing their investigations from the cerebellum through
the spinal canal For I believe that much of a mans character will be found
betokened in his backbone I would rather feel your spine than your skull
whoever you are A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul
I rejoice in my spine as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling
half out to the world
Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the sperm whale His cranial
cavity is continuous with the first neckvertebra and in that vertebra the
bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches across being eight in
height and of a triangular figure with the base downward As it passes through
the remaining vertebræ the canal tapers in size but for a considerable distance
remains of large capacity Now of course this canal is filled with much the
same strangely fibrous substance the spinal cord as the brain and directly
communicates with the brain And what is still more for many feet after
emerging from the brains cavity the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing
girth almost equal to that of the brain Under all these circumstances would
it be unreasonable to survey and map out the whales spine phrenologically For
viewed in this light the wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper is
more than compensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord
But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists I would
merely assume the spinal theory for a moment in reference to the sperm whales
hump This august hump if I mistake not rises over one of the larger vertebræ
and is therefore in some sort the outer convex mould of it From its relative
situation then I should call this high hump the organ of firmness or
indomitableness in the sperm whale And that the great monster is indomitable
you will yet have reason to know
Chapter LXXXI
The Pequod Meets the Virgin
The predestinated day arrived and we duly met the ship Jungfrau Derick De
Deer master of Bremen
At one time the greatest whaling people in the world the Dutch and Germans
are now among the least but here and there at very wide intervals of latitude
and longitude you still occasionally meet with their flag in the Pacific
For some reason the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects While
yet some distance from the Pequod she rounded to and dropping a boat her
captain was impelled toward us impatiently standing in the bows instead of the
stern
»What has he in his hand there« cried Starbuck pointing to something
wavingly held by the German »Impossible a lampfeeder«
»Not that« said Stubb »no no it s a coffeepot Mr Starbuck he s
coming off to make us our coffee is the Yarman dont you see that big tin can
there alongside of him that s his boiling water Oh he s all right is the
Yarman«
»Go along with you« cried Flask »it s a lampfeeder and an oilcan He s
out of oil and has come abegging«
However curious it may seem for an oilship to be borrowing oil on the
whaleground and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb
about carrying coals to Newcastle yet sometimes such a thing really happens
and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a
lampfeeder as Flask did declare
As he mounted the deck Ahab abruptly accosted him without at all heeding
what he had in his hand but in his broken lingo the German soon evinced his
complete ignorance of the White Whale immediately turning the conversation to
his lampfeeder and oilcan with some remarks touching his having to turn into
his hammock at night in profound darkness his last drop of Bremen oil being
gone and not a single flyingfish yet captured to supply the deficiency
concluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the fishery is
technically called a clean one that is an empty one well deserving the name
Jungfrau or the Virgin
His necessities supplied Derick departed but he had not gained his ships
side when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the mastheads of both
vessels and so eager for the chase was Derick that without pausing to put his
oilcan and lampfeeder aboard he slewed round his boat and made after the
leviathan lampfeeders
Now the game having risen to leeward he and the other three German boats
that soon followed him had considerably the start of the Pequods keels There
were eight whales an average pod Aware of their danger they were going all
abreast with great speed straight before the wind rubbing their flanks as
closely as so many spans of horses in harness They left a great wide wake as
though continually unrolling a great wide parchment upon the sea
Full in this rapid wake and many fathoms in the rear swam a huge humped
old bull which by his comparatively slow progress as well as by the unusual
yellowish incrustations overgrowing him seemed afflicted with the jaundice or
some other infirmity Whether this whale belonged to the pod in advance seemed
questionable for it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all
social Nevertheless he stuck to their wake though indeed their backwater
must have retarded him because the whitebone or swell at his broad muzzle was
a dashed one like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet His spout
was short slow and laborious coming forth with a choking sort of gush and
spending itself in torn shreds followed by strange subterranean commotions in
him which seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity causing the
waters behind him to upbubble
»Who s got some paregoric« said Stubb »he has the stomachache I m
afraid Lord think of having half an acre of stomachache Adverse winds are
holding mad Christmas in him boys It s the first foul wind I ever knew to
blow from astern but look did ever whale yaw so before it must be he s lost
his tiller«
As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindustan coast with a deckload
of frightened horses careens buries rolls and wallows on her way so did
this old whale heave his aged bulk and now and then partly turning over on his
cumbrous ribends expose the cause of his devious wake in the unnatural stump
of his starboard fin Whether he had lost that fin in battle or had been born
without it it were hard to say
»Only wait a bit old chap and I ll give ye a sling for that wounded arm«
cried cruel Flask pointing to the whaleline near 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 pointed for this one fish
because not only was he the largest and therefore the most valuable whale but
he was nearest to them and the other whales were going with such great
velocity moreover as almost to defy pursuit for the time At this juncture
the Pequods keels had shot by the three German boats last lowered but from the
great start he had had Dericks boat still led the chase though every moment
neared by his foreign rivals The only thing they feared was that from being
already so nigh to his mark he would be enabled to dart his iron before they
could completely overtake and pass him As for Derick he seemed quite confident
that this would be the case and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook his
lampfeeder at the other boats
»The ungracious and ungrateful dog« cried Starbuck »he mocks and dares me
with the very poorbox I filled for him not five minutes ago« then in his old
intense whisper »give way grayhounds Dog to it«
»I tell ye what it is men« cried Stubb to his crew »it s against my
religion to get mad but I d like to eat that villainous Yarman Pull wont
ye Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye Do ye love brandy A hogshead of
brandy then to the best man Come why dont some of ye burst a bloodvessel
Who s that been dropping an anchor overboard we dont budge an inch we re
becalmed Halloa here s grass growing in the boats bottom and by the Lord
the mast there s 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 and down »What a hump
Oh do pile on the beef lays like a log Oh my lads do spring slapjacks
and quohogs for supper you know my lads baked clams and muffins oh do
do spring he s a hundredbarreler dont lose him now dont oh dont
see that Yarman Oh wont ye pull for your duff my lads such a sog such
a sogger Dont ye love sperm There goes three thousand dollars men a bank
a whole bank The bank of England Oh do do do What s that Yarman
about now«
At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lampfeeder at the
advancing boats and also his oilcan perhaps with the double view of retarding
his rivals way and at the same time economically accelerating his own by the
momentary impetus of the backward toss
»The unmannerly Dutch dogger« cried Stubb »Pull now men like fifty
thousand lineofbattle shiploads of redhaired devils What d ye say
Tashtego are you the man to snap your spine in twoandtwenty pieces for the
honour of old Gay Head What d ye say«
»I say pull like goddam« cried the Indian
Fiercely but evenly incited by the taunts of the German the Pequods three
boats now began ranging almost abreast and so disposed momentarily neared
him In that fine loose chivalrous attitude of the headsman when drawing near
to his prey the three mates stood up proudly occasionally backing the
afteroarsman with an exhilarating cry of »There she slides now Hurrah for
the whiteash breeze Down with the Yarman Sail over him«
But so decided an original start had Derick had that spite of all their
gallantry he would have proved the victor in this race had not a righteous
judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the blade of his midship
oarsman While this clumsy lubber was striving to free his whiteash and while
in consequence Dericks boat was nigh to capsizing and he thundering away at
his men in a mighty rage that was a good time for Starbuck Stubb and Flask
With a shout they took a mortal start forward and slantingly ranged up on the
Germans quarter An instant more and all four boats were diagonically in the
whales immediate wake while stretching from them on both sides was the
foaming swell that he made
It was a terrific most pitiable and maddening sight The whale was now
going head out and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented jet
while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright Now to this hand
now to that he yawed in his faltering flight and still at every billow that he
broke he spasmodically sank in the sea or sideways rolled toward the sky his
one beating fin So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted
broken circles in the air vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks But
the bird has a voice and with plaintive cries will make known her fear but the
fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea was chained up and enchanted in him he
had no voice save that choking respiration through his spiracle and this made
the sight of him unspeakably pitiable while still in his amazing bulk
portcullis jaw and omnipotent tail there was enough to appal the stoutest man
who so pitied
Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequods boats
the advantage and rather than be thus foiled of his game Derick chose to
hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart ere the last
chance would forever escape
But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke than all three
tigers Queequeg Tashtego Daggoo instinctively sprang to their feet and
standing in a diagonal row simultaneously pointed their barbs and darted over
the head of the German harpooneer their three Nantucket irons entered the
whale Blinding vapours of foam and whitefire The three boats in the first
fury of the whales headlong rush bumped the Germans aside with such force
that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out and sailed over by
the three flying keels
»Dont be afraid my butterboxes« cried Stubb casting a passing glance
upon them as he shot by »ye ll be picked up presently all right I saw some
sharks astern St Bernards dogs you know relieve distressed travellers
Hurrah this is the way to sail now Every keel a sunbeam Hurrah Here we go
like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad cougar This puts me in mind of
fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain makes the wheelspokes fly
boys when you fasten to him that way and there s danger of being pitched out
too when you strike a hill Hurrah this is the way a fellow feels when he s
going to Davy Jones all a rush down an endless inclined plane Hurrah this
whale carries the everlasting mail«
But the monsters run was a brief one Giving a sudden gasp he tumultuously
sounded With a grating rush the three lines flew round the loggerheads with
such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them while so fearful were the
harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust the lines that using
all their dexterous might they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to
hold on till at last owing to the perpendicular strain from the leadlined
chocks of the boats whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue
the gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water while the three sterns
tilted high in the air And the whale soon ceasing to sound for some time they
remained in that attitude fearful of expending more line though the position
was a little ticklish But though boats have been taken down and lost in this
way yet it is this holding on as it is called this hooking up by the sharp
barbs of his live flesh from the back this it is that often torments the
leviathan into soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes Yet not to
speak of the peril of the thing it is to be doubted whether this course is
always the best for it is but reasonable to presume that the longer the
stricken whale stays under water the more he is exhausted Because owing to
the enormous surface of him in a fullgrown sperm whale something less than
two thousand square feet the pressure of the water is immense We all know
what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under even here
aboveground in the air how vast then the burden of a whale bearing on his
back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean It must at least equal the weight
of fifty atmospheres One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty
lineofbattle ships with all their guns and stores and men on board
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea gazing down into
its eternal blue noon and as not a single groan or cry of any sort nay not so
much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths what landsman would have
thought that beneath all that silence and placidity the utmost monster of the
seas was writhing and wrenching in agony Not eight inches of perpendicular rope
were visible at the bows Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the
great leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eightday clock
Suspended and to what To three bits of board Is this the creature of whom it
was once so triumphantly said »Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons or
his head with fishspears The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold the
spear the dart nor the habergeon he esteemeth iron as straw the arrow cannot
make him flee darts are counted as stubble he laugheth at the shaking of a
spear« This the creature this he Oh that unfulfilments should follow the
prophets For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail Leviathan had
run his head under the mountains of the sea to hide him from the Pequods
fishspears
In that sloping afternoon sunlight the shadows that the three boats sent
down beneath the surface must have been long enough and broad enough to shade
half Xerxes army Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale must have
been such huge phantoms flitting over his head
»Stand by men he stirs« cried Starbuck as the three lines suddenly
vibrated in the water distinctly conducting upward to them as by magnetic
wires the life and death throbs of the whale so that every oarsman felt them
in his seat The next moment relieved in great part from the downward strain at
the bows the boats gave a sudden bounce upward as a small icefield will when
a dense herd of white bears are scared from it into the sea
»Haul in Haul in« cried Starbuck again »he s rising«
The lines of which hardly an instant before not one handsbreadth could
have been gained were now in long quick coils flung back all dripping into the
boats and soon the whale broke water within two shipslengths of the hunters
His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion In most land animals
there are certain valves or floodgates in many of their veins whereby when
wounded the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off in certain
directions Not so with the whale one of whose peculiarities it is to have an
entire nonvalvular structure of the bloodvessels so that when pierced even by
so small a point as a harpoon a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole
arterial system and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressure of
water at a great distance below the surface his life may be said to pour from
him in incessant streams Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him and so
distant and numerous its interior fountains that he will keep thus bleeding and
bleeding for a considerable period even as in a drought a river will flow
whose source is in the wellsprings of faroff and indiscernible hills Even
now when the boats pulled upon this whale and perilously drew over his swaying
flukes and the lances were darted into him they were followed by steady jets
from the newmade wound which kept continually playing while the natural
spouthole in his head was only at intervals however rapid sending its
affrighted moisture into the air From this last vent no blood yet came because
no vital part of him had thus far been struck His life as they significantly
call it was untouched
As the boats now more closely surrounded him the whole upper part of his
form with much of it that is ordinarily submerged was plainly revealed His
eyes or rather the places where his eyes had been were beheld As strange
misgrown masses gather in the knotholes of the noblest oaks when prostrate so
from the points which the whales eyes had once occupied now protruded blind
bulbs horribly pitiable to see But pity there was none For all his old age
and his one arm and his blind eyes he must die the death and be murdered in
order to light the gay bridals and other merrymakings of men and also to
illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all
to all Still rolling in his blood at last he partially disclosed a strangely
discoloured bunch or protuberance the size of a bushel low down on the flank
»A nice spot« cried Flask »just let me prick him there once«
»Avast« cried Starbuck »there s no need of that«
But humane Starbuck was too late At the instant of the dart an ulcerous jet
shot from this cruel wound and goaded by it into more than sufferable anguish
the whale now spouting thick blood with swift fury blindly darted at the
craft bespattering them and their glorying crews all over with showers of gore
capsizing Flasks boat and marring the bows It was his deathstroke For by
this time so spent was he by loss of blood that he helplessly rolled away from
the wreck he had made lay panting on his side impotently flapped with his
stumped fin then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world turned up
the white secrets of his belly lay like a log and died It was most piteous
that last expiring spout As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn
off from some mighty fountain and with halfstifled melancholy gurglings the
spraycolumn lowers and lowers to the ground so the last long dying spout of
the whale
Soon while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship the body showed
symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled Immediately by Starbucks
orders lines were secured to it at different points so that ere long every
boat was a buoy the sunken whale being suspended a few inches beneath them by
the cords By very heedful management when the ship drew nigh the whale was
transferred to her side and was strongly secured there by the stiffest
flukechains for it was plain that unless artificially upheld the body would
at once sink to the bottom
It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade the
entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh on the
lower part of the bunch before described But as the stumps of harpoons are
frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales with the flesh perfectly
healed around them and no prominence of any kind to denote their place
therefore there must needs have been some other unknown reason in the present
case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to But still more curious was
the fact of a lancehead of stone being found in him not far from the buried
iron the flesh perfectly firm about it Who had darted that stone lance And
when It might have been darted by some NorWest Indian long before America was
discovered
What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous cabinet
there is no telling But a sudden stop was put to further discoveries by the
ships being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea owing to the
bodys immensely increasing tendency to sink However Starbuck who had the
ordering of affairs hung on to it to the last hung on to it so resolutely
indeed that when at length the ship would have been capsized if still
persisting in locking arms with the body then when the command was given to
break clear from it such was the immovable strain upon the timberheads to
which the flukechains and cables were fastened that it was impossible to cast
them off Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant To cross to the other
side of the deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house The ship
groaned and gasped Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were
started from their places by the unnatural dislocation In vain handspikes and
crows were brought to bear upon the immovable flukechains to pry them adrift
from the timberheads and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged
ends could not be at all approached while every moment whole tons of
ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk and the ship seemed on the point
of going over
»Hold on hold on wont ye« cried Stubb to the body »dont be in such a
devil of a hurry to sink By thunder men we must do something or go for it No
use prying there avast I say with your handspikes and run one of ye for a
prayerbook and a penknife and cut the big chains«
»Knife Ay ay« cried Queequeg and seizing the carpenters heavy hatchet
he leaned out of a porthole and steel to iron began slashing at the largest
flukechains But a few strokes full of sparks were given when the exceeding
strain effected the rest With a terrific snap every fastening went adrift the
ship righted the carcase sank
Now this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed sperm whale
is a very curious thing nor has any fisherman yet adequately accounted for it
Usually the dead sperm whale floats with great buoyancy with its side or belly
considerably elevated above the surface If the only whales that thus sank were
old meagre and brokenhearted creatures their pads of lard diminished and all
their bones heavy and rheumatic then you might with some reason assert that
this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so sinking
consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him But it is not so For
young whales in the highest health and swelling with noble aspirations
prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of life with all their panting
lard about them even these brawny buoyant heroes do sometimes sink
Be it said however that the sperm whale is far less liable to this
accident than any other species Where one of that sort go down twenty right
whales do This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in no small
degree to the greater quantity of bone in the right whale his Venetian blinds
alone sometimes weighing more than a ton from this encumbrance the sperm whale
is wholly free But there are instances where after the lapse of many hours or
several days the sunken whale again rises more buoyant than in life But the
reason of this is obvious Gases are generated in him he swells to a prodigious
magnitude becomes a sort of animal balloon A lineofbattle ship could hardly
keep him under then In the shore whaling on soundings among the bays of New
Zealand when a right whale gives token of sinking they fasten buoys to him
with plenty of rope so that when the body has gone down they know where to
look for it when it shall have ascended again
It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from the
Pequods mastheads announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering her boats
though the only spout in sight was that of a finback belonging to the species
of uncapturable whales because of its incredible power of swimming
Nevertheless the finbacks spout is so similar to the sperm whales that by
unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it And consequently Derick and all
his host were now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute The Virgin
crowding all sail made after her four young keels and thus they all
disappeared far to leeward still in bold hopeful chase
Oh many are the finbacks and many are the Dericks my friend
Chapter LXXXII
The Honour and Glory of Whaling
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method
The more I dive into this matter of whaling and push my researches up to
the very springhead of it so much the more am I impressed with its great
honourableness and antiquity and especially when I find so many great demigods
and heroes prophets of all sorts who one way or other have shed distinction
upon it I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong though but
subordinately to so emblazoned a fraternity
The gallant Perseus a son of Jupiter was the first whaleman and to the
eternal honour of our calling be it said that the first whale attacked by our
brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent Those were the knightly days
of our profession when we only bore arms to succour the distressed and not to
fill mens lampfeeders Everyone knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda
how the lovely Andromeda the daughter of a king was tied to a rock on the
seacoast and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off Perseus
the prince of whalemen intrepidly advancing harpooned the monster and
delivered and married the maid It was an admirable artistic exploit rarely
achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day inasmuch as this leviathan
was slain at the very first dart And let no man doubt this Arkite story for in
the ancient Joppa now Jaffa on the Syrian coast in one of the pagan temples
there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale which the citys legends
and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that
Perseus slew When the Romans took Joppa the same skeleton was carried to Italy
in triumph What seems most singular and suggestively important in this story is
this it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail
Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda indeed by some supposed to
be indirectly derived from it is that famous story of St George and the
Dragon which dragon I maintain to have been a whale for in many old chronicles
whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together and often stand for each
other »Thou art as a lion of the waters and as a dragon of the sea« saith
Ezekiel hereby plainly meaning a whale in truth some versions of the Bible
use that word itself Besides it would much subtract from the glory of the
exploit had St George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land instead
of doing battle with the great monster of the deep Any man may kill a snake
but only a Perseus a St George a Coffin have the heart in them to march
boldly up to a whale
Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us for though the
creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely represented of a
griffinlike shape and though the battle is depicted on land and the saint on
horseback yet considering the great ignorance of those times when the true
form of the whale was unknown to artists and considering that as in Perseus
case St Georges whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach and
considering that the animal ridden by St George might have been only a large
seal or seahorse bearing all this in mind it will not appear altogether
incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene to
hold this socalled dragon no other than the great leviathan himself In fact
placed before the strict and piercing truth this whole story will fare like
that fish flesh and fowl idol of the Philistines Dagon by name who being
planted before the ark of Israel his horses head and both the palms of his
hands fell off from him and only the stump or fishy part of him remained Thus
then one of our own noble stamp even a whaleman is the tutelary guardian of
England and by good rights we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in
the most noble order of St George And therefore let not the knights of that
honourable company none of whom I venture to say have ever had to do with a
whale like their great patron let them never eye a Nantucketer with disdain
since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we are much better entitled
to St Georges decoration than they
Whether to admit Hercules among us or not concerning this I long remained
dubious for though according to the Greek mythologies that antique Crockett
and Kit Carson that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds was swallowed down and
thrown up by a whale still whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him that
might be mooted It nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish
unless indeed from the inside Nevertheless he may be deemed a sort of
involuntary whaleman at any rate the whale caught him if he did not the whale
I claim him for one of our clan
But by the best contradictory authorities this Grecian story of Hercules
and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more ancient Hebrew
story of Jonah and the whale and vice versa certainly they are very similar
If I claim the demigod then why not the prophet
Nor do heroes saints demigods and prophets alone comprise the whole roll
of our order Our grand master is still to be named for like royal kings of old
times we find the headwaters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great
gods themselves That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the
Shaster which gives us the dread Vishnu one of the three persons in the
godhead of the Hindus gives us this divine Vishnu himself for our Lord
Vishnu who by the first of his ten earthly incarnations has forever set apart
and sanctified the whale When Brahma or the God of Gods saith the Shaster
resolved to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions he
gave birth to Vishnu to preside over the work but the Vedas or mystical
books whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnu before
beginning the creation and which therefore must have contained something in the
shape of practical hints to young architects these Vedas were lying at the
bottom of the waters so Vishnu became incarnate in a whale and sounding down
in him to the uttermost depths rescued the sacred volumes Was not this Vishnu
a whaleman then even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman
Perseus St George Hercules Jonah and Vishnu there s a memberroll for
you What club but the whalemans can head off like that
Chapter LXXXIII
Jonah Historically Regarded
Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the
preceding chapter Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story
of Jonah and the whale But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans
who standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times equally doubted the
story of Hercules and the whale and Arion and the dolphin and yet their
doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts
for all that
One old Sag Harbour whalemans chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story
was this He had one of those quaint oldfashioned Bibles embellished with
curious unscientific plates one of which represented Jonahs whale with two
spouts in his head a peculiarity only true with respect to a species of the
leviathan the right whale and the varieties of that order concerning which
the fishermen have this saying »A penny roll would choke him« his swallow is
so very small But to this Bishop Jebbs anticipative answer is ready It is
not necessary hints the Bishop that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whales
belly 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
accommodate a couple of whisttables and comfortably seat all the players
Possibly too Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth but on
second thoughts the right whale is toothless
Another reason which Sag Harbour he went by that name urged for his want
of faith in this matter of the prophet was something obscurely in reference to
his incarcerated body and the whales gastric juices But this objection
likewise falls to the ground because a German exegetist supposes that Jonah
must have taken refuge in the floating body of a dead whale even as the French
soldiers in the Russian campaign turned their dead horses into tents and
crawled into them Besides it has been divined by other continental
commentators that when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa ship he
straightway effected his escape to another vessel near by some vessel with a
whale for a figurehead and I would add possibly called the Whale as some
craft are nowadays christened the Shark the Gull the Eagle Nor have there
been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned in the
book of Jonah merely meant a lifepreserver an inflated bag of wind which
the endangered prophet swam to and so was saved from a watery doom Poor Sag
Harbour therefore seems worsted all round But he had still another reason for
his want of faith It was this if I remember right Jonah was swallowed by the
whale in the Mediterranean Sea and after three days he was vomited up somewhere
within three days journey of Nineveh a city on the Tigris very much more than
three days journey across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast
How is that
But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within that
short distance of Nineveh Yes He might have carried him round by the way of
the Cape of Good Hope But not to speak of the passage through the whole length
of the Mediterranean and another passage up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea such
a supposition would involve the complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three
days not to speak of the Tigris waters near the site of Nineveh being too
shallow for any whale to swim in Besides this idea of Jonahs weathering the
Cape of Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honour of the discovery of
that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz its reputed discoverer and so make
modern history a liar
But all these foolish arguments of old Sag Harbour only evinced his foolish
pride of reason a thing still more reprehensible in him seeing that he had
but little learning except what he had picked up from the sun and the sea I say
it only shows his foolish impious pride and abominable devilish rebellion
against the reverend clergy For by a Portuguese Catholic priest this very idea
of Jonahs going to Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal
magnification of the general miracle And so it was Besides to this day the
highly enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah And
some three centuries ago an English traveller in old Harriss Voyages speaks of
a Turkish mosque built in honour of Jonah in which mosque was a miraculous lamp
that burnt without any oil
Chapter LXXXIV
Pitchpoling
To make them run easily and swiftly the axles of carriages are anointed and
for much the same purpose some whalers perform an analogous operation upon
their boat they grease the bottom Nor is it to be doubted that as such a
procedure can do no harm it may possibly be of no contemptible advantage
considering that oil and water are hostile that oil is a sliding thing and
that the object in view is to make the boat slide bravely Queequeg believed
strongly in anointing his boat and one morning not long after the German ship
Jungfrau disappeared took more than customary pains in that occupation
crawling under its bottom where it hung over the side and rubbing in the
unctuousness as though diligently seeking to ensure a crop of hair from the
crafts bald keel He seemed to be working in obedience to some particular
presentiment Nor did it remain unwarranted by the event
Toward noon whales were raised but so soon as the ship sailed down to them
they turned and fled with swift precipitancy a disordered flight as of
Cleopatras barges from Actium
Nevertheless the boats pursued and Stubbs was foremost By great
exertion Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron but the stricken
whale without at all sounding still continued his horizontal flight with
added fleetness Such unintermitted strainings upon the planted iron must sooner
or later inevitably extract it It became imperative to lance the flying whale
or be content to lose him But to haul the boat up to his flank was impossible
he swam so fast and furious What then remained
Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities the sleights of hand and
countless subtleties to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced none
exceed that fine manoeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling Small sword or
broad sword in all its exercises boasts nothing like it It is only
indispensable with an inveterate running whale its grand fact and feature is
the wonderful distance to which the long lance is accurately darted from a
violently rocking jerking boat under extreme headway Steel and wood included
the entire spear is some ten or twelve feet in length the staff is much
slighter than that of the harpoon and also of a lighter material pine It is
furnished with a small rope called a warp of considerable length by which it
can be hauled back to the hand after darting
But before going further it is important to mention here that though the
harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance yet it is seldom done
and when done is still less frequently successful on account of the greater
weight and inferior length of the harpoon as compared with the lance which in
effect become serious drawbacks As a general thing therefore you must first
get fast to a whale before any pitchpoling comes into play
Look now at Stubb a man who from his humorous deliberate coolness and
equanimity in the direst emergencies was specially qualified to excel in
pitchpoling Look at him he stands upright in the tossed bow of the flying
boat wrapped in fleecy foam the towing whale is forty feet ahead Handling the
long lance lightly glancing twice or thrice along its length to see if it be
exactly straight Stubb whistlingly gathers up the coil of the warp in one hand
so as to secure its free end in his grasp leaving the rest unobstructed Then
holding the lance full before his waistbands middle he levels it at the whale
when covering him with it he steadily depresses the buttend in his hand
thereby elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his
palm fifteen feet in the air He minds you somewhat of a juggler balancing a
long staff on his chin Next moment with a rapid nameless impulse in a superb
lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming distance and quivers in the life
spot of the whale Instead of sparkling water he now spouts red blood
»That drove the spigot out of him« cries Stubb »Tis Julys immortal
Fourth all fountains must run wine today Would now it were old Orleans
whiskey or old Ohio or unspeakable old Monongahela Then Tashtego lad I d
have ye hold a cannikin to the jet and we d drink round it Yea verily
hearts alive we d brew choice punch in the spread of his spouthole there and
from that live punchbowl quaff the living stuff«
Again and again to such gamesome talk the dexterous dart is repeated the
spear returning to its master like a grayhound held in skilful leash The
agonised whale goes into his flurry the towline is slackened and the
pitchpoler dropping astern folds his hands and mutely watches the monster die
Chapter LXXXV
The Fountain
That for six thousand years and no one knows how many millions of ages before
the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea and sprinkling
and mistifying the gardens of the deep as with so many sprinkling or mistifying
pots and that for some centuries back thousands of hunters should have been
close by the fountain of the whale watching these sprinklings and spoutings
that all this should be and yet that down to this blessed minute fifteen and
a quarter minutes past one oclock P M of this sixteenth day of December A
D 1851 it should still remain a problem whether these spoutings are after
all really water or nothing but vapour this is surely a noteworthy thing
Let us then look at this matter along with some interesting items
contingent Everyone knows that by the peculiar cunning of their gills the
finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is combined with the
element in which they swim hence a herring or a cod might live a century and
never once raise its head above the surface But owing to his marked internal
structure which gives him regular lungs like a human beings the whale can
only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere Wherefore the
necessity for his periodical visits to the upper world But he cannot in any
degree breathe through his mouth for in his ordinary attitude the sperm
whales mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface and what is
still more his windpipe has no connection with his mouth No he breathes
through his spiracle alone and this is on the top of his head
If I say that in any creature breathing is only a function indispensable to
vitality inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a certain element which being
subsequently brought into contact with the blood imparts to the blood its
vivifying principle I do not think I shall err though I may possibly use some
superfluous scientific words Assume it and it follows that if all the blood in
a man could be aerated with one breath he might then seal up his nostrils and
not fetch another for a considerable time That is to say he would then live
without breathing Anomalous as it may seem this is precisely the case with the
whale who systematically lives by intervals his full hour and more when at
the bottom without drawing a single breath or so much as in any way inhaling a
particle of air for remember he has no gills How is this Between his ribs
and on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan
labyrinth of vermicellilike vessels which vessels when he quits the surface
are completely distended with oxygenated blood So that for an hour or more a
thousand fathoms in the sea he carries a surplus stock of vitality in him just
as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for
future use in its four supplementary stomachs The anatomical fact of this
labyrinth is indisputable and that the supposition founded upon it is
reasonable and true seems the more cogent to me when I consider the otherwise
inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spoutings out as the
fishermen phrase it This is what I mean If unmolested upon rising to the
surface the sperm whale will continue there for a period of time exactly
uniform with all his other unmolested risings Say he stays eleven minutes and
jets seventy times that is respires seventy breaths then whenever he rises
again he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again to a minute Now
if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him so that he sounds he will be
always dodging up again to make good his regular allowance of air And not till
those seventy breaths are told will he finally go down to stay out his full
term below Remark however that in different individuals these rates are
different but in any one they are alike Now why should the whale thus insist
upon having his spoutings out unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air
ere descending for good How obvious is it too that this necessity for the
whales rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase For not by
hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught when sailing a thousand
fathoms beneath the sunlight Not so much thy skill then O hunter as the
great necessities that strike the victory to thee
In man breathing is incessantly going on one breath only serving for two
or three pulsations so that whatever other business he has to attend to waking
or sleeping breathe he must or die he will But the sperm whale only breathes
about oneseventh or Sunday of his time
It has been said that the whale only breathes through his spouthole if it
could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water then I opine we
should be furnished with the reason why his sense of smell seems obliterated in
him for the only thing about him that at all answers to his nose is that
identical spouthole and being so clogged with two elements it could not be
expected to have the power of smelling But owing to the mystery of the spout
whether it be water or whether it be vapour no absolute certainty can as yet
be arrived at on this head Sure it is nevertheless that the sperm whale has
no proper olfactories But what does he want of them No roses no violets no
Colognewater in the sea
Furthermore as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting
canal and as that long canal like the grand Erie Canal is furnished with a
sort of locks that open and shut for the downward retention of air or the
upward exclusion of water therefore the whale has no voice unless you insult
him by saying that when he so strangely rumbles he talks through his nose But
then again what has the whale to say Seldom have I known any profound being
that had anything to say to this world unless forced to stammer out something
by way of getting a living Oh happy that the world is such an excellent
listener
Now the spouting canal of the sperm whale chiefly intended as it is for
the conveyance of air and for several feet laid along horizontally just
beneath the upper surface of his head and a little to one side this curious
canal is very much like a gaspipe laid down in a city on one side of a street
But the question returns whether this gaspipe is also a waterpipe in other
words, whether the spout of the sperm whale is the mere vapour of the exhaled
breath or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the
mouth and discharged through the spiracle It is certain that the mouth
indirectly communicates with the spouting canal but it cannot be proved that
this is for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle Because the
greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be when in feeding he
accidentally takes in water But the sperm whales food is far beneath the
surface and there he cannot spout even if he would Besides if you regard him
very closely and time him with your watch you will find that when unmolested
there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets and the ordinary
periods of respiration
But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject Speak out You
have seen him spout then declare what the spout is can you not tell water from
air My dear sir in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things
I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all And as for this
whalespout you might almost stand in it and yet be undecided as to what it is
precisely
The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping it
and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from it when always
when you are close enough to a whale to get a close view of his spout he is in
a prodigious commotion the water cascading all around him And if at such times
you should think that you really perceived drops of moisture in the spout how
do you know that they are not merely condensed from its vapour or how do you
know that they are not those identical drops superficially lodged in the
spouthole fissure which is countersunk into the summit of the whales head
For even when tranquilly swimming through the midday sea in a calm with his
elevated hump sundried as a dromedarys in the desert even then the whale
always carries a small basin of water on his head as under a blazing sun you
will sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain
Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be overcurious touching the
precise nature of the whalespout It will not do for him to be peering into it
and putting his face in it You cannot go with your pitcher to this fountain and
fill it and bring it away For even when coming into slight contact with the
outer vapoury shreds of the jet which will often happen your skin will
feverishly smart from the acridness of the thing so touching it And I know
one who coming into still closer contact with the spout whether with some
scientific object in view or otherwise I cannot say the skin peeled off from
his cheek and arm Wherefore among whalemen the spout is deemed poisonous
they try to evade it Another thing I have heard it said and I do not much
doubt it that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes it will blind you
The wisest thing the investigator can do then it seems to me is to let this
deadly spout alone
Still we can hypothesise even if we cannot prove and establish My
hypothesis is this that the spout is nothing but mist And besides other
reasons to this conclusion I am impelled by considerations touching the great
inherent dignity and sublimity of the sperm whale I account him no common
shallow being inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he is never found on
soundings or near shores all other whales sometimes are He is both ponderous
and profound And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound
beings such as Plato Pyrrho the Devil Jupiter Dante and so on there
always goes up a certain semivisible steam while in the act of thinking deep
thoughts While composing a little treatise on Eternity I had the curiosity to
place a mirror before me and ere long saw reflected there a curious involved
worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head The invariable moisture
of my hair while plunged in deep thought after six cups of hot tea in my thin
shingled attic of an August noon this seems an additional argument for the
above supposition
And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty misty monster to behold
him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea his vast mild head overhung
by a canopy of vapour engendered by his incommunicable contemplations and that
vapour as you will sometimes see it glorified by a rainbow as if heaven
itself had put its seal upon his thoughts For d ye see rainbows do not visit
the clear air they only irradiate vapour And so through all the thick mists
of the dim doubts in my mind divine intuitions now and then shoot enkindling
my fog with a heavenly ray And for this I thank God for all have doubts many
deny but doubts or denials few along with them have intuitions Doubts of all
things earthly and intuitions of some things heavenly this combination makes
neither believer nor infidel but makes a man who regards them both with equal
eye
Chapter LXXXVI
The Tail
Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope and the
lovely plumage of the bird that never alights less celestial I celebrate a
tail
Reckoning the largestsized sperm whales tail to begin at that point of the
trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man it comprises upon its upper
surface alone an area of at least fifty square feet The compact round body of
its root expands into two broad firm flat palms or flukes gradually shoaling
away to less than an inch in thickness At the crotch or junction these flukes
slightly overlap then sideways recede from each other like wings leaving a
wide vacancy between In no living thing are the lines of beauty more
exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes At its
utmost expansion in the fullgrown whale the tail will considerably exceed
twenty feet across
The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews but cut into
it and you find that three distinct strata compose it upper middle and
lower The fibres in the upper and lower layers are long and horizontal those
of the middle one very short and running crosswise between the outside layers
This triune structure as much as anything else imparts power to the tail To
the student of old Roman walls the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel
to the thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful
relics of the antique and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great
strength of the masonry
But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough the
whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of muscular fibres
and filaments which passing on either side the loins and running down into the
flukes insensibly blend with them and largely contribute to their might so
that in the tail the confluent measureless force of the whole whale seems
concentrated to a point Could annihilation occur to matter this were the thing
to do it
Nor does this its amazing strength at all tend to cripple the graceful
flexion of its motions where infantileness of ease undulates through a Titanism
of power On the contrary those motions derive their most appalling beauty from
it Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony but it often bestows it and
in everything imposingly beautiful strength has much to do with the magic Take
away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved
Hercules and its charm would be gone As devout Eckermann lifted the linen
sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe he was overwhelmed with the massive chest
of the man that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch When Angelo paints even God
the Father in human form mark what robustness is there And whatever they may
reveal of the divine love in the Son the soft curled hermaphroditical Italian
pictures in which his idea has been most successfully embodied these pictures
so destitute as they are of all brawniness hint nothing of any power but the
mere negative feminine one of submission and endurance which on all hands it
is conceded form the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings
Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of that whether wielded
in sport or in earnest or in anger whatever be the mood it be in its
flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace Therein no fairys arm can
transcend it
Five great motions are peculiar to it First when used as a fin for
progression Second when used as a mace in battle Third in sweeping Fourth
in lobtailing Fifth in peaking flukes
First Being horizontal in its position the leviathans tail acts in a
different manner from the tails of all other seacreatures It never wriggles
In man or fish wriggling is a sign of inferiority To the whale his tail is
the sole means of propulsion Scroll coiled forward beneath the body and then
rapidly sprung backward it is this which gives that singular darting leaping
motion to the monster when furiously swimming His sidefins only serve to steer
by
Second It is a little significant that while one sperm whale only fights
another sperm whale with his head and jaw nevertheless in his conflicts with
man he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail In striking at a boat he
swiftly curves away his flukes from it and the blow is only inflicted by the
recoil If it be made in the unobstructed air especially if it descend to its
mark the stroke is then simply irresistible No ribs of man or boat can
withstand it Your only salvation lies in eluding it but if it comes sideways
through the opposing water then partly owing to the light buoyancy of the
whaleboat and the elasticity of its materials a cracked rib or a dashed plank
or two a sort of stitch in the side is generally the most serious result
These submerged side blows are so often received in the fishery that they are
accounted mere childs play Someone strips off a frock and the hole is
stopped
Third I cannot demonstrate it but it seems to me that in the whale the
sense of touch is concentrated in the tail for in this respect there is a
delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the elephants trunk This
delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of sweeping when in maidenly
gentleness the whale with a certain soft slowness moves his immense flukes from
side to side upon the surface of the sea and if he feel but a sailors whisker
woe to that sailor whiskers and all What tenderness there is in that
preliminary touch Had this tail any prehensile power I should straightway
bethink me of Darmonodes elephant that so frequented the flowermarket and
with low salutations presented nosegays to damsels and then caressed their
zones On more accounts than one a pity it is that the whale does not possess
this prehensile virtue in his tail for I have heard of yet another elephant
that when wounded in the fight curved round his trunk and extracted the dart
Fourth Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the
middle of solitary seas you find him unbent from the vast corpulence of his
dignity and kittenlike he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth But
still you see his power in his play The broad palms of his tail are flirted
high into the air then smiting the surface the thunderous concussion resounds
for miles You would almost think a great gun had been discharged and if you
noticed the light wreath of vapour from the spiracle at his other extremity you
would think that that was the smoke from the touchhole
Fifth As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes lie
considerably below the level of his back they are then completely out of sight
beneath the surface but when he is about to plunge into the deeps his entire
flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the air and so
remain vibrating a moment till they downward shoot out of view Excepting the
sublime breach somewhere else to be described this peaking of the whales
flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature Out of
the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at
the highest heaven So in dreams have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his
tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell But in gazing at such
scenes it is all in all what mood you are in if in the Dantean the devils
will occur to you if in that of Isaiah the archangels Standing at the
masthead of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea I once saw a
large herd of whales in the east all heading toward the sun and for a moment
vibrating in concert with peaked flukes As it seemed to me at the time such a
grand embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld even in Persia the
home of the fireworshippers As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African
elephant I then testified of the whale pronouncing him the most devout of all
beings For according to King Juba the military elephants of antiquity often
hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the profoundest silence
The chance comparison in this chapter between the whale and the elephant
so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk of the other are
concerned should not tend to place those two opposite organs on an equality
much less the creatures to which they respectively belong For as the mightiest
elephant is but a terrier to Leviathan so compared with Leviathans tail his
trunk is but the stalk of a lily The most direful blow from the elephants
trunk were as the playful tap of a fan compared with the measureless crush and
crash of the sperm whales ponderous flukes which in repeated instances have
one after the other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews into the
air very much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls18
The more I consider this mighty tail the more do I deplore my inability to
express it At times there are gestures in it which though they would well
grace the hand of man remain wholly inexplicable In an extensive herd so
remarkable occasionally are these mystic gestures that I have heard hunters
who have declared them akin to Freemason signs and symbols that the whale
indeed by these methods intelligently conversed with the world Nor are there
wanting other motions of the whale in his general body full of strangeness and
unaccountable to his most experienced assailant Dissect him how I may then I
but go skin deep I know him not and never will But if I know not even the
tail of this whale how understand his head much more how comprehend his face
when face he has none Thou shalt see my back parts my tail he seems to say
but my face shall not be seen But I cannot completely make out his back parts
and hint what he will about his face I say again he has no face
Chapter LXXXVII
The Grand Armada
The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca extending southeastward from the
territorities of Burmah forms the most southerly point of all Asia In a
continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of Sumatra Java
Bally and Timor which with many others form a vast mole or rampart
lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia and dividing the long unbroken Indian
Ocean from the thickly studded oriental archipelagoes This rampart is pierced
by several sallyports for the convenience of ships and whales conspicuous
among which are the Straits of Sunda and Malacca By the Straits of Sunda
chiefly vessels bound to China from the West emerge into the China seas
Those narrow Straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java and standing midway
in that vast rampart of islands buttressed by that bold green promontory known
to seamen as Java Head they not a little correspond to the central gateway
opening into some vast walled empire and considering the inexhaustible wealth
of spices and silks and jewels and gold and ivory with which the thousand
islands of that oriental sea are enriched it seems a significant provision of
nature that such treasures by the very formation of the land should at least
bear the appearance however ineffectual of being guarded from the allgrasping
Western world The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those
domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean the
Baltic and the Propontis Unlike the Danes these Orientals do not demand the
obsequious homage of lowered topsails from the endless procession of ships
before the wind which for centuries past by night and by day have passed
between the islands of Sumatra and Java freighted with the costliest cargoes of
the East But while they freely waive a ceremonial like this they do by no
means renounce their claim to more solid tribute
Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays lurking among the low
shaded coves and islets of Sumatra have sallied out upon the vessels sailing
through the straits fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears
Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they have received at the hands of
European cruisers the audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat
repressed yet even at the present day we occasionally hear of English and
American vessels which in those waters have been remorselessly boarded and
pillaged
With a fair fresh wind the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these straits
Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea and thence cruising
northward over waters known to be frequented here and there by the sperm whale
sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands and gain the far coast of Japan in
time for the great whaling season there By these means the circumnavigating
Pequod would sweep almost all the known sperm whale cruisinggrounds of the
world previous to descending upon the Line in the Pacific where Ahab though
everywhere else foiled in his pursuit firmly counted upon giving battle to
MobyDick in the sea he was most known to frequent and at a season when he
might most reasonably be presumed to be haunting it
But how now in this zoned quest does Ahab touch no land does his crew
drink air Surely he will stop for water Nay For a long time now the
circusrunning sun has raced within his fiery ring and needs no sustenance but
what s in himself So Ahab Mark this too in the whaler While other hulls
are loaded down with alien stuff to be transferred to foreign wharves the
worldwandering whaleship carries no cargo but herself and crew their weapons
and their wants She has a whole lakes contents bottled in her ample hold She
is ballasted with utilities not altogether with unusable piglead and
kentledge She carries years water in her Clear old prime Nantucket water
which when three years afloat the Nantucketer in the Pacific prefers to
drink before the brackish fluid but yesterday rafted off in casks from the
Peruvian or Indian streams Hence it is that while other ships may have gone to
China from New York and back again touching at a score of ports the
whaleship in all that interval may not have sighted one grain of soil her
crew having seen no man but floating seamen like themselves So that did you
carry them the news that another flood had come they would only answer »Well
boys here s the ark«
Now as many sperm whales had been captured off the western coast of Java
in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda indeed as most of the ground
roundabout was generally recognised by the fishermen as an excellent spot for
cruising therefore as the Pequod gained more and more upon Java Head the
lookouts were repeatedly hailed and admonished to keep wide awake But though
the green palmy cliffs of the land soon loomed on the starboard bow and with
delighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air yet not a single
jet was descried Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game
hereabouts the ship had wellnigh entered the straits when the customary
cheering cry was heard from aloft and ere long a spectacle of singular
magnificence saluted us
But here be it premised that owing to the unwearied activity with which of
late they have been hunted over all four oceans the sperm whales instead of
almost invariably sailing in small detached companies as in former times are
now frequently met with in extensive herds sometimes embracing so great a
multitude that it would almost seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn
solemn league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection To this
aggregation of the sperm whale into such immense caravans may be imputed the
circumstance that even in the best cruisinggrounds you may now sometimes sail
for weeks and months together without being greeted by a single spout and then
be suddenly saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands
Broad on both bows at a distance of some two or three miles and forming a
great semicircle embracing onehalf of the level horizon a continuous chain of
whalejets were upplaying and sparkling in the noonday air Unlike the
straight perpendicular twinjets of the right whale which dividing at top
fall over in two branches like the cleft drooping boughs of a willow the
single forwardslanting spout of the sperm whale presents a thick curled bush of
white mist continually rising and falling away to leeward
Seen from the Pequods deck then as she would rise on a high hill of the
sea this host of vapoury spouts individually curling up into the air and
beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze showed like the thousand
cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis descried of a balmy autumnal
morning by some horseman on a height
As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains
accelerate their march all eagerness to place that perilous passage in their
rear and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain even so did
this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through the straits
gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle and swimming on in one
solid but still crescentic centre
Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them the harpooneers handling
their weapons and loudly cheering from the heads of their yet suspended boats
If the wind only held little doubt had they that chased through these Straits
of Sunda the vast host would only deploy into the oriental seas to witness the
capture of not a few of their number And who could tell whether in that
congregated caravan MobyDick himself might not temporarily be swimming like
the worshipped white elephant in the coronation procession of the Siamese So
with stunsail piled on stunsail we sailed along driving these leviathans
before us when of a sudden the voice of Tashtego was heard loudly directing
attention to something in our wake
Corresponding to the crescent in our van we beheld another in our rear It
seemed formed of detached white vapours rising and falling something like the
spouts of the whales only they did not so completely come and go for they
constantly hovered without finally disappearing Levelling his glass at this
sight Ahab quickly revolved in his pivothole crying »Aloft there and rig
whips and buckets to wet the sails Malays sir and after us«
As if too long lurking behind the headlands till the Pequod should fairly
have entered the straits these rascally Asiatics were now in hot pursuit to
make up for their overcautious delay But when the swift Pequod with a fresh
leading wind was herself in hot chase how very kind of these tawny
philanthropists to assist in speeding her on to her own chosen pursuit mere
ridingwhips and rowels to her that they were As with glass under arm Ahab to
and fro paced the deck in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased
and in the after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him some such fancy as
the above seemed his And when he glanced upon the green walls of the watery
defile in which the ship was then sailing and bethought him that through that
gate lay the route to his vengeance and beheld how that through that same gate
he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end and not only that
but a herd of remorseless wild pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were
infernally cheering him on with their curses when all these conceits had
passed through his brain Ahabs brow was left gaunt and ribbed like the black
sand beach after some stormy tide has been gnawing it without being able to
drag the firm thing from its place
But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew and when
after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern the Pequod at last shot
by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side emerging at last upon the
broad waters beyond then the harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift
whales had been gaining upon the ship than to rejoice that the ship had so
victoriously gained upon the Malays But still driving on in the wake of the
whales at length they seemed abating their speed gradually the ship neared
them and the wind now dying away word was passed to spring to the boats But
no sooner did the herd by some presumed wonderful instinct of the sperm whale
become notified of the three keels that were after them though as yet a mile
in their rear than they rallied again and forming in close ranks and
battalions so that their spouts all looked like flashing lines of stacked
bayonets moved on with redoubled velocity
Stripped to our shirts and drawers we sprang to the whiteash and after
several hours pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase when a
general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating token that they were
now at last under the influence of that strange perplexity of inert
irresolution which when the fishermen perceive it in the whale they say he is
gallied The compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly and
steadily swimming were now broken up in one measureless rout and like King
Porus elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander they seemed going mad with
consternation In all directions expanding in vast irregular circles and
aimlessly swimming hither and thither by their short thick spoutings they
plainly betrayed their distraction of panic This was still more strangely
evinced by those of their number who completely paralysed as it were
helplessly floated like waterlogged dismantled ships on the sea Had these
leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep pursued over the pasture by three
fierce wolves they could not possibly have evinced such excessive dismay But
this occasional timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures
Though banding together in tens of thousands the lionmaned buffaloes of the
West have fled before a solitary horseman Witness too all human beings how
when herded together in the sheepfold of a theatres pit they will at the
slightest alarm of fire rush helterskelter for the outlets crowding
trampling jamming and remorselessly dashing each other to death Best
therefore withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us for
there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by
the madness of men
Though many of the whales as has been said were in violent motion yet it
is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced not retreated but
collectively remained in one place As is customary in those cases the boats at
once separated each making for some one lone whale on the outskirts of the
shoal In about three minutes time Queequegs harpoon was flung the stricken
fish darted blinding spray in our faces and then running away with us like
light steered straight for the heart of the herd Though such a movement on the
part of the whale struck under such circumstances is in no wise unprecedented
and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated yet does it present one of
the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery For as the swift monster drags
you deeper and deeper into the frantic shoal you bid adieu to circumspect life
and only exist in a delirious throb
As blind and deaf the whale plunged forward as if by sheer power of speed
to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him as we thus tore a
white gash in the sea on all sides menaced as we flew by the crazed creatures
to and fro rushing about us our beset boat was like a ship mobbed by iceisles
in a tempest and striving to steer through their complicated channels and
straits knowing not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed
But not a bit daunted Queequeg steered us manfully now sheering off from
this monster directly across our route in advance now edging away from that
whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead while all the time Starbuck
stood up in the bows lance in hand pricking out of our way whatever whales he
could reach by short darts for there was no time to make long ones Nor were
the oarsmen quite idle though their wonted duty was now altogether dispensed
with They chiefly attended to the shouting part of the business »Out of the
way commodore« cried one to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to
the surface and for an instant threatened to swamp us »Hard down with your
tail there« cried a second to another which close to our gunwale seemed
calmly cooling himself with his own fanlike extremity
All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances originally invented by
the Nantucket Indians called druggs Two thick squares of wood of equal size
are stoutly clenched together so that they cross each others grain at right
angles a line of considerable length is then attached to the middle of this
block and the other end of the line being looped it can in a moment be
fastened to a harpoon It is chiefly among gallied whales that this drugg is
used For then more whales are close round you than you can possibly chase at
one time But sperm whales are not every day encountered while you may then
you must kill all you can And if you cannot kill them all at once you must
wing them so that they can be afterward killed at your leisure Hence it is,
that at times like these the drugg comes into requisition Our boat was
furnished with three of them The first and second were successfully darted and
we saw the whales staggeringly running off fettered by the enormous sidelong
resistance of the towing drugg They were cramped like malefactors with the
chain and ball But upon flinging the third in the act of tossing overboard the
clumsy wooden block it caught under one of the seats of the boat and in an
instant tore it out and carried it away dropping the oarsman in the boats
bottom as the seat slid from under him On both sides the sea came in at the
wounded planks but we stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in and so
stopped the leaks for the time
It had been next to impossible to dart these druggedharpoons were it not
that as we advanced into the herd our whales way greatly diminished moreover
that as we went still further and further from the circumference of commotion
the direful disorders seemed waning So that when at last the jerking harpoon
drew out and the towing whale sideways vanished then with the tapering force
of his parting momentum we glided between two whales into the innermost heart
of the shoal as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley
lake Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales were
heard but not felt In this central expanse the sea presented that smooth
satinlike surface called a sleek produced by the subtle moisture thrown off
by the whale in his more quiet moods Yes we were now in that enchanted calm
which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion And still in the
distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric circles and
saw successive pods of whales eight or ten in each swiftly going round and
round like multiplied spans of horses in a ring and so closely shoulder to
shoulder that a Titanic circusrider might easily have overarched the middle
ones and so have gone round on their backs Owing to the density of the crowd
of reposing whales more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd
no possible chance of escape was at present afforded us We must watch for a
breach in the living wall that hemmed us in the wall that had only admitted us
in order to shut us up Keeping at the centre of the lake we were occasionally
visited by small tame cows and calves the women and children of this routed
host
Now inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving outer
circles and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in any one of
those circles the entire area at this juncture embraced by the whole
multitude must have contained at least two or three square miles At any rate
though indeed such a test at such a time might be deceptive spoutings might be
discovered from our low boat that seemed playing up almost from the rim of the
horizon I mention this circumstance because as if the cows and calves had
been purposely locked up in this innermost fold and as if the wide extent of
the herd had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause of its
stopping or possibly being so young unsophisticated and every way innocent
and inexperienced however it may have been these smaller whales now and then
visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the lake evinced a wondrous
fearlessness and confidence or else a still becharmed panic which it was
impossible not to marvel at Like household dogs they came snuffling round us
right up to our gunwales and touching them till it almost seemed that some
spell had suddenly domesticated them Queequeg patted their foreheads Starbuck
scratched their backs with his lance but fearful of the consequences for the
time refrained from darting it
But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface another and still
stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side For suspended in those
watery vaults floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales and those
that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers The lake as I
have hinted was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent and as human
infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast as if
leading two different lives at the time and while yet drawing mortal
nourishment be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence
even so did the young of these whales seem looking up toward us but not at us
as if we were but a bit of gulfweed in their newborn sight Floating on their
sides the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us One of these little infants
that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old might have measured some
fourteen feet in length and some six feet in girth He was a little frisky
though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it
had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule where tail to head and all
ready for the final spring the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartars bow The
delicate sidefins and the palms of his flukes still freshly retained the
plaited crumpled appearance of a babys ears newly arrived from foreign parts
»Line line« cried Queequeg looking over the gunwale »him fast him fast
Who line him Who struck Two whale one big one little«
»What ails ye man« cried Starbuck
»Looke here« said Queequeg pointing down
As when the stricken whale that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of
fathoms of rope as after deep sounding he floats up again and shows the
slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling toward the air so now
Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan by which the
young cub seemed still tethered to its dam Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes
of the chase this natural line with the maternal end loose becomes entangled
with the hempen one so that the cub is thereby trapped Some of the subtlest
secrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond We saw young
leviathan amours in the deep19
And thus though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and
affrights did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly
indulge in all peaceful concernments yea serenely revelled in dalliance and
delight But even so amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being do I myself still
forever centrally disport in mute calm and while ponderous planets of unwaning
woe revolve round me deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in
eternal mildness of joy
Meanwhile as we thus lay entranced the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats still
engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host or possibly carrying
on the war within the first circle where abundance of room and some convenient
retreats were afforded them But the sight of the enraged drugged whales now and
then blindly darting to and fro across the circles was nothing to what at last
met our eyes It is sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly
powerful and alert to seek to hamstring him as it were by sundering or
maiming his gigantic tailtendon It is done by darting a shorthandled
cuttingspade to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again A whale
wounded as we afterward learned in this part but not effectually as it
seemed had broken away from the boat carrying along with him half of the
harpoonline and in the extraordinary agony of the wound he was now dashing
among the revolving circles like the lone mounted desperado Arnold at the
battle of Saratoga carrying dismay wherever he went
But agonising as was the wound of this whale and an appalling spectacle
enough anyway yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire the rest
of the herd was owing to a cause which at first the intervening distance
obscured from us But at length we perceived that by one of the unimaginable
accidents of the fishery this whale had become entangled in the harpoonline
that he towed he had also run away with the cuttingspade in him and while the
free end of the rope attached to that weapon had permanently caught in the
coils of the harpoonline round his tail the cuttingspade itself had worked
loose from his flesh So that tormented to madness he was now churning through
the water violently flailing with his flexible tail and tossing the keen spade
about him wounding and murdering his own comrades
This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their stationary
fright First the whales forming the margin of our lake began to crowd a
little and tumble against each other as if lifted by halfspent billows from
afar then the lake itself began faintly to heave and swell the submarine
bridalchambers and nurseries vanished in more and more contracting orbits the
whales in the more central circles began to swim in thickening clusters Yes
the long calm was departing A low advancing hum was soon heard and then like
to the tumultuous masses of blockice when the great river Hudson breaks up in
spring the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner centre as if
to pile themselves up in one common mountain Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg
changed places Starbuck taking the stern
»Oars oars« he intensely whispered seizing the helm »grip your oars
and clutch your souls now My God men stand by Shove him off you Queequeg
the whale there prick him hit him Stand up stand up and stay so
Spring men pull men never mind their backs scrape them scrape away«
The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks leaving a
narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths But by desperate endeavour we at
last shot into a temporary opening then giving way rapidly and at the same
time earnestly watching for another outlet After many similar hairbreadth
escapes we at last swiftly glided into what had just been one of the outer
circles but now crossed by random whales all violently making for one centre
This lucky salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequegs hat who
while standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales had his hat taken clean
from his head by the aireddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad
flukes close by
Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was it soon resolved
itself into what seemed a systematic movement for having clumped together at
last in one dense body they then renewed their onward flight with augmented
fleetness Further pursuit was useless but the boats still lingered in their
wake to pick up what drugged whales might be dropped astern and likewise to
secure one which Flask had killed and waifed The waif is a pennoned pole two
or three of which are carried by every boat and which when additional game is
at hand are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale both to
mark its place in the sea and also as token of prior possession should the
boats of any other ship draw near
The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious
saying in the fishery the more whales the less fish Of all the drugged
whales only one was captured The rest contrived to escape for the time but
only to be taken as will hereafter be seen by some other craft than the
Pequod
Chapter LXXXVIII
Schools and Schoolmasters
The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of sperm whales
and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those vast
aggregations
Now though such great bodies are at times encountered yet as must have
been seen even at the present day small detached bands are occasionally
observed embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each Such bands are known
as schools They generally are of two sorts those composed almost entirely of
females and those mustering none but young vigorous males or bulls as they
are familiarly designated
In cavalier attendance upon the school of females you invariably see a male
of fullgrown magnitude but not old who upon any alarm evinces his gallantry
by falling in the rear and covering the flight of his ladies In truth this
gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman swimming about over the watery world
surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces and endearments of the harem The
contrast between this Ottoman and his concubines is striking because while he
is always of the largest leviathanic proportions the ladies even at full
growth are not more than onethird of the bulk of an averagesized male They
are comparatively delicate indeed I dare say not to exceed half a dozen yards
round the waist Nevertheless it cannot be denied that upon the whole they are
hereditarily entitled to embonpoint
It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent
ramblings Like fashionables they are forever on the move in leisurely search
of variety You meet them on the Line in time for the full flower of the
Equatorial feedingseason having just returned perhaps from spending the
summer in the Northern seas and so cheating summer of all unpleasant weariness
and warmth By the time they have lounged up and down the promenade of the
Equator a while they start for the oriental waters in anticipation of the cool
season there and so evade the other excessive temperature of the year
When serenely advancing on one of these journeys if any strange suspicious
sights are seen my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his interesting family
Should any unwarrantably pert young leviathan coming that way presume to draw
confidentially close to one of the ladies with what prodigious fury the Bashaw
assails him and chases him away High times indeed if unprincipled young
rakes like him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss
though do what the Bashaw will he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out
of his bed for alas all fish bed in common As ashore the ladies often cause
the most terrible duels among their rival admirers just so with the whales who
sometimes come to deadly battle and all for love They fence with their long
lower jaws sometimes locking them together and so striving for the supremacy
like elks that warringly interweave their antlers Not a few are captured having
the deep scars of these encounters furrowed heads broken teeth scolloped
fins and in some instances wrenched and dislocated mouths
But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at the
first rush of the harems lord then is it very diverting to watch that lord
Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and revels there a while
still in tantalising vicinity to young Lothario like pious Solomon devoutly
worshipping among his thousand concubines Granting other whales to be in sight
the fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks for these
Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength and hence their unctuousness is
small As for the sons and the daughters they beget why those sons and
daughters must take care of themselves at least with only the maternal help
For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named my Lord
Whale has no taste for the nursery however much for the bower and so being a
great traveller he leaves his anonymous babies all over the world every baby
an exotic In good time nevertheless as the ardour of youth declines as years
and dumps increase as reflection lends her solemn pauses in short as a
general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk then a love of ease and virtue
supplants the love for maidens our Ottoman enters upon the impotent repentant
admonitory stage of life forswears disbands the harem and grown to an
exemplary sulky old soul goes about all alone among the meridians and
parallels saying his prayers and warning each young leviathan from his amorous
errors
Now as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school so is the
lord and master of that school technically known as the schoolmaster It is
therefore not in strict character however admirably satirical that after going
to school himself he should then go abroad inculcating not what he learned
there but the folly of it His title schoolmaster would very naturally seem
derived from the name bestowed upon the harem itself but some have surmised
that the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale must have read
the memoirs of Vidocq and informed himself what sort of a country schoolmaster
that famous Frenchman was in his younger days and what was the nature of those
occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils
The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale betakes
himself in his advancing years is true of all aged sperm whales Almost
universally a lone whale as a solitary leviathan is called proves an
ancient one Like venerable mossbearded Daniel Boone he will have no one near
him but Nature herself and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters
and the best of wives she is though she keeps so many moody secrets
The schools composing none but young and vigorous males previously
mentioned offer a strong contrast to the harem schools For while those female
whales are characteristically timid the young males or fortybarrel bulls as
they call them are by far the most pugnacious of all leviathans and
proverbially the most dangerous to encounter excepting those wondrous
grayheaded grizzled whales sometimes met and these will fight you like grim
fiends exasperated by a penal gout
The fortybarrel bull schools are larger than the harem schools Like a mob
of young collegians they are full of fight fun and wickedness tumbling round
the world at such a reckless rollicking rate that no prudent underwriter would
insure them any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard They soon
relinquish this turbulence though and when about threefourths grown break up
and separately go about in quest of settlements that is harems
Another point of difference between the male and female schools is still
more characteristic of the sexes Say you strike a fortybarrel bull poor
devil all his comrades quit him But strike a member of the harem school and
her companions swim around her with every token of concern sometimes lingering
so near her and so long as themselves to fall a prey
Chapter LXXXIX
FastFish and LooseFish
The allusion to the waifs and waifpoles in the last chapter but one
necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whalefishery of
which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge
It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company a
whale may be struck by one vessel then escape and be finally killed and
captured by another vessel and herein are indirectly comprised many minor
contingencies all partaking of this one grand feature For example after a
weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale the body may get loose from the
ship by reason of a violent storm and drifting far away to leeward be retaken
by a second whaler who in a calm snugly tows it alongside without risk of
life or line Thus the most vexatious and violent disputes would often arise
between the fishermen were there not some written or unwritten universal
undisputed law applicable to all cases
Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorised by legislative enactment was
that of Holland It was decreed by the StatesGeneral in A D 1695 But though
no other nation has ever had any written whaling law yet the American fishermen
have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter They have provided a
system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinians Pandects and the
Bylaws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other
Peoples Business Yes these laws might be engraven on a Queen Annes farthing
or the barb of a harpoon and worn round the neck so small are they
I A FastFish belongs to the party fast to it
II A LooseFish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it
But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable brevity
of it which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to expound it
First What is a FastFish Alive or dead a fish is technically fast when
it is connected with an occupied ship or boat by any medium at all controllable
by the occupant or occupants a mast an oar a nineinch cable a telegraph
wire or a strand of cobweb it is all the same Likewise a fish is technically
fast when it bears a waif or any other recognised symbol of possession so long
as the party waifing it plainly evince their ability at any time to take it
alongside as well as their intention so to do
These are scientific commentaries but the commentaries of the whalemen
themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks the
CokeuponLittleton of the fist True among the more upright and honourable
whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases where it would be an
outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim possession of a whale
previously chased or killed by another party But others are by no means so
scrupulous
Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whaletrover litigated in
England wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of a whale in
the Northern seas and when indeed they the plaintiffs had succeeded in
harpooning the fish they were at last through peril of their lives obliged to
forsake not only their lines but their boat itself Ultimately the defendants
the crew of another ship came up with the whale struck killed seized and
finally appropriated it before the very eyes of the plaintiffs And when those
defendants were remonstrated with their captain snapped his fingers in the
plaintiffs teeth and assured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had
done he would now retain their line harpoons and boat which had remained
attached to the whale at the time of the seizure Wherefore the plaintiffs now
sued for the recovery of the value of their whale line harpoons and boat
Mr Erskine was counsel for the defendants Lord Ellenborough was the judge
In the course of the defence the witty Erskine went on to illustrate his
position by alluding to a recent crim con case wherein a gentleman after in
vain trying to bridle his wifes viciousness had at last abandoned her upon the
seas of life but in the course of years repenting of that step he instituted
an action to recover possession of her Erskine was on the other side and he
then supported it by saying that though the gentleman had originally harpooned
the lady and had once had her fast and only by reason of the great stress of
her plunging viciousness had at last abandoned her yet abandon her he did so
that she became a loosefish and therefore when a subsequent gentleman
reharpooned her the lady then became that subsequent gentlemans property
along with whatever harpoon might have been found sticking in her
Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the whale and
the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other
These pleadings and the counter pleadings being duly heard the very
learned judge in set terms decided to wit That as for the boat he awarded
it to the plaintiffs because they had merely abandoned it to save their lives
but that with regard to the controverted whale harpoons and line they
belonged to the defendants the whale because it was a LooseFish at the time
of the final capture and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off
with them it the fish acquired a property in those articles and hence
anybody who afterward took the fish had a right to them Now the plaintiffs
afterward took the fish ergo the aforesaid articles were theirs
A common man looking at this decision of the very learned judge might
possibly object to it But ploughed up to the primary rock of the matter the
two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws previously quoted and
applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in the abovecited case these two
laws touching FastFish and LooseFish I say will on reflection be found the
fundamentals of all human jurisprudence for notwithstanding its complicated
tracery of sculpture the Temple of the Law like the Temple of the Philistines
has but two props to stand on
Is it not a saying in everyones mouth Possession is half of the law that
is regardless of how the thing came into possession But often possession is
the whole of the law What are the sinews and souls of Russian serfs and
Republican slaves but FastFish whereof possession is the whole of the law
What to the rapacious landlord is the widows last mite but a FastFish What is
yonder undetected villains marble mansion with a doorplate for a waif what is
that but a FastFish What is the ruinous discount which Mordecai the broker
gets from poor Woebegone the bankrupt on a loan to keep Woebegones family
from starvation what is that ruinous discount but a FastFish What is the
Archbishop of Savesouls income of £100000 seized from the scant bread and
cheese of hundreds of thousands of brokenbacked labourers all sure of heaven
without any of Savesouls help what is that globular 100000 but a FastFish
What are the Duke of Dunders hereditary towns and hamlets but FastFish What
to that redoubted harpooneer John Bull is poor Ireland but a FastFish What
to that apostolic lancer Brother Jonathan is Texas but a FastFish And
concerning all these is not Possession the whole of the law
But if the doctrine of FastFish be pretty generally applicable the kindred
doctrine of LooseFish is still more widely so That is internationally and
universally applicable
What was America in 1492 but a LooseFish in which Columbus struck the
Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress What
was Poland to the Czar What Greece to the Turk What India to England What at
last will Mexico be to the United States All LooseFish
What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but LooseFish
What all mens minds and opinions but LooseFish What is the principle of
religious belief in them but a LooseFish What to the ostentatious smuggling
verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but LooseFish What is the great globe
itself but a LooseFish And what are you reader but a LooseFish and a
FastFish too
Chapter XC
Heads or Tails
»De balena vero sufficit si rex
habeat caput et regina caudam«
Bracton 1 3 c 3
Latin from the books of the Laws of England which taken along with the context
means that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of that land the
King as Honorary Grand Harpooneer must have the head and the Queen be
respectfully presented with the tail A division which in the whale is much
like halving an apple there is no intermediate remainder Now as this law
under a modified form is to this day in force in England and as it offers in
various respects a strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast and
LooseFish it is here treated of in a separate chapter on the same courteous
principle that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a separate
car specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty In the first place in
curious proof of the fact that the abovementioned law is still in force I
proceed to lay before you a circumstance that happened within the last two
years
It seems that some honest mariners of Dover or Sandwich or some one of the
Cinque Ports had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and beaching a fine
whale which they had originally descried afar off from the shore Now the Cinque
Ports are partially or somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or
beadle called a Lord Warden Holding the office directly from the crown I
believe all the royal emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become
by assignment his By some writers this office is called a sinecure But not so
Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his perquisites
which are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of them
Now when these poor sunburnt mariners barefooted and with their trowsers
rolled high up on their eely legs had wearily hauled their fat fish high and
dry promising themselves a good £150 from the precious oil and bone and in
fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives and good ale with their cronies upon
the strength of their respective shares up steps a very learned and most
Christian and charitable gentleman with a copy of Blackstone under his arm and
laying it upon the whales head he says »Hands off this fish my masters is
a FastFish I seize it as the Lord Wardens« Upon this the poor mariners in
their respectful consternation so truly English knowing not what to say
fall to vigorously scratching their heads all round meanwhile ruefully glancing
from the whale to the stranger But that did in no wise mend the matter or at
all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone
At length one of them after long scratching about for his ideas made bold to
speak
»Please sir who is the Lord Warden«
»The Duke«
»But the Duke had nothing to do with taking this fish«
»It is his«
»We have been at great trouble and peril and some expense and is all that
to go to the Dukes benefit we getting nothing at all for our pains but our
blisters«
»It is his«
»Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of getting
a livelihood«
»It is his«
»I thought to relieve my old bedridden mother by part of my 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 Grace the Duke of
Wellington received the money Thinking that viewed in some particular lights
the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be deemed under the
circumstances a rather hard one an honest clergyman of the town respectfully
addressed a note to his Grace begging him to take the case of those unfortunate
mariners into full consideration To which my Lord Duke in substance replied
both letters were published that he had already done so and received the
money and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he the
reverend gentleman would decline meddling with other peoples business Is this
the still militant old man standing at the corners of the three kingdoms on
all hands coercing alms of beggars
It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke to
the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign We must needs inquire then on
what principle the Sovereign is originally invested with that right The law
itself has already been set forth But Plowdon gives us the reason for it Says
Plowdon the whale so caught belongs to the King and Queen because of its
superior excellence And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a
cogent argument in such matters
But why should the King have the head and the Queen the tail A reason for
that ye lawyers
In his treatise on »QueenGold« or Queenpin an old Kings Bench author
one William Prynne thus discourseth »Ye tail is ye Queens that ye Queens
wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone« Now this was written at a time when
the black limber bone of the Greenland or right whale was largely used in
ladies bodices But this same bone is not in the tail it is in the head which
is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne But is the Queen a mermaid
to be presented with a tail An allegorical meaning may lurk here
There are two royal fish so styled by the English lawwriters the whale
and the sturgeon both royal property under certain limitations and nominally
supplying the tenth branch of the crowns ordinary revenue I know not that any
other author has hinted of the matter but by inference it seems to me that the
sturgeon must be divided in the same way as the whale the King receiving the
highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish which symbolically
regarded may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality
And thus there seems a reason in all things even in law
Chapter XCI
The Pequod Meets the RoseBud
»In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this
Leviathan insufferable fetor denying not inquiry«
Sir T Browne V E
It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted and when we were
slowly sailing over a sleepy vapoury midday sea that the many noses on the
Pequods deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the three pairs of eyes
aloft A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was smelt in the sea
»I will bet something now« said Stubb »that somewhere hereabouts are some
of those drugged whales we tickled the other day I thought they would keel up
before long«
Presently the vapours in advance slid aside and there in the distance lay
a ship whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be alongside
As we glided nearer the stranger showed French colours from his peak and by
the eddying cloud of vulture seafowl that circled and hovered and swooped
around him it was plain that the whale alongside must be what the fishermen
call a blasted whale that is a whale that has died unmolested on the sea and
so floated an unappropriated corpse It may well be conceived what an unsavoury
odour such a mass must exhale worse than an Assyrian city in the plague when
the living are incompetent to bury the departed So intolerable indeed is it
regarded by some that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it
Yet are there those who will still do it notwithstanding the fact that the oil
obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality and by no means of
the nature of attarofrose
Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze we saw that the Frenchman had
a second whale alongside and this second whale seemed even more of a nosegay
than the first In truth it turned out to be one of those problematical whales
that seem to dry up and die with a sort of prodigious dyspepsia or indigestion
leaving their defunct bodies almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil
Nevertheless in the proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will
ever turn up his nose at such a whale as this however much he may shun blasted
whales in general
The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger that Stubb vowed he
recognised his cuttingspade pole entangled in the lines that were knotted round
the tail of one of these whales
»There s a pretty fellow now« he banteringly laughed standing in the
ships bows »there s a jackal for ye I well know that these Crappoes of
Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery sometimes lowering their boats for
breakers mistaking them for spermwhale spouts yes and sometimes sailing from
their port with their hold full of boxes of tallow candles and cases of
snuffers foreseeing that all the oil they will get wont be enough to dip the
captains wick into ay we all know these things but look ye here s a Crappo
that is content with our leavings the drugged whale there I mean ay and is
content too with scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has
there Poor devil I say pass round a hat someone and let s make him a
present of a little oil for dear charitys sake For what oil he ll get from
that drugged whale there wouldnt be fit to burn in a jail no not in a
condemned cell And as for the other whale why I ll agree to get more oil by
chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours than he ll get from that
bundle of bones though now that I think of it it may contain something worth
a good deal more than oil yes ambergris I wonder now if our old man has
thought of that It s worth trying Yes I m in for it« and so saying he
started for the quarterdeck
By this time the faint air had become a complete calm so that whether or
no the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell with no hope of escaping
except by its breezing up again Issuing from the cabin Stubb now called his
boats crew and pulled off for the stranger Drawing across her bow he
perceived that in accordance with the fanciful French taste the upper part of
her stempiece was carved in the likeness of a huge drooping stalk was painted
green and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it here and there the
whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red colour Upon her
headboards in large gilt letters he read »Bouton de Rose« Rosebutton or
Rosebud and this was the romantic name of this aromatic ship
Though Stubb did not understand the Bouton part of the inscription yet the
word rose and the bulbous figurehead put together sufficiently explained the
whole to him
»A wooden rosebud eh« he cried with his hand to his nose »that will do
very well but how like all creation it smells«
Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck he had to
pull round the bows to the starboard side and thus come close to the blasted
whale and so talk over it
Arrived then at this spot with one hand still to his nose he bawled »
BoutondeRose ahoy are there any of you BoutondeRoses that speak English«
»Yes« rejoined a Guernseyman from the bulwarks who turned out to be the
chief mate
»Well then my BoutondeRosebud have you seen the White Whale«
»What whale«
»The White Whale a sperm whale MobyDick have ye seen him«
»Never heard of such a whale Cachalot Blanche White Whale no«
»Very good then goodbye now and I ll call again in a minute«
Then rapidly pulling back toward the Pequod and seeing Ahab leaning over
the quarterdeck rail awaiting his report he moulded his two hands into a
trumpet and shouted »No sir No« Upon which Ahab retired and Stubb returned
to the Frenchman
He now perceived that the Guernseyman who had just got into the chains
and was using a cuttingspade had slung his nose in a sort of bag
»What s the matter with your nose there« said Stubb »Broke it«
»I wish it was broken or that I didnt have any nose at all« answered the
Guernseyman who did not seem to relish the job he was at very much »But what
are you holding yours for«
»Oh nothing It s a wax nose I have to hold it on Fine day aint it
Air rather gardenny I should say throw us a bunch of posies will ye
Boutonde
»What in the devils name do you want here« roared the Guernseyman flying
into a sudden passion
»Oh keep cool cool yes that s the word why dont you pack those
whales in ice while you re working at em But joking aside though do you
know Rosebud that it s all nonsense trying to get any oil out of such whales
As for that dried up one there he hasnt a gill in his whole carcase«
»I know that well enough but d ye see the captain here wont believe it
this is his first voyage he was a Cologne manufacturer before But come aboard
and mayhap he ll believe you if he wont me and so I ll get out of this
dirty scrape«
»Anything to oblige ye my sweet and pleasant fellow« rejoined Stubb and
with that he soon mounted to the deck There a queer scene presented itself The
sailors in tasselled caps of red worsted were getting the heavy tackles in
readiness for the whales But they worked rather slow and talked very fast and
seemed in anything but a good humour All their noses upwardly projected from
their faces like so many jibbooms Now and then pairs of them would drop their
work and run up to the masthead to get some fresh air Some thinking they
would catch the plague dipped oakum in coaltar and at intervals held it to
their nostrils Others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short off
at the bowl were vigorously puffing tobaccosmoke so that it constantly filled
their olfactories
Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding from the
captains roundhouse abaft and looking in that direction saw a fiery face
thrust from behind the door which was held ajar from within This was the
tormented surgeon who after in vain remonstrating against the proceedings of
the day had betaken himself to the captains roundhouse cabinet he called it
to avoid the pest but still could not help yelling out his entreaties and
indignations at times
Marking all this Stubb argued well for his scheme and turning to the
Guernseyman had a little chat with him during which the stranger mate
expressed his detestation of his captain as a conceited ignoramus who had
brought them all into so unsavoury and unprofitable a pickle Sounding him
carefully Stubb further perceived that the Guernseyman had not the slightest
suspicion concerning the ambergris He therefore held his peace on that head
but otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him so that the two quickly
concocted a little plan for both circumventing and satirising the captain
without his at all dreaming of distrusting their sincerity According to this
little plan of theirs the Guernseyman under cover of an interpreters office
was to tell the captain what he pleased but as coming from Stubb and as for
Stubb he was to utter any nonsense that should come uppermost in him during the
interview
By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin He was a small
and dark but rather delicatelooking man for a seacaptain with large whiskers
and moustache however and wore a red cotton velvet vest with watchseals at
his side To this gentleman Stubb was now politely introduced by the
Guernseyman who at once ostentatiously put on the aspect of interpreting
between them
»What shall I say to him first« said he
»Why« said Stubb eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seal »you may
as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me though I
dont pretend to be a judge«
»He says monsieur« said the Guernseyman in French turning to his
captain »that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel whose captain and chief
mate with six sailors had all died of a fever caught from a blasted whale they
had brought alongside«
Upon this the captain started and eagerly desired to know more
»What now« said the Guernseyman to Stubb
»Why since he takes it so easy tell him that now I have eyed him
carefully I m quite certain that he s no more fit to command a whaleship
than a St Jago monkey In fact tell him from me he s a baboon«
»He vows and declares monsieur that the other whale the dried one is far
more deadly than the blasted one in fine monsieur he conjures us as we value
our lives to cut loose from these fish«
Instantly the captain ran forward and in a loud voice commanded his crew to
desist from hoisting the cuttingtackles and at once cast loose the cables and
chains confining the whales to the ship
»What now« said the Guernseyman when the captain had returned to them
»Why let me see yes you may as well tell him now that that in fact
tell him I ve diddled him and aside to himself perhaps somebody else«
»He says monsieur that he s very happy to have been of any service to
us«
Hearing this the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties meaning
himself and mate and concluded by inviting Stubb down into his cabin to drink
a bottle of Bordeaux
»He wants you to take a glass of wine with him« said the interpreter
»Thank him heartily but tell him it s against my principles to drink with
the man I ve diddled In fact tell him I must go«
»He says monsieur that his principles wont admit of his drinking but
that if monsieur wants to live another day to drink then monsieur had best drop
all four boats and pull the ship away from these whales for it s so calm they
wont drift«
By this time Stubb was over the side and getting into his boat hailed the
Guernseyman to this effect that having a long towline in his boat he would
do what he could to help them by pulling out the lighter whale of the two from
the ships side While the Frenchmans boats then were engaged in towing the
ship one way Stubb benevolently towed away at his whale the other way
ostentatiously slacking out a most unusually long towline
Presently a breeze sprang up Stubb feigned to cast off from the whale
hoisting his boats the Frenchman soon increased his distance while the Pequod
slid in between him and Stubbs whale Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to the
floating body and hailing the Pequod to give notice of his intentions at once
proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning Seizing his sharp
boatspade he commenced an excavation in the body a little behind the
sidefin You would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the
sea and when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs it was like
turning up old Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam His boats
crew were all in high excitement eagerly helping their chief and looking as
anxious as goldhunters
And all the time numberless fowls were diving and ducking and screaming
and yelling and fighting around them Stubb was beginning to look disappointed
especially as the horrible nosegay increased when suddenly from out the very
heart of this plague there stole a faint stream of perfume which flowed
through the tide of bad smells without being absorbed by it as one river will
flow into and then along with another without at all blending with it for a
time
»I have it I have it« cried Stubb with delight striking something in the
subterranean regions »a purse a purse«
Dropping his spade he thrust both hands in and drew out handfuls of
something that looked like ripe Windsor soap or rich mottled old cheese very
unctuous and savoury withal You might easily dent it with your thumb it is of
a hue between yellow and ash colour And this good friends is ambergris worth
a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist Some six handfuls were obtained but
more was unavoidably lost in the sea and still more perhaps might have been
secured were it not for impatient Ahabs loud command to Stubb to desist and
come on board else the ship would bid them goodbye
Chapter XCII
Ambergris
Now this ambergris is a very curious substance and so important as an article
of commerce that in 1791 a certain Nantucketborn Captain Coffin was examined
at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject For at that time
and indeed until a comparatively late day the precise origin of ambergris
remained like amber itself a problem to the learned Though the word ambergris
is but the French compound for gray amber yet the two substances are quite
distinct For amber though at times found on the seacoast is also dug up in
some far inland soils whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea
Besides amber is a hard transparent brittle odourless substance used for
mouthpieces to pipes for beads and ornaments but ambergris is soft waxy and
so highly fragrant and spicy that it is largely used in perfumery in
pastilles precious candles hairpowders and pomatum The Turks use it in
cooking and also carry it to Mecca for the same purpose that frankincense is
carried to St Peters in Rome Some winemerchants drop a few grains into
claret to flavour it
Who would think then that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale
themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale Yet
so it is By some ambergris is supposed to be the cause and by others the
effect of the dyspepsia in the whale How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard
to say unless by administering three or four boatloads of Brandreths pills
and then running out of harms way as labourers do in blasting rocks
I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris certain
hard round bony plates which at first Stubb thought might be sailors
trowserbuttons but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than
pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in
the heart of such decay is this nothing Bethink thee of that saying of St
Paul in Corinthians about corruption and incorruption how that we are sown in
dishonour but raised in glory And likewise call to mind that saying of
Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk Also forget not the
strange fact that of all things of illsavour Cologne water in its rudimental
manufacturing stages is the worst
I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal but cannot
owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen and which in
the estimation of some already biased minds might be considered as indirectly
substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchmans two whales Elsewhere in
this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved that the vocation of
whaling is throughout a slatternly untidy business But there is another thing
to rebut They hint that all whales always smell bad Now how did this odious
stigma originate
I opine that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland
whalingships in London more than two centuries ago Because those whalemen did
not then and do not now try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships have
always done but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits thrust it through
the bungholes of large casks and carry it home in that manner the shortness
of the season in those icy seas and the sudden and violent storms to which they
are exposed forbidding any other course The consequence is that upon breaking
into the hold and unloading one of these whale cemeteries in the Greenland
dock a savour is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating
an old city graveyard for the foundations of a Lyingin Hospital
I partly surmise also that this wicked charge against whalers may be
likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland in former times of
a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg which latter name is the
one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack in his great work on Smells a textbook
on that subject As its name imports smeer fat berg to put up this village
was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whalefleet
to be tried out without being taken home to Holland for that purpose It was a
collection of furnaces fatkettles and oilsheds and when the works were in
full operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savour But all this is
quite different with a South Sea sperm whaler which in a voyage of four years
perhaps after completely filling her hold with oil does not perhaps consume
fifty days in the business of boiling out and in the state that it is casked
the oil is nearly scentless The truth is that living or dead if but decently
treated whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill odour nor can
whalemen be recognised as the people of the Middle Ages affected to detect a
Jew in the company by the nose Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise
than fragrant when as a general thing he enjoys such high health taking
abundance of exercise always out of doors though it is true seldom in the
open air I say that the motion of a sperm whales flukes above water dispenses
a perfume as when a muskscented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlour What
then shall I liken the sperm whale to for fragrance considering his magnitude
Must it not be to that famous elephant with jewelled tusks and redolent with
myrrh which was led out of an Indian town to do honour to Alexander the Great
Chapter XCIII
The Castaway
It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman that a most
significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequods crew an event
most lamentable and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and
predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever
shattered sequel might prove her own
Now in the whaleship it is not everyone that goes in the boats Some few
hands are reserved called shipkeepers whose province it is to work the vessel
while the boats are pursuing the whale As a general thing these shipkeepers
are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats crews But if there happen
to be an unduly slender clumsy or timorous wight in the ship that wight is
certain to be made a shipkeeper It was so in the Pequod with the little negro
Pippin by nickname Pip by abbreviation Poor Pip ye have heard of him before
ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight so gloomyjolly
In outer aspect Pip and DoughBoy made a match like a black pony and a
white one of equal developments though of dissimilar colour driven in one
eccentric span But while hapless DoughBoy was by nature dull and torpid in his
intellects Pip though over tenderhearted was at bottom very bright with
that pleasant genial jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe a tribe which
ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer freer relish than any other
race For blacks the years calendar should show naught but three hundred and
sixtyfive Fourth of Julys and New Years Days Nor smile so while I write that
this little black was brilliant for even blackness has its brilliancy behold
yon lustrous ebony panelled in kings cabinets But Pip loved life and all
lifes peaceable securities so that the panicstriking business in which he had
somehow unaccountably become entrapped had most sadly blurred his brightness
though as ere long will be seen what was thus temporarily subdued in him in
the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires that
fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his
native Tolland County in Connecticut he had once enlivened many a fiddlers
frolic on the green and at melodious eventide with his gay haha had turned
the round horizon into one starbelled tambourine So though in the clear air
of day suspended against a blueveined neck the purewatered diamond drop will
healthful glow yet when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its
most impressive lustre he lays it against a gloomy ground and then lights it
up not by the sun but by some unnatural gases Then come out those fiery
effulgences infernally superb then the evilblazing diamond once the divinest
symbol of the crystal skies looks like some crownjewel stolen from the King of
Hell But let us to the story
It came to pass that in the ambergris affair Stubbs afteroarsman chanced
so to sprain his hand as for a time to become quite maimed and temporarily
Pip was put into his place
The first time Stubb lowered with him Pip evinced much nervousness but
happily for that time escaped close contact with the whale and therefore came
off not altogether discreditably though Stubb observing him took care
afterward to exhort him to cherish his courageousness to the utmost for he
might often find it needful
Now upon the second lowering the boat paddled upon the whale and as the
fish received the darted iron it gave its customary rap which happened in
this instance to be right under poor Pips seat The involuntary consternation
of the moment caused him to leap paddle in hand out of the boat and in such a
way that part of the slack whaleline coming against his chest he breasted it
overboard with him so as to become entangled in it when at last plumping into
the water That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run the line
swiftly straightened and presto poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of
the boat remorselessly dragged there by the line which had taken several turns
around his chest and neck
Tashtego stood in the bows He was full of the fire of the hunt He hated
Pip for a poltroon Snatching the boatknife from its sheath he suspended its
sharp edge over the line and turning toward Stubb exclaimed interrogatively
Cut Meantime Pips blue choked face plainly looked Do for Gods sake All
passed in a flash In less than half a minute this entire thing happened
»Damn him cut« roared Stubb and so the whale was lost and Pip was saved
So soon as he recovered himself the poor little negro was assailed by yells
and execrations from the crew Tranquilly permitting these irregular cursings to
evaporate Stubb then in a plain businesslike but still halfhumorous manner
cursed Pip officially and that done unofficially gave him much wholesome
advice The substance was Never jump from a boat Pip except but all the
rest was indefinite as the soundest advice ever is Now in general Stick to
the boat is your true motto in whaling but cases will sometimes happen when
Leap from the boat is still better Moreover as if perceiving at last that if
he should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip he would be leaving him
too wide a margin to jump in for the future Stubb suddenly dropped all advice
and concluded with a peremptory command »Stick to the boat Pip or by the
Lord I wont pick you up if you jump mind that We cant afford to lose whales
by the likes of you a whale would sell for thirty times what you would Pip in
Alabama Bear that in mind and dont jump any more« Hereby perhaps Stubb
indirectly hinted that though man loved his fellow yet man is a moneymaking
animal which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence
But we are all in the hands of the Gods and Pip jumped again It was under
very similar circumstances to the first performance but this time he did not
breast out the line and hence when the whale started to run Pip was left
behind on the sea like a hurried travellers trunk Alas Stubb was but too
true to his word It was a beautiful bounteous blue day the spangled sea calm
and cool and flatly stretching away all round to the horizon like
goldbeaters skin hammered out to the extremest Bobbing up and down in that
sea Pips ebon head showed like a head of cloves No boatknife was lifted when
he fell so rapidly astern Stubbs inexorable back was turned upon him and the
whale was winged In three minutes a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between
Pip and Stubb Out from the centre of the sea poor Pip turned his crisp
curling black head to the sun another lonely castaway though the loftiest and
the brightest
Now in calm weather to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised
swimmer as to ride in a springcarriage ashore But the awful lonesomeness is
intolerable The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless
immensity my God who can tell it Mark how when sailors in a dead calm bathe
in the open sea mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her
sides
But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate No he did
not mean to at least Because there were two boats in his wake and he
supposed no doubt that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly and
pick him up though indeed such considerations toward oarsmen jeopardised
through their own timidity is not always manifested by the hunters in all
similar instances and such instances not unfrequently occur almost invariably
in the fishery a coward so called is marked with the same ruthless
detestation peculiar to military navies and armies
But it so happened that those boats without seeing Pip suddenly spying
whales close to them on one side turned and gave chase and Stubbs boat was
now so far away and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish that Pips
ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably By the merest chance the
ship itself at last rescued him but from that hour the little negro went about
the deck an idiot such at least they said he was The sea had jeeringly kept
his finite body up but drowned the infinite of his soul Not drowned entirely
though Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths where strange shapes of
the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes and the
misermerman Wisdom revealed his hoarded heaps and among the joyous
heartless everjuvenile eternities Pip saw the multitudinous Godomnipresent
coral insects that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs He
saw Gods foot upon the treadle of the loom and spoke it and therefore his
shipmates called him mad So mans insanity is heavens sense and wandering
from all mortal reason man comes at last to that celestial thought which to
reason is absurd and frantic and weal or woe feels then uncompromised
indifferent as his God
For the rest blame not Stubb too hardly The thing is common in that
fishery and in the sequel of the narrative it will then be seen what like
abandonment befell myself
Chapter XCIV
A Squeeze of the Hand
That whale of Stubbs so dearly purchased was duly brought to the Pequods
side where all those cutting and hoisting operations previously detailed were
regularly gone through even to the baling of the Heidelburgh Tun or Case
While some were occupied with this latter duty others were employed in
dragging away the larger tubs so soon as filled with the sperm and when the
proper time arrived this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to the
tryworks of which anon
It had cooled and crystallised to such a degree that when with several
others I sat down before a large Constantines bath of it I found it strangely
concreted into lumps here and there rolling about in the liquid part It was
our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid A sweet and unctuous duty
No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favourite cosmetic Such a
clearer such a sweetener such a softener such a delicious mollifier After
having my hands in it for only a few minutes my fingers felt like eels and
began as it were to serpentine and spiralise
As I sat there at my ease crosslegged on the deck after the bitter
exertion at the windlass under a blue tranquil sky the ship under indolent
sail and gliding so serenely along as I bathed my hands among those soft
gentle globules of infiltrated tissues woven almost within the hour as they
richly broke to my fingers and discharged all their opulence like fully ripe
grapes their wine as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma literally and
truly like the smell of spring violets I declare to you that for the time I
lived as in a musky meadow I forgot all about our horrible oath in that
inexpressible sperm I washed my hands and my heart of it I almost began to
credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying
the heat of anger while bathing in that bath I felt divinely free from all
illwill or petulance or malice of any sort whatsoever
Squeeze squeeze squeeze all the morning long I squeezed that sperm till
I myself almost melted into it I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of
insanity came over me and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my colabourers
hands in it mistaking their hands for the gentle globules Such an abounding
affectionate friendly loving feeling did this avocation beget that at last I
was continually squeezing their hands and looking up into their eyes
sentimentally as much as to say Oh my dear fellowbeings why should we
longer cherish any social acerbities or know the slightest illhumour or envy
Come let us squeeze hands all round nay let us all squeeze ourselves into
each other let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of
kindness
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever For now since by
many prolonged repeated experiences I have perceived that in all cases man
must eventually lower or at least shift his conceit of attainable felicity
not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy but in the wife the
heart the bed the table the saddle the fireside the country now that I
have perceived all this I am ready to squeeze case eternally In thoughts of
the visions of the night I saw long rows of angels in paradise each with his
hands in a jar of spermaceti
Now while discoursing of sperm it behooves to speak of other things akin to
it in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the tryworks
First comes whitehorse so called which is obtained from the tapering part
of the fish and also from the thicker portions of his flukes It is tough with
congealed tendons a wad of muscle but still contains some oil After being
severed from the whale the whitehorse is first cut into portable oblongs ere
going to the mincer They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble
Plumpudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the
whales flesh here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber and often
participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness It is a most
refreshing convivial beautiful object to behold As its name imports it is of
an exceedingly rich mottled tint with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground
dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and purple It is plums of rubies in
pictures of citron Spite of reason it is hard to keep yourself from eating it
I confess that once I stole behind the foremast to try it It tasted something
as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have
tasted supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison
season and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine
vintage of the vineyards of Champagne
There is another substance and a very singular one which turns up in the
course of this business but which I feel it to be very puzzling adequately to
describe It is called slobgollion an appellation original with the whalemen
and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an ineffably oozy stringy
affair most frequently found in the tubs of sperm after a prolonged squeezing
and subsequent decanting I hold it to be the wondrously thin ruptured
membranes of the case coalescing
Gurry so called is a term properly belonging to right whalemen but
sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen It designates the dark
glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right
whale and much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that
ignoble leviathan
Nippers Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whales vocabulary But
as applied by whalemen it becomes so A whalemans nipper is a short firm strip
of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of leviathans tail it averages
an inch in thickness and for the rest is about the size of the iron part of a
hoe Edgewise moved along the oily deck it operates like a leathern squilgee
and by nameless blandishments as of magic allures along with it all
impurities
But to learn all about these recondite matters your best way is at once to
descend into the blubberroom and have a long talk with its inmates This place
has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the blanketpieces when
stripped and hoisted from the whale When the proper time arrives for cutting up
its contents this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros especially by
night On one side lit by a dull lantern a space has been left clear for the
workmen They generally go in pairs a pikeandgaffman and a spademan The
whalingpike is similar to a frigates boardingweapon of the same name The
gaff is something like a boathook With his gaff the gaffman hooks on to a
sheet of blubber and strives to hold it from slipping as the ship pitches and
lurches about Meanwhile the spademan stands on the sheet itself
perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horsepieces This spade is sharp
as hone can make it the spademans feet are shoeless the thing he stands on
will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him like a sledge If he cuts off
one of his own toes or one of his assistants would you be very much
astonished Toes are scarce among veteran blubberroom men
Chapter XCV
The Cassock
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this
postmortemising of the whale and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass
pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very
strange enigmatical object which you would have seen there lying along
lengthwise in the leescuppers Not the wondrous cistern in the whales huge
head not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw not the miracle of his
symmetrical tail none of these would so surprise you as half a glimpse of that
unaccountable cone longer than a Kentuckian is tall nigh a foot in diameter
at the base and jetblack as Yojo the ebony idol of Queequeg And an idol
indeed it is or rather in old times its likeness was Such an idol as that
found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea and for worshipping which
King Asa her son did depose her and destroyed the idol and burnt it for an
abomination at the brook Kedron as darkly set forth in the fifteenth chapter of
the first book of Kings
Look at the sailor called the mincer who now comes along and assisted by
two allies heavily backs the grandissimus as the mariners call it and with
bowed shoulders staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead
comrade from the field Extending it upon the forecastle deck he now proceeds
cylindrically to remove its dark pelt as an African hunter the pelt of a boa
This done he turns the pelt inside out like a pantaloon leg gives it a good
stretching so as almost to double its diameter and at last hangs it well
spread in the rigging to dry Ere long it is taken down when removing some
three feet of it toward the pointed extremity and then cutting two slits for
armholes at the other end he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it The
mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling
Immemorial to all his order this investiture alone will adequately protect him
while employed in the peculiar functions of his office
That office consists in mincing the horsepieces of blubber for the pots an
operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse planted endwise against
the bulwarks and with a capacious tub beneath it into which the minced pieces
drop fast as the sheets from a rapt orators desk Arrayed in decent black
occupying a conspicuous pulpit intent on bible leaves what a candidate for an
archbishoprick what a lad for a Pope were this mincer20
Chapter XCVI
The TryWorks
Besides her hoisted boats an American whaler is outwardly distinguished by her
tryworks She presents the curious anomaly of the most solid masonry joining
with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship It is as if from the open
field a brickkiln were transported to her planks
The tryworks are planted between the foremast and mainmast the most roomy
part of the deck The timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength fitted to
sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar some ten feet by
eight square and five in height The foundation does not penetrate the deck
but the masonry is firmly secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron
bracing it on all sides and screwing it down to the timbers On the flanks it
is cased with wood and at top completely covered by a large sloping battened
hatchway Removing this hatch we expose the great trypots two in number and
each of several barrels capacity When not in use they are kept remarkably
clean Sometimes they are polished with soapstone and sand till they shine
within like silver punchbowls During the night some cynical old sailors will
crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap While employed in
polishing them one man in each pot side by side many confidential
communications are carried on over the iron lips It is a place also for
profound mathematical meditation It was in the lefthand trypot of the Pequod
with the soapstone diligently circling round me that I was first indirectly
struck by the remarkable fact that in geometry all bodies gliding along the
cycloid my soapstone for example will descend from any point in precisely the
same time
Removing the fireboard from the front of the tryworks the bare masonry of
that side is exposed penetrated by the two iron mouths of the furnaces
directly underneath the pots These mouths are fitted with heavy doors of iron
The intense heat of the fire is prevented from communicating itself to the deck
by means of a shallow reservoir extending under the entire enclosed surface of
the works By a tunnel inserted at the rear this reservoir is kept replenished
with water as fast as it evaporates There are no external chimneys they open
direct from the rear wall And here let us go back for a moment
It was about nine oclock at night that the Pequods tryworks were first
started on this present voyage It belonged to Stubb to oversee the business
»All ready there Off hatch then and start her You cook fire the
works« This was an easy thing for the carpenter had been thrusting his
shavings into the furnace throughout the passage Here be it said that in a
whaling voyage the first fire in the tryworks has to be fed for a time with
wood After that no wood is used except as a means of quick ignition to the
staple fuel In a word after being tried out the crisp shrivelled blubber
now called scraps or fritters still contains considerable of its unctuous
properties These fritters feed the flames Like a plethoric burning martyr or
a selfconsuming misanthrope once ignited the whale supplies his own fuel and
burns by his own body Would that he consumed his own smoke for his smoke is
horrible to inhale and inhale it you must and not only that but you must live
in it for the time It has an unspeakable wild Hindu odour about it such as
may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres It smells like the left wing of the
day of judgment it is an argument for the pit
By midnight the works were in full operation We were clear from the
carcase sail had been made the wind was freshening the wild ocean darkness
was intense But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames which at
intervals forked forth from the sooty flues and illuminated every lofty rope in
the rigging as with the famed Greek fire The burning ship drove on as if
remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed So the pitch and
sulphurfreighted brigs of the bold Hydriote Canaris issuing from their
midnight harbours with broad sheets of flame for sails bore down upon the
Turkish frigates and folded them in conflagrations
The hatch removed from the top of the works now afforded a wide hearth in
front of them Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan
harpooneers always the whaleships stokers With huge pronged poles they
pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots or stirred up the
fires beneath till the snaky flames darted curling out of the doors to catch
them by the feet The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps To every pitch of the
ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil which seemed all eagerness to leap
into their faces Opposite the mouth of the works on the further side of the
wide wooden hearth was the windlass This served for a seasofa Here lounged
the watch when not otherwise employed looking into the red heat of the fire
till their eyes felt scorched in their heads Their tawny features now all
begrimed with smoke and sweat their matted beards and the contrasting barbaric
brilliancy of their teeth all these were strangely revealed in the capricious
emblazonings of the works As they narrated to each other their unholy
adventures their tales of terror told in words of mirth as their uncivilised
laughter forked upward out of them like the flames from the furnace as to and
fro in their front the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged
forks and dippers as the wind howled on and the sea leaped and the ship
groaned and dived and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further
into the blackness of the sea and the night and scornfully champed the white
bone in her mouth and viciously spat round her on all sides then the rushing
Pequod freighted with savages and laden with fire and burning a corpse and
plunging into that blackness of darkness seemed the material counterpart of her
monomaniac commanders soul
So seemed it to me as I stood at her helm and for long hours silently
guided the way of this fireship on the sea Wrapped for that interval in
darkness myself I but the better saw the redness the madness the ghastliness
of others The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me capering half in
smoke and half in fire these at last begat kindred visions in my soul so soon
as I began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over
me at a midnight helm
But that night in particular a strange and ever since inexplicable thing
occurred to me Starting from a brief standing sleep I was horribly conscious
of something fatally wrong The jawbone tiller smote my side which leaned
against it in my ears was the low hum of sails just beginning to shake in the
wind I thought my eyes were open I was half conscious of putting my fingers to
the lids and mechanically stretching them still further apart But spite of all
this I could see no compass before me to steer by though it seemed but a
minute since I had been watching the card by the steady binnacle lamp
illuminating it Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom now and then made
ghastly by flashes of redness Uppermost was the impression that whatever
swift rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as
rushing from all havens astern A stark bewildered feeling as of death came
over me Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller but with the crazy conceit
that the tiller was somehow in some enchanted way inverted My God what is
the matter with me thought I Lo in my brief sleep I had turned myself about
and was fronting the ships stern with my back to her prow and the compass In
an instant I faced back just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into
the wind and very probably capsizing her How glad and how grateful the relief
from this unnatural hallucination of the night and the fatal contingency of
being brought by the lee
Look not too long in the face of the fire O man Never dream with thy hand
on the helm Turn not thy back to the compass accept the first hint of the
hitching tiller believe not the artificial fire when its redness makes all
things look ghastly Tomorrow in the natural sun the skies will be bright
those who glared like devils in the forking flames the morn will show in far
other at least gentler relief the glorious golden glad sun the only true
lamp all others but liars
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginias Dismal Swamp nor Romes accursed
Campagna nor wide Sahara nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of
griefs beneath the moon The sun hides not the ocean which is the dark side of
this earth and which is twothirds of this earth So therefore that mortal
man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him that mortal man cannot be true
not true or undeveloped With books the same The truest of all men was the Man
of Sorrows and the truest of all books is Solomons and Ecclesiastes is the
fine hammered steel of woe »All is vanity« ALL This wilful world hath not got
hold of unchristian Solomons wisdom yet But he who dodges hospitals and jails
and walks fast crossing graveyards and would rather talk of operas than hell
calls Cowper Young Pascal Rousseau poor devils all of sick men and
throughout a carefree lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise and
therefore jolly not that man is fitted to sit down on tombstones and break
the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon
But even Solomon he says »the man that wandereth out of the way of
understanding shall remain« ie even while living »in the congregation of the
dead« Give not thyself up then to fire lest it invert thee deaden thee as
for the time it did me There is a wisdom that is woe but there is a woe that
is madness And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down
into the blackest gorges and soar out of them again and become invisible in the
sunny spaces And even if he forever flies within the gorge that gorge is in
the mountains so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still
higher than other birds upon the plain even though they soar
Chapter XCVII
The Lamp
Had you descended from the Pequods tryworks to the Pequods forecastle where
the offduty watch were sleeping for one single moment you would have almost
thought you were standing in some illuminated shrine of canonised kings and
counsellors There they lay in their triangular oaken vaults each mariner a
chiselled muteness a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes
In merchantmen oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens
To dress in the dark and eat in the dark and stumble in darkness to his
pallet this is his usual lot But the whaleman as he seeks the food of light
so he lives in light He makes his berth an Aladdins lamp and lays him down in
it so that in the pitchiest night the ships black hull still houses an
illumination
See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps often
but old bottles and vials though to the copper cooler at the tryworks and
replenishes them there as mugs of ale at a vat He burns too the purest of
oil in its unmanufactured and therefore unvitiated state a fluid unknown to
solar lunar or astral contrivances ashore It is sweet as early grass butter
in April He goes and hunts for his oil so as to be sure of its freshness and
genuineness even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own supper of
game
Chapter XCVIII
Stowing Down and Clearing Up
Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off descried from
the masthead how he is chased over the watery moors and slaughtered in the
valleys of the deep how he is then towed alongside and beheaded and how on
the principle which entitled the headsman of old to the garments in which the
beheaded was killed his great padded surtout becomes the property of his
executioner how in due time he is condemned to the pots and like Shadrach
Meshach and Abednego his spermaceti oil and bone pass unscathed through the
fire but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the
description by rehearsing singing if I may the romantic proceeding of
decanting off his oil into the casks and striking them down into the hold where
once again Leviathan returns to his native profundities sliding along beneath
the surface as before but alas never more to rise and blow
While still warm the oil like hot punch is received into the sixbarrel
casks and while perhaps the ship is pitching and rolling this way and that in
the midnight sea the enormous casks are slewed round and headed over end for
end and sometimes perilously scoot across the slippery deck like so many
landslides till at last manhandled and stayed in their course and all round
the hoops rap rap go as many hammers as can play upon them for now ex
officio every sailor is a cooper
At length when the last pint is casked and all is cool then the great
hatchways are unsealed the bowels of the ship are thrown open and down go the
casks to their final rest in the sea This done the hatches are replaced and
hermetically closed like a closet walled up
In the sperm fishery this is perhaps one of the most remarkable incidents
in all the business of whaling One day the planks stream with freshets of blood
and oil on the sacred quarterdeck enormous masses of the whales head are
profanely piled great rusty casks lie about as in a brewery yard the smoke
from the tryworks has besooted all the bulwarks the mariners go about suffused
with unctuousness the entire ship seems great Leviathan himself while on all
hands the din is deafening
But a day or two after you look about you and prick your ears in this
selfsame ship and were it not for the telltale boats and tryworks you would
all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel with a most scrupulously
neat commander The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing
virtue This is the reason why the decks never look so white as just after what
they call an affair of oil Besides from the ashes of the burned scraps of the
whale a potent ley is readily made and whenever any adhesiveness from the back
of the whale remains clinging to the side that ley quickly exterminates it
Hands go diligently along the bulwarks and with buckets of water and rags
restore them to their full tidiness The soot is brushed from the lower rigging
All the numerous implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully
cleansed and put away The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the
tryworks completely hiding the pots every cask is out of sight all tackles
are coiled in unseen nooks and when by the combined and simultaneous industry
of almost the entire ships company the whole of this conscientious duty is at
last concluded then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions shift
themselves from top to toe and finally issue to the immaculate deck fresh and
all aglow as bridegrooms newleaped from out the daintiest Holland
Now with elated step they pace the planks in twos and threes and
humorously discourse of parlours sofas carpets and fine cambrics propose to
mat the deck think of having hangings to the top object not to taking tea by
moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle To hint to such musked mariners of
oil and bone and blubber were little short of audacity They know not the
thing you distantly allude to Away and bring us napkins
But mark aloft there at the three mastheads stand three men intent on
spying out more whales which if caught infallibly will again soil the old
oaken furniture and drop at least one small greasespot somewhere Yes and
many is the time when after the severest uninterrupted labours which know no
night continuing straight through for ninetysix hours when from the boat
where they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line they
only step to the deck to carry vast chains and heave the heavy windlass and
cut and slash yea and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by
the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial tryworks when on
the heel of all this they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the
ship and make a spotless dairyroom of it many is the time the poor fellows
just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks are startled by the cry of There
she blows and away they fly to fight another whale and go through the whole
weary thing again Oh my friends but this is mankilling Yet this is life For
hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this worlds vast bulk
its small but valuable sperm and then with weary patience cleansed ourselves
from its defilements and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul
hardly is this done when There she blows the ghost is spouted up and away
we sail to fight some other world and go through young lifes old routine
again
Oh the metempsychosis Oh Pythagoras that in bright Greece two thousand
years ago did die so good so wise so mild I sailed with thee along the
Peruvian coast last voyage and foolish as I am taught thee a green simple
boy how to splice a rope
Chapter XCIX
The Doubloon
Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarterdeck taking
regular turns at either limit the binnacle and mainmast but in the
multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been added how that
sometimes in these walks when most plunged in his mood he was wont to pause in
turn at each spot and stand there strangely eyeing the particular object before
him When he halted before the binnacle with his glance fastened on the pointed
needle in the compass that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed
intensity of his purpose and when resuming his walk he again paused before the
mainmast then as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin
there he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness only dashed with a
certain wild longing if not hopefulness
But one morning turning to pass the doubloon he seemed to be newly
attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it as though now
for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way
whatever significance might lurk in them And some certain significance lurks in
all things else all things are little worth and the round world itself but an
empty cipher except to sell by the cartload as they do hills about Boston to
fill up some morass in the Milky Way
Now this doubloon was of purest virgin gold raked somewhere out of the
heart of gorgeous hills whence east and west over golden sands the
headwaters of many a Pactolus flows And though now nailed amidst all the
rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes yet untouchable and
immaculate to any foulness it still preserved its Quito glow Nor though
placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands and
through the livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any
pilfering approach nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the
sunset left it last For it was set apart and sanctified to one awestriking
end and however wanton in their sailor ways one and 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 would ever
live to spend it
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun and
tropic tokenpieces Here palms alpacas and volcanoes suns disks and stars
ecliptics hornsofplenty and rich banners waving are in luxuriant profusion
stamped so that the precious gold seems almost to derive an added preciousness
and enhancing glories by passing through those fancy mints so Spanishly
poetic
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of
these things On its round border it bore the letters REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR
QUITO So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the
world and beneath the great Equator and named after it and it had been cast
midway up the Andes in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn Zoned by those
letters you saw the likeness of three Andes summits from one a flame a tower
on another on the third a crowing cock while arching over all was a segment of
the partitioned zodiac the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics and
the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra
Before this equatorial coin Ahab not unobserved by others was now
pausing
»There s something ever egotistical in mountaintops and towers and all
other grand and lofty things look here three peaks as proud as Lucifer The
firm tower that is Ahab the volcano that is Ahab the courageous the
undaunted and victorious fowl that too is Ahab all are Ahab and this round
gold is but the image of the rounder globe which like a magicians glass to
each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self Great
pains small gains for those who ask the world to solve them it cannot solve
itself Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face but see ay he enters
the sign of storms the equinox and but six months before he wheeled out of a
former equinox at Aries From storm to storm So be it then Born in throes
tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs So be it then Here s
stout stuff for woe to work on So be it then«
»No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold but devils claws must have
left their mouldings there since yesterday« murmured Starbuck to himself
leaning against the bulwarks »The old man seems to read Belshazzars awful
writing I have never marked the coin inspectingly He goes below let me read
A dark valley between three mighty heavenabiding peaks that almost seem the
Trinity in some faint earthly symbol So in this vale of Death God girds us
round and over all our gloom the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon
and a hope If we bend down our eyes the dark vale shows her mouldy soil but
if we lift them the bright sun meets our glance halfway to cheer Yet oh
the great sun is no fixture and if at midnight we would fain snatch some
sweet solace from him we gaze for him in vain This coin speaks wisely mildly
truly but still sadly to me I will quit it lest Truth shake me falsely«
»There now s the old Mogul« soliloquised Stubb by the tryworks »he s
been twigging it and there goes Starbuck from the same and both with faces
which I should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long And all from
looking at a piece of gold which did I have it now on Negro Hill or in
Corlaers Hook I d not look at it very long ere spending it Humph in my
poor insignificant opinion I regard this as queer I have seen doubloons
before now in my voyagings your doubloons of old Spain your doubloons of Peru
your doubloons of Chili your doubloons of Bolivia your doubloons of Popayan
with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles and joes and half joes and quarter
joes What then should there be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so
killing wonderful By Golconda let me read it once Halloa here s signs and
wonders truly That now is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac
and what my almanack below calls ditto I ll get the almanack and as I have
heard devils can be raised with Dabolls arithmetic I ll try my hand at
raising a meaning out of these queer curvicues here with the Massachusetts
calendar Here s the book Let s see now Signs and wonders and the sun he
s always among em Hem hem hem here they are here they go all alive
Aries or the Ram Taurus or the Bull and Jimimi here s Gemini himself or
the Twins Well the sun he wheels among em Ay here on the coin he s just
crossing the threshold between two of twelve sittingrooms all in a ring Book
you lie there the fact is you books must know your places You ll do to give
us the bare words and facts but we come in to supply the thoughts That s my
small experience so far as the Massachusetts calendar and Bowditchs
navigator and Dabolls arithmetic go Signs and wonders eh Pity if there is
nothing wonderful in signs and significant in wonders There s a clue
somewhere wait a bit hist hark By Jove I have it Look you Doubloon your
zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter and now I ll read it off
straight out of the book Come Almanack To begin there s Aries or the Ram
lecherous dog he begets us then Taurus or the Bull he bumps us the first
thing then Gemini or the Twins that is Virtue and Vice we try to reach
Virtue when lo comes Cancer the Crab and drags us back and here going from
Virtue Leo a roaring Lion lies in the path he gives a few fierce bites and
surly dabs with his paw we escape and hail Virgo the Virgin that s our
first love we marry and think to be happy for aye when pop comes Libra or the
Scales happiness weighed and found wanting and while we are very sad about
that Lord how we suddenly jump as Scorpio or the Scorpion stings us in
rear we are curing the wound when whang come the arrows all round
Sagittarius or the Archer is amusing himself As we pluck out the shafts
stand aside here s the batteringram Capricornus or the Goat full tilt he
comes rushing and headlong we are tossed when Aquarius or the Waterbearer
pours out his whole deluge and drowns us and to wind up with Pisces or the
Fishes we sleep There s a sermon now writ in high heaven and the sun goes
through it every year and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty Jollily he
aloft there wheels through toil and trouble and so alow here does jolly
Stubb Oh jolly s the word for aye Adieu Doubloon But stop here comes
little KingPost dodge round the tryworks now and let s hear what he ll
have to say There he s before it he ll out with something presently So
so he s beginning«
»I see nothing here but a round thing made of gold and whoever raises a
certain whale this round thing belongs to him So what s all this staring
been about It is worth sixteen dollars that s true and at two cents the
cigar that s nine hundred and sixty cigars I wont smoke dirty pipes like
Stubb but I like cigars and here s nine hundred and sixty of them so here
goes Flask aloft to spy em out«
»Shall I call that wise or foolish now if it be really wise it has a
foolish look to it yet if it be really foolish then has it a sort of wiseish
look to it But avast here comes our old Manxman the old hearsedriver he
must have been that is before he took to the sea He luffs up before the
doubloon halloa and goes round on the other side of the mast why there s a
horseshoe nailed on that side and now he s back again what does that mean
Hark he s muttering voice like an old wornout coffeemill Prick ears and
listen«
»If the White Whale be raised it must be in a month and a day when the sun
stands in some one of these signs I ve studied signs and know their marks
they were taught me twoscore years ago by the old witch in Copenhagen Now in
what sign will the sun then be The horseshoe sign for there it is right
opposite the gold And what s the horseshoe sign The lion is the horseshoe
sign the roaring and devouring lion Ship old ship my old head shakes to
think of thee«
»There s another rendering now but still one text All sorts of men in one
kind of world you see Dodge again here comes Queequeg all tattooing looks
like the signs of the zodiac himself What says the cannibal As I live he s
comparing notes looking at his thighbone thinks the sun is in the thigh or
in the calf or in the bowels I suppose as the old women talk Surgeons
Astronomy in the back country And by Jove he s found something there in the
vicinity of his thigh I guess it s Sagittarius or the Archer No he dont
know what to make of the doubloon he takes it for an old button off some kings
trowsers But aside again here comes that ghostdevil Fedallah tail coiled
out of sight as usual oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual What does he
say with that look of his Ah only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself
there is a sun on the coin fireworshipper depend upon it Ho more and more
This way comes Pip poor boy would he had died or I he s half horrible to
me He too has been watching all of these interpreters myself included and
look now he comes to read with that unearthly idiot face Stand away again and
hear him Hark«
»I look you look he looks we look ye look they look«
»Upon my soul he s been studying Murrays Grammar Improving his mind
poor fellow But what s that he says now hist«
»I look you look he looks we look ye look they look«
»Why he s getting it by heart hist again«
»I look you look he looks we look ye look they look«
»Well that s funny«
»And I you and he and we ye and they are all bats and I m a crow
especially when I stand atop of this pinetree here Caw caw caw caw caw
caw Aint I a crow And where s the scarecrow There he stands two bones
stuck into a pair of old trowsers and two more poked into the sleeves of an old
jacket«
»Wonder if he means me complimentary poor lad I could go hang
myself Anyway for the present I ll quit Pips vicinity I can stand the
rest for they have plain wits but he s too crazywitty for my sanity So so
I leave him muttering«
»Here s the ships navel this doubloon here and they are all on fire to
unscrew it But unscrew your navel and what s the consequence Then again if
it stays here that is ugly too for when aught s nailed to the mast it s a
sign that things grow desperate Ha ha old Ahab the White Whale he ll nail
ye This is a pinetree My father in old Tolland county cut down a pinetree
once and found a silver ring grown over in it some old darkeys wedding ring
How did it get there And so they ll say in the resurrection when they come to
fish up this old mast and find a doubloon lodged in it with bedded oysters for
the shaggy bark Oh the gold the precious precious gold the green miser
ll hoard ye soon Hish hish God goes mong the worlds blackberrying Cook
ho cook and cook us Jenny hey hey hey hey hey Jenny Jenny and get
your hoecake done«
Chapter C
Leg and Arm
The Pequod of Nantucket Meets the Samuel Enderby of London
»Ship ahoy Hast seen the White Whale«
So cried Ahab once more hailing a ship showing English colours bearing
down under the stern Trumpet to mouth the old man was standing in his hoisted
quarterboat his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain who was
carelessly reclining in his own boats bow He was a darklytanned burly
goodnatured finelooking man of sixty or thereabouts dressed in a spacious
roundabout that hung round him in festoons of blue pilotcloth and one empty
arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a hussars
surcoat
»Hast seen the White Whale«
»See you this« and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it he
held up a white arm of sperm whalebone terminating in a wooden head like a
mallet
»Man my boat« cried Ahab impetuously and tossing about the oars near him
»Stand by to lower«
In less than a minute without quitting his little craft he and his crew
were dropped to the water and were soon alongside of the stranger But here a
curious difficulty presented itself In the excitement of the moment Ahab had
forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once stepped on board of
any vessel at sea but his own and then it was always by an ingenious and very
handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod and a thing not to be
rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moments warning Now it is no very
easy matter for anybody except those who are almost hourly used to it like
whalemen to clamber up a ships side from a boat on the open sea for the
great swells now lift the boat high up toward the bulwarks and then
instantaneously drop it halfway down to the kelson So deprived of one leg
and the strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly
invention Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again
hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope to attain
It has before been hinted perhaps that every little untoward circumstance
that befell him and which indirectly sprang from his luckless mishap almost
invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab And in the present instance all this
was heightened by the sight of the two officers of the strange ship leaning
over the side by the perpendicular ladder of nailed cleats there and swinging
toward him a pair of tastefully ornamented manropes for at first they did not
seem to bethink them that a onelegged man must be too much of a cripple to use
their seabanisters But this awkwardness only lasted a minute because the
strange captain observing at a glance how affairs stood cried out »I see I
see avast heaving there Jump boys and swing over the cuttingtackle«
As good luck would have it they had had a whale alongside a day or two
previous and the great tackles were still aloft and the massive curved
blubberhook now clean and dry was still attached to the end This was quickly
lowered to Ahab who at once comprehending it all slid his solitary thigh into
the curve of the hook it was like sitting in the fluke of an anchor or the
crotch of an appletree and then giving the word held himself fast and at
the same time also helped to hoist his own weight by pulling hand over hand
upon one of the running parts of the tackle Soon he was carefully swung inside
the high bulwarks and gently landed upon the capstanhead With his ivory arm
frankly thrust forth in welcome the other captain advanced and Ahab putting
out his ivory leg and crossing the ivory arm like two swordfish blades
cried out in his walrus way »Ay ay hearty let us shake bones together an
arm and a leg an arm that never can shrink d ye see and a leg that never
can run Where didst thou see the White Whale how long ago«
»The White Whale« said the Englishman pointing his ivory arm toward the
east and taking a rueful sight along it as if it had been a telescope »There
I saw him on the Line last season«
»And he took that arm off did he« asked Ahab now sliding down from the
capstan and resting on the Englishmans shoulder as he did so
»Ay he was the cause of it at least and that leg too«
»Spin me the yarn« said Ahab »how was it«
»It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line« began
the Englishman »I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time Well one day
we lowered for a pod of four or five whales and my boat fastened to one of
them a regular circus horse he was too that went milling and milling round
so that my boats crew could only trim dish by sitting all their sterns on the
outer gunwale Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing great
whale with a milkywhite head and hump all crows feet and wrinkles«
»It was he it was he« cried Ahab suddenly letting out his suspended
breath
»And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin«
»Ay ay they were mine my irons« cried Ahab exultingly »but on«
»Give me a chance then« said the Englishman goodhumouredly »Well this
old greatgrandfather with the white head and hump runs all afoam into the
pod and goes to snapping furiously at my fastline«
»Ay I see wanted to part it free the fastfish an old trick I know
him«
»How it was exactly« continued the onearmed commander »I do not know but
in biting the line it got foul of his teeth caught there somehow but we
didnt know it then so that when we afterward pulled on the line bounce we
came plump on to his hump instead of the other whales that went off to
windward all fluking Seeing how matters stood and what a noble great whale it
was the noblest and biggest I ever saw sir in my life I resolved to
capture him spite of the boiling rage he seemed to be in And thinking the
haphazard line would get loose or the tooth it was tangled to might draw for I
have a devil of a boats crew for a pull on a whaleline seeing all this I
say I jumped into my first mates boat Mr Mounttops here by the way
captain Mounttop Mounttop the captain as I was saying I jumped into
Mounttops boat which d ye see was gunwale and gunwale with mine then and
snatching the first harpoon let this old greatgrandfather have it But Lord
look you sir hearts and souls alive man the next instant in a jiff I was
blind as a bat both eyes out all befogged and bedeadened with black foam
the whales tail looming straight up out of it perpendicular in the air like a
marble steeple No use sterning all then but as I was groping at midday with
a blinding sun all crownjewels as I was groping I say after the second
iron to toss it overboard down comes the tail like a Lima tower cutting my
boat in two leaving each half in splinters and flukes first the white hump
backed through the wreck as though it was all chips We all struck out To
escape his terrible flailings I seized hold of my harpoonpole sticking in him
and for a moment clung to that like a sucking fish But a combing sea dashed me
off and at the same instant the fish taking one good dart forward went down
like a flash and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near me
caught me here« clapping his hand just below his shoulder »yes caught me
just here I say and bore me down to hells flames I was thinking when when
all of a sudden thank the good God the barb ripped its way along the flesh
clear along the whole length of my arm came out nigh my wrist and up I
floated and that gentleman there will tell you the rest by the way captain
Dr Bunger ships surgeon Bunger my lad the captain Now Bunger boy
spin your part of the yarn«
The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out had been all the
time standing near them with nothing specific visible to denote his gentlemanly
rank on board His face was an exceedingly round but sober one he was dressed
in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt and patched trowsers and had thus far
been dividing his attention between a marlingspike he held in one hand and a
pillbox held in the other occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory
limbs of the two crippled captains But at his superiors 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 whalesurgeon »and taking my
advice Captain Boomer here stood our old Sammy «
»Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship« interrupted the onearmed captain
addressing Ahab »go on boy«
»Stood our old Sammy off to the northward to get out of the blazing hot
weather there on the Line But it was no use I did all I could sat up with
him nights was very severe with him in the matter of diet «
»Oh very severe« chimed in the patient himself then suddenly altering his
voice »Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night till he couldnt see to
put on the bandages and sending me to bed halfseas over about three oclock
in the morning Oh ye stars he sat up with me indeed and was very severe in
my diet Oh a great watcher and very dietetically severe is Dr Bunger
Bunger you dog laugh out why dont ye You know you re a precious jolly
rascal But heave ahead boy I d rather be killed by you than kept alive by
any other man«
»My captain you must have ere this perceived respected sir« said the
imperturbable godlylooking Bunger slightly bowing to Ahab »is apt to be
facetious at times he spins us many clever things of that sort But I may as
well say en passant as the French remark that I myself that is to say
Jack Bunger late of the reverend clergy am a strict total abstinence man I
never drink «
»Water« cried the captain »he never drinks it it s a sort of fits to
him fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia but go on go on with the arm
story«
»Yes I may as well« said the surgeon coolly »I was about observing sir
before Captain Boomers facetious interruption that spite of my best and
severest endeavours the wound kept getting worse and worse the truth was sir
it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw more than two feet and several
inches long I measured it with the leadline In short it grew black I knew
what was threatened and off it came But I had no hand in shipping that ivory
arm there that thing is against all rule« pointing at it with the
marlingspike »that is the captains work not mine he ordered the carpenter
to make it he had that clubhammer there put to the end to knock someones
brains out with I suppose as he tried mine once He flies into diabolical
passions sometimes Do ye see this dent sir« removing his hat and brushing
aside his hair and exposing a bowllike cavity in his skull but which bore not
the slightest scarry trace or any token of ever having been a wound »Well
the captain there will tell you how that came here he knows«
»No I dont« said the captain »but his mother did he was born with it
Oh you solemn rogue you you Bunger Was there ever such another Bunger in
the watery world Bunger when you die you ought to die in pickle you dog you
should be preserved to future ages you rascal«
»What became of the White Whale« now cried Ahab who thus far had been
impatiently listening to this byplay between the two Englishmen
»Oh« cried the onearmed captain »oh yes Well after he sounded we
didnt see him again for some time in fact as I before hinted I didnt then
know what whale it was that had served me such a trick till some time
afterward when coming back to the Line we heard about MobyDick as some call
him and 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 should I do without this
other arm And I m thinking MobyDick doesnt bite so much as he swallows«
»Well then« interrupted Bunger »give him your left arm for bait to get
the right Do you know gentlemen« very gravely and mathematically bowing to
each captain in succession »Do you know gentlemen that the digestive organs
of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence that it is
quite impossible for him to completely digest even a mans arm And he knows it
too So that what you take for the White Whales malice is only his awkwardness
For he never means to swallow a single limb he only thinks to terrify by
feints But sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow formerly a patient of
mine in Ceylon that making believe swallow jackknives once upon a time let
one drop into him in good earnest and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or
more when I gave him an emetic and he heaved it up in small tacks d ye see
No possible way for him to digest that jackknife and fully incorporate it into
his general bodily system Yes Captain Boomer if you are quick enough about
it and have a mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving
decent burial to the other why in that case the arm is yours only let the
whale have another chance at you shortly that s all«
»No thank ye Bunger« said the English captain »he s welcome to the arm
he has since I cant help it and didnt know him then but not to another one
No more White Whales for me I ve lowered for him once and that has satisfied
me There would be great glory in killing him I know that and there is a
shipload of precious sperm in him but hark ye he s 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 is best let alone
that accursed thing is not always what least allures He s all a magnet How
long since thou sawst him last Which way heading«
»Bless my soul and curse the foul fiends« cried Bunger stoopingly
walking round Ahab and like a dog strangely snuffing »this mans blood
bring the thermometer it s at the boiling point his pulse makes these
planks beat sir« taking a lancet from his pocket and drawing near to
Ahabs arm
»Avast« roared Ahab dashing him against the bulwarks »Man the boat
Which way heading«
»Good God« cried the English captain to whom the question was put »What
s the matter He was heading east I think Is your captain crazy«
whispering Fedallah
But Fedallah putting a finger on his lip slid over the bulwarks to take
the boats steeringoar and Ahab swinging the cuttingtackle toward him
commanded the ships sailors to stand by to lower
In a moment he was standing in the boats stern and the Manilla men were
springing to their oars In vain the English captain hailed him With back to
the stranger ship and face set like a flint to his own Ahab stood upright till
alongside of the Pequod
Chapter CI
The Decanter
Ere the English ship fades from sight be it set down here that she hailed from
London and was named after the late Samuel Enderby merchant of that city the
original of the famous whaling house of Enderby amp Sons a house which in my
poor whalemans opinion comes not far behind the united royal houses of the
Tudors and Bourbons in point of real historical interest How long prior to
the year of our Lord 1775 this great whaling house was in existence my
numerous fishdocuments do not make plain but in that year 1775 it fitted out
the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the sperm whale though for
some score of years previous ever since 1726 our valiant Coffins and Maceys of
Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets pursued that leviathan but only
in the North and South Atlantic not elsewhere Be it distinctly recorded here
that the Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilised
steel the great sperm whale and that for half a century they were the only
people of the whole globe who so harpooned him
In 1778 a fine ship the Amelia fitted out for the express purpose and at
the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys boldly rounded Cape Horn and was the
first among the nations to lower a whaleboat of any sort in the great South
Sea The voyage was a skilful and lucky one and returning to her berth with her
hold full of the precious sperm the Amelias example was soon followed by other
ships English and American and thus the vast sperm whale grounds of the
Pacific were thrown open But not content with this good deed the indefatigable
house again bestirred itself Samuel and all his Sons how many their mother
only knows and under their immediate auspices and partly I think at their
expense the British government was induced to send the sloopofwar Rattler on
a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea Commanded by a naval
postcaptain the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it and did some service
how much does not appear But this is not all In 1819 the same house fitted
out a discovery whaleship of their own to go on a tasting cruise to the remote
waters of Japan That ship well called the Syren made a noble experimental
cruise and it was thus that the great Japanese whalingground first became
generally known The Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain
Coffin a Nantucketer
All honour to the Enderbys therefore whose house I think exists to the
present day though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have slipped his
cable for the great South Sea of the other world
The ship named after him was worthy of the honour being a very fast sailer
and a noble craft every way I boarded her once at midnight somewhere off the
Patagonian coast and drank good flip down in the forecastle It was a fine gam
we had and they were all trumps every soul on board A short life to them
and a jolly death And that fine gam I had long very long after old Ahab
touched her planks with his ivory heel it minds me of the noble solid Saxon
hospitality of that ship and may my parson forget me and the devil remember
me if I ever lose sight of it Flip Did I say we had flip Yes and we flipped
it at the rate of ten gallons the hour and when the squall came for it s
squally off there by Patagonia and all hands visitors and all were called
to reef topsails we were so topheavy that we had to swing each other aloft in
bowlines and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails so
that we hung there reefed fast in the howling gale a warning example to all
drunken tars However the masts did not go overboard and by and by we
scrambled down so sober that we had to pass the flip again though the savage
salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle rather too much diluted and
pickled it to my taste
The beef was fine tough but with body in it They said it was bullbeef
others that it was dromedary beef but I do not know for certain how that
was They had dumplings too small but substantial symmetrically globular and
indestructible dumplings I fancied that you could feel them and roll them
about in you after they were swallowed If you stooped over too far forward you
risked their pitching out of you like billiardballs The bread but that
couldnt be helped besides it was an antiscorbutic in short the bread
contained the only fresh fare they had But the forecastle was not very light
and it was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it But all in
all taking her from truck to helm considering the dimensions of the cooks
boilers including his own live parchment boilers fore and aft I say the
Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship of good fare and plenty fine flip and strong
crack fellows all and capital from bootheels to hatband
But why was it think ye that the Samuel Enderby and some other English
whalers I know of not all though were such famous hospitable ships that
passed round the beef and the bread and the can and the joke and were not
soon weary of eating and drinking and laughing I will tell you The abounding
good cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research Nor have
I been at all sparing of historical whaleresearch when it has seemed needed
The English were preceded in the whalefishery by the Hollanders
Zealanders and Danes from whom they derived many terms still extant in the
fishery and what is yet more their fat old fashions touching plenty to eat
and drink For as a general thing the English merchant ship scrimps her crew
but not so the English whaler Hence in the English this thing of whaling good
cheer is not normal and natural but incidental and particular and therefore
must have some special origin which is here pointed out and will be still
further elucidated
During my researches in the leviathanic histories I stumbled upon an
ancient Dutch volume which by the musty whaling smell of it I knew must be
about whalers The title was Dan Coopman wherefore I concluded that this must
be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery as every
whaleship must carry its cooper I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing
that it was the production of one »Fitz Swackhammer« But my friend Dr
Snodhead a very learned man professor of Low Dutch and High German in the
college of Santa Claus and St Potts to whom I handed the work for
translation giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble this same Dr
Snodhead so soon as he spied the book assured me that Dan Coopman did not mean
»The Cooper« but »The Merchant« In short this ancient and learned Low Dutch
book treated of the commerce of Holland and among other subjects contained a
very interesting account of its whalefishery And in this chapter it was
headed »Smeer« or »Fat« that I found a long detailed list of the outfits for
the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen from which list as
translated by Dr Snodhead I transcribe the following
400000 lbs of beef
60000 lbs Friesland pork
150000 lbs of stock fish
550000 lbs of biscuit
72000 lbs of soft bread
2800 firkins of butter
20000 lbs Texel amp Leyden cheese
144000 lbs cheese probably an inferior article
550 ankers of Geneva
10800 barrels of beer
Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading not so in the present
case however where the reader is flooded with whole pipes barrels quarts
and gills of good gin and good cheer
At the time I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this
beer beef and bread during which many profound thoughts were incidentally
suggested to me capable of a transcendental and Platonic application and
furthermore I compiled supplementary tables of my own touching the probable
quantity of stockfish etc consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in that
ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whalefishery In the first place the amount
of butter and Texel and Leyden cheese consumed seems amazing I impute it
though to their naturally unctuous natures being rendered still more unctuous
by the nature of their vocation and especially by their pursuing their game in
those frigid Polar seas on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the
convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil
The quantity of beer too is very large 10800 barrels Now as those
Polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that climate so
that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen including the short voyage
to and from the Spitzbergen sea did not much exceed three months say and
reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet of 180 sail we have 5400 Low Dutch
seamen in all therefore I say we have precisely two barrels of beer per man
for a twelve weeks allowance exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550
ankers of gin Now whether these gin and beer harpooneers so fuddled as one
might fancy them to have been were the right sort of men to stand up in a
boats head and take good aim at flying whales this would seem somewhat
improbable Yet they did aim at them and hit them too But this was very far
north be it remembered where beer agrees well with the constitution upon the
Equator in our Southern fishery beer would be apt to make the harpooneer
sleepy at the masthead and boozy in his boat and grievous loss might ensue to
Nantucket and New Bedford
But no more enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers of two
or three centuries ago were high livers and that the English whalers have not
neglected so excellent an example For say they when cruising in an empty
ship if you can get nothing better out of the world get a good dinner out of
it at least And this empties the decanter
Chapter CII
A Bower in the Arsacides
Hitherto in descriptively treating of the sperm whale I have chiefly dwelt
upon the marvels of his outer aspect or separately and in detail upon some few
interior structural features But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension
of him it behoves me now to unbutton him still further and untagging the
points of his hose unbuckling his garters and casting loose the hooks and the
eyes of the joints of his innermost bones set him before you in his ultimatum
that is to say in his unconditional skeleton
But how now Ishmael How is it that you a mere oarsman in the fishery
pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the whale Did erudite
Stubb mounted upon your capstan deliver lectures on the anatomy of the
Cetacea and by help of the windlass hold up a specimen rib for exhibition
Explain thyself Ishmael Can you land a fullgrown whale on your deck for
examination as a cook dishes a roastpig Surely not A veritable witness have
you hitherto been Ishmael but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah
alone the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams the rafters
ridgepole sleepers and underpinnings making up the framework of Leviathan
and belike of the tallowvats dairyrooms butteries and cheeseries in his
bowels
I confess that since Jonah few whalemen have penetrated very far beneath
the skin of the adult whale nevertheless I have been blessed with an
opportunity to dissect him in miniature In a ship I belonged to a small cub
sperm whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag to make
sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons and for the heads of the lances Think
you I let that chance go without using my boathatchet and jackknife and
breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young cub
And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their
gigantic fullgrown development for that rare knowledge I am indebted to my
late royal friend Tranquo king of Tranque one of the Arsacides For being at
Tranque years ago when attached to the tradingship Dey of Algiers I was
invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque at
his retired palm villa at Pupella a seaside glen not very far distant from what
our sailors called BambooTown his capital
Among many other fine qualities my royal friend Tranquo being gifted with
a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertù had brought together in Pupella
whatever rare things the more ingenious of his people could invent chiefly
carved woods of wonderful devices chiselled shells inlaid spears costly
paddles aromatic canoes and all these distributed among whatever natural
wonders the wonderfreighted tributerendering waves had cast upon his shores
Chief among these latter was a great sperm whale which after an unusually
long raging gale had been found dead and stranded with his head against a
cocoanut tree whose plumagelike tufted droopings seemed his verdant jet
When the vast body had at last been stripped of its fathomdeep enfoldings and
the bones become dust dry in the sun then the skeleton was carefully
transported up the Pupella glen where a grand temple of lordly palms now
sheltered it
The ribs were hung with trophies the vertebræ were carved with Arsacidean
annals in strange hieroglyphics in the skull the priests kept up an
unextinguished aromatic flame so that the mystic head again sent forth its
vapoury spout while suspended from a bough the terrific lower jaw vibrated
over all the devotees like the hairhung sword that so affrighted Damocles
It was a wondrous sight The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen the
trees stood high and haughty feeling their living sap the industrious earth
beneath was as a weavers loom with a gorgeous carpet on it whereof the
groundvine tendrils formed the warp and woof and the living flowers the
figures All the trees with all their laden branches all the shrubs and
ferns and grasses the messagecarrying air all these unceasingly were active
Through the lacings of the leaves the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving
the unwearied verdure Oh busy weaver unseen weaver pause one word
whither flows the fabric what palace may it deck wherefore all these ceaseless
toilings Speak weaver stay thy hand but one single word with thee Nay
the shuttle flies the figures float from forth the loom the freshetrushing
carpet forever slides away The weavergod he weaves and by that weaving is he
deafened that he hears no mortal voice and by that humming we too who look
on the loom are deafened and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand
voices that speak through it For even so it is in all material factories The
spoken words that are inaudible among the flying spindles those same words are
plainly heard without the walls bursting from the opened casements Thereby
have villainies been detected Ah mortal then be heedful for so in all this
din of the great worlds loom thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar
Now amid the green liferestless loom of that Arsacidean wood the great
white worshipped skeleton lay lounging a gigantic idler Yet as the
everwoven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him the mighty
idler seemed the cunning weaver himself all woven over with the vines every
month assuming greener fresher verdure but himself a skeleton Life folded
Death Death trellised Life the grim god wived with youthful Life and begat
him curlyheaded glories
Now when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale and saw the
skull an altar and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real jet had
issued I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an object of vertù
He laughed But more I marvelled that the priests should swear that smoky jet of
his was genuine To and fro I paced before this skeleton brushed the vines
aside broke through the ribs and with a ball of Arsacidean twine wandered
eddied long amid its many winding shaded colonnades and arbours But soon my
line was out and following it back I emerged from the opening where I entered
I saw no living thing within naught was there but bones
Cutting me a green measuringrod I once more dived within the skeleton
From their arrowslit in the skull the priests perceived me taking the altitude
of the final rib »How now« they shouted »darst thou measure this our god
That s for us« »Ay priests well how long do ye make him then« But
hereupon a fierce contest rose among them concerning feet and inches they
cracked each others sconces with their yardsticks the great skull echoed
and seizing that lucky chance I quickly concluded my own admeasurements
These admeasurements I now propose to set before you But first be it
recorded that in this matter I am not free to utter any fancied measurement I
please Because there are skeleton authorities you can refer to to test my
accuracy There is a Leviathanic Museum they tell me in Hull England one of
the whalingports of that country where they have some fine specimens of
finbacks and other whales Likewise I have heard that in the museum of
Manchester in New Hampshire they have what the proprietors call the only
perfect specimen of a Greenland or river whale in the United States Moreover
at a place in Yorkshire England Burton Constable by name a certain Sir
Clifford Constable has in his possession the skeleton of a sperm whale but of
moderate size by no means of the fullgrown magnitude of my friend King
Tranquos
In both cases the stranded whales to which these two skeletons belonged
were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar grounds King Tranquo
seizing his because he wanted it and Sir Clifford because he was lord of the
seignories of those parts Sir Cliffords whale has been articulated throughout
so that like a great chest of drawers you can open and shut him in all his
bony cavities spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan and swing all day upon
his lower jaw Locks are to be put upon some of his trapdoors and shutters and
a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side Sir
Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the
spinal column threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum and
sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead
The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim
from my right arm where I had them tattooed as in my wild wanderings at that
period there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics
But as I was crowded for space and wished the other parts of my body to remain
a blank page for a poem I was then composing at least what untattooed parts
might remain I did not trouble myself with the odd inches nor indeed should
inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale
Chapter CIII
Measurement of the Whales Skeleton
In the first place I wish to lay before you a particular plain statement
touching the living bulk of this leviathan whose skeleton we are briefly to
exhibit Such a statement may prove useful here
According to a careful calculation I have made and which I partly base upon
Captain Scoresbys estimate of seventy tons for the largestsized Greenland
whale of sixty feet in length according to my careful calculation I say a
sperm whale of the largest magnitude between eightyfive and ninety feet in
length and something less than forty feet in its fullest circumference such a
whale will weigh at least ninety tons so that reckoning thirteen men to a ton
he would considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one
thousand one hundred inhabitants
Think you not then that brains like yoked cattle should be put to this
leviathan to make him at all budge to any landsmans imagination
Having already in various ways put before you his skull spouthole jaw
teeth tail forehead fins and divers other parts I shall now simply point
out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his unobstructed bones But
as the colossal skull embraces so very large a proportion of the entire extent
of the skeleton as it is by far the most complicated part and as nothing is to
be repeated concerning it in this chapter you must not fail to carry it in your
mind or under your arm as we proceed otherwise you will not gain a complete
notion of the general structure we are about to view
In length the sperm whales skeleton at Tranque measured seventytwo feet
so that when fully invested and extended in life he must have been ninety feet
long for in the whale the skeleton loses about onefifth in length compared
with the living body Of this seventytwo feet his skull and jaw comprised some
twenty feet leaving some fifty feet of plain backbone Attached to this
backbone for something less than a third of its length was the mighty circular
basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals
To me this vast ivoryribbed chest with the long unrelieved spine
extending far away from it in a straight line not a little resembled the hull
of a great ship newlaid upon the stocks when only some twenty of her naked
bowribs are inserted and the keel is otherwise for the time but a long
disconnected timber
The ribs were ten on a side The first to begin from the neck was nearly
six feet long the second third and fourth were each successively longer till
you came to the climax of the fifth or one of the middle ribs which measured
eight feet and some inches From that part the remaining ribs diminished till
the tenth and last only spanned five feet and some inches In general thickness
they all bore a seemly correspondence to their length The middle ribs were the
most arched In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay
footpath bridges over small streams
In considering these ribs I could not but be struck anew with the
circumstance so variously repeated in this book that the skeleton of the whale
is by no means the mould of his invested form The largest of the Tranque ribs
one of the middle ones occupied that part of the fish which in life is
greatest in depth Now the greatest depth of the invested body of this
particular whale must have been at least sixteen feet whereas the
corresponding rib measured but little more than eight feet So that this rib
only conveyed half of the true notion of the living magnitude of that part
Besides for some way where I now saw but a naked spine all that had been once
wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh muscle blood and bowels Still
more for the ample fins I here saw but a few disordered joints and in place
of the weighty and majestic but boneless flukes an utter blank
How vain and foolish then thought I for timid untravelled man to try to
comprehend aright this wondrous whale by merely poring over his dead attenuated
skeleton stretched in this peaceful wood No Only in the heart of quickest
perils only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes only on the profound
unbounded sea can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out
But the spine For that the best way we can consider it is with a crane
to pile its bones high up on end No speedy enterprise But now it s done it
looks much like Pompeys Pillar
There are forty and odd vertebræ in all which in the skeleton are not
locked together They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic
spire forming solid courses of heavy masonry The largest a middle one is in
width something less than three feet and in depth more than four The smallest
where the spine tapers away into the tail is only two inches in width and
looks something like a white billiard ball I was told that there were still
smaller ones but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins the
priests children who had stolen them to play marbles with Thus we see how
that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into
simple childs play
Chapter CIV
The Fossil Whale
From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon to
enlarge amplify and generally expatiate Would you you could not compress
him By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial folio Not to tell
over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail and the yards he measures about
the waist only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines where they
lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean
orlopdeck of a lineofbattle ship
Since I have undertaken to manhandle this leviathan it behoves me to
approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise not overlooking the
minutest seminal germs of his blood and spinning him out to the uttermost coil
of his bowels Having already described him in most of his present habitatory
and anatomical peculiarities it now remains to magnify him in an archæological
fossiliferous and antediluvian point of view Applied to any other creature
than the leviathan to an ant or a flea such portly terms might justly be
deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent But when Leviathan is the text the case is
altered Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the
dictionary And here be it said that whenever it has been convenient to consult
one in the course of these dissertations I have invariably used a huge quarto
edition of Johnson expressly purchased for that purpose because that famous
lexicographers uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to
be used by a whaleauthor like me
One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject though it
may seem but an ordinary one How then with me writing of this leviathan
Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals Give me a condors
quill Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand Friends hold my arms For in
the mere act of penning my thoughts of this leviathan they weary me and make
me faint with their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep as if to include the
whole circle of the sciences and all the generations of whales and men and
mastodons past present and to come with all the revolving panoramas of
empire on earth and throughout the whole universe not excluding its suburbs
Such and so magnifying is the virtue of a large and liberal theme We expand
to its bulk To produce a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme No great
and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea though many there be who
have tried it
Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales I present my credentials as
a geologist by stating that in my miscellaneous time I have been a stonemason
and also a great digger of ditches canals and wells winevaults cellars and
cisterns of all sorts Likewise by way of preliminary I desire to remind the
reader that while in the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils
of monsters now almost completely extinct the subsequent relics discovered in
what are called the Tertiary formations seem the connecting or at any rate
intercepted links between the antichronical creatures and those whose remote
posterity are said to have entered the Ark all the Fossil Whales hitherto
discovered belong to the Tertiary period which is the last preceding the
superficial formations And though none of them precisely answer to any known
species of the present time they are yet sufficiently akin to them in general
respects to justify their taking rank as Cetacean fossils
Detached broken fossils of preAdamite whales fragments of their bones and
skeletons have within thirty years past at various intervals been found at
the base of the Alps in Lombardy in France in England in Scotland and in
the States of Louisiana Mississippi and Alabama Among the more curious of
such remains is part of a skull which in the year 1779 was disinterred in the
Rue Dauphiné in Paris a short street opening almost directly upon the palace of
the Tuileries and bones disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp
in Napoleons time Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some
utterly unknown leviathanic species
But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost complete
vast skeleton of an extinct monster found in the year 1842 on the plantation
of Judge Creagh in Alabama The awestricken credulous slaves in the vicinity
took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels The Alabama doctors declared
it a huge reptile and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus But some
specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen the English anatomist
it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale though of a departed
species A significant illustration of the fact again and again repeated in
this book that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape
of his fully invested body So Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon and in
his paper read before the London Geological Society pronounced it in
substance one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the
globe have blotted out of existence
When I stand among these mighty leviathan skeletons skulls tusks jaws
ribs and vertebræ all characterised by partial resemblances to the existing
breeds of seamonsters but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar
affinities to the annihilated antichronical leviathans their incalculable
seniors I am by a flood borne back to that wondrous period ere time itself
can be said to have begun for time began with man Here Saturns gray chaos
rolls over me and I obtain dim shuddering glimpses into those Polar
eternities when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the
Tropics and in all the 25000 miles of this worlds circumference not an
inhabitable hands breadth of land was visible Then the whole world was the
whales and king of creation he left his wake along the present lines of the
Andes and the Himalayas Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan Ahabs harpoon
had shed older blood than the Pharaohs Methuselah seems a schoolboy I look
round to shake hands with Shem I am horrorstruck at this antemosaic unsourced
existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale which having been before all
time must needs exist after all humane ages are over
But not alone has this leviathan left his preAdamite traces in the
stereotype plates of nature and in limestone and marl bequeathed his ancient
bust but upon Egyptian tablets whose antiquity seems to claim for them an
almost fossiliferous character we find the unmistakable print of his fin In an
apartment of the great temple of Denderah some fifty years ago there was
discovered upon the granite ceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere
abounding in centaurs griffins and dolphins similar to the grotesque figures
on the celestial globe of the moderns Gliding among them old Leviathan swam as
of yore was there swimming in that planisphere centuries before Solomon was
cradled
Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity of
the whale in his own osseous postdiluvian reality as set down by the venerable
John Leo the old Barbary traveller
»Not far from the Seaside they have a Temple the Rafters and Beams of
which are made of WhaleBones for Whales of a monstrous size are oftentimes
cast up dead upon that shore The Common People imagine that by a secret Power
bestowed by God upon the Temple no Whale can pass it without immediate death
But the truth of the Matter is that on either side of the Temple there are
Rocks that shoot two Miles into the Sea and wound the Whales when they light
upon em They keep a Whales Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle which
lying upon the Ground with its convex part uppermost makes an Arch the Head of
which cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camels Back This Rib says John Leo
is said to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it Their Historians
affirm that a Prophet who prophesyd of Mahomet came from this Temple and
some do not stand to assert that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale
at the Base of the Temple«
In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you reader and if you be a
Nantucketer and a whaleman you will silently worship there
Chapter CV
Does the Whales Magnitude Diminish Will He Perish
Inasmuch then as this leviathan comes floundering down upon us from the
headwaters of the Eternities it may be fitly inquired whether in the long
course of his generations he has not degenerated from the original bulk of his
sires
But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the present
day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are found in the
Tertiary system embracing a distinct geological period prior to man but of
the whales found in that Tertiary system those belonging to its latter
formations exceed in size those of its earlier ones
Of all the preAdamite whales yet exhumed by far the largest is the Alabama
one mentioned in the last chapter and that was less than seventy feet in length
in the skeleton Whereas we have already seen that the tapemeasure gives
seventytwo feet for the skeleton of a largesized modern whale And I have
heard on whalemens authority that sperm whales have been captured near a
hundred feet long at the time of capture
But may it not be that while the whales of the present hour are an advance
in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods may it not be that
since Adams time they have degenerated
Assuredly we must conclude so if we are to credit the accounts of such
gentlemen as Pliny and the ancient naturalists generally For Pliny tells us of
whales that embraced acres of living bulk and Aldrovandi of others which
measured eight hundred feet in length rope walks and Thames tunnels of whales
And even in the days of Banks and Solander Cooks naturalists we find a Danish
member of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland whales
reydansiskur or Wrinkled Bellies at one hundred and twenty yards that is
three hundred and sixty feet And Lacépède the French naturalist in his
elaborate history of whales in the very beginning of his work page 3 sets
down the right whale at one hundred metres three hundred and twentyeight feet
And this work was published so late as A D 1825
But will any whaleman believe these stories No The whale of today is as
big as his ancestors in Plinys time And if ever I go where Pliny is I a
whaleman more than he was will make bold to tell him so Because I cannot
understand how it is that while the Egyptian mummies that were buried thousands
of years before even Pliny was born do not measure so much in their coffins as
a modern Kentuckian in his socks and while the cattle and other animals
sculptured on the oldest Egyptian and Nineveh tablets by the relative
proportions in which they are drawn just as plainly prove that the highbred
stallfed prize cattle of Smithfield not only equal but far exceed in
magnitude the fattest of Pharaohs fat kine in the face of all this I will not
admit that of all animals the whale alone should have degenerated
But still another inquiry remains one often agitated by the more recondite
Nantucketers Whether owing to the almost omniscient lookouts at the mastheads
of the whaleships now penetrating even through Behring Straits and into the
remotest secret drawers and lockers of the world and the thousand harpoons and
lances darted along all continental coasts the moot point is whether Leviathan
can long endure so wide a chase and so remorseless a havoc whether he must not
at last be exterminated from the waters and the last whale like the last man
smoke his last pipe and then himself evaporate in the final puff
Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo
which not forty years ago overspread by tens of thousands the prairies of
Illinois and Missouri and shook their iron manes and scowled with their
thunderclotted brows upon the sites of populous rivercapitals where now the
polite broker sells you land at a dollar an inch in such a comparison an
irresistible argument would seem furnished to show that the hunted whale cannot
now escape speedy extinction
But you must look at this matter in every light Though so short a period
ago not a good lifetime the census of the buffalo in Illinois exceeded the
census of men now in London and though at the present day not one horn or hoof
of them remains in all that region and though the cause of this wondrous
extermination was the spear of man yet the far different nature of the
whalehunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an end to the leviathan Forty men
in one ship hunting the sperm whale for fortyeight months think they have done
extremely well and thank God if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish
Whereas in the days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the
West when the far west in whose sunset suns still rise was a wilderness and a
virgin the same number of moccasined men for the same number of months
mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships would have slain not forty but
forty thousand and more buffaloes a fact that if need were could be
statistically stated
Nor considered aright does it seem any argument in favour of the gradual
extinction of the sperm whale for example that in former years the latter
part of the last century say these leviathans in small pods were encountered
much oftener than at present and in consequence the voyages were not so
prolonged and were also much more remunerative Because as has been elsewhere
noticed those whales influenced by some views to safety now swim the seas in
immense caravans so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries yokes and
pods and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely
separated unfrequent armies That is all And equally fallacious seems the
conceit that because the socalled whalebone whales no longer haunt many
grounds in former years abounding with them hence that species also is
declining For they are only being driven from promontory to cape and if one
coast is no longer enlivened with their jets then be sure some other and
remoter strand has been very recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle
Furthermore concerning these lastmentioned leviathans they have two firm
fortresses which in all human probability will forever remain impregnable
And as upon the invasion of their valleys the frosty Swiss have retreated to
their mountains so hunted from the savannas and glades of the middle seas the
whalebone whales can at last resort to their Polar citadels and diving under
the ultimate glassy barriers and walls there come up among icy fields and
floes and in a charmed circle of everlasting December bid defiance to all
pursuit from man
But as perhaps fifty of these whalebone whales are harpooned for one
cachalot some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this positive
havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions But though for
some time past a number of these whales not less than 13000 have been
annually slain on the norwest coast by the Americans alone yet there are
considerations which render even this circumstance of little or no account as an
opposing argument in this matter
Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the populousness of
the more enormous creatures of the globe yet what shall we say to Harto the
historian of Goa when he tells us that at one hunting the King of Siam took
4000 elephants that in those regions elephants are numerous as droves of cattle
in the temperate climes And there seems no reason to doubt that if these
elephants which have now been hunted for thousands of years by Semiramis by
Porus by Hannibal and by all the successive monarchs of the East if they
still survive there in great numbers much more may the great whale outlast all
hunting since he has a pasture to expatiate in which is precisely twice as
large as all Asia both Americas Europe and Africa New Holland and all the
isles of the sea combined
Moreover we are to consider that from the presumed great longevity of
whales their probably attaining the age of a century and more therefore at any
one period of time several distinct adult generations must be contemporary And
what that is we may soon gain some idea of by imagining all the graveyards
cemeteries and family vaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the
men women and children who were alive seventyfive years ago and adding this
countless host to the present human population of the globe
Wherefore for all these things we account the whale immortal in his
species however perishable in his individuality He swam the seas before the
continents broke water he once swam over the site of the Tuileries and Windsor
Castle and the Kremlin In Noahs flood he despised Noahs Ark and if ever the
world is to be again flooded like the Netherlands to kill off its rats then
the eternal whale will still survive and rearing upon the topmost crest of the
equatorial flood spout his frothed defiance to the skies
Chapter CVI
Ahabs Leg
The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel Enderby of
London had not been unattended with some small violence to his own person He
had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had
received a halfsplintering shock And when after gaining his own deck and his
own pivothole there he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to
the steersman it was as ever something about his not steering inflexibly
enough then the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and
wrench that though it still remained entire and to all appearances lusty yet
Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy
And indeed it seemed small matter for wonder that for all his pervading
mad recklessness Ahab did at times give careful heed to the condition of that
dead bone upon which he partly stood For it had not been very long prior to the
Pequods sailing from Nantucket that he had been found one night lying prone
upon the ground and insensible by some unknown and seemingly inexplicable
unimaginable casualty his ivory limb having been so violently displaced that
it had stakewise smitten and all but pierced his groin nor was it without
extreme difficulty that the agonising wound was entirely cured
Nor at the time had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind that all the
anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a former woe
and he too plainly seemed to see that as the most poisonous reptile of the
marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove
so equally with every felicity all miserable events do naturally beget their
like Yea more than equally thought Ahab since both the ancestry and
posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy For not
to hint of this that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings that
while some natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the
other world but on the contrary shall be followed by the joychildlessness of
all hells despair whereas some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely
beget to themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave
not at all to hint of this there still seems an inequality in the deeper
analysis of the thing For thought Ahab while even the highest earthly
felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them but at
bottom all heartwoes a mystic significance and in some men an archangelic
grandeur so do their diligent tracingsout not belie the obvious deduction To
trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries carries us at last among
the sourceless primogenitures of the gods so that in the face of all the glad
haymaking suns and softcymballing round harvestmoons we must needs give in
to this that the gods themselves are not forever glad The ineffaceable sad
birthmark in the brow of man is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers
Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged which perhaps might more
properly in set way have been disclosed before With many other particulars
concerning Ahab always had it remained a mystery to some why it was that for
a certain period both before and after the sailing of the Pequod he had hidden
himself away with such GrandLamalike exclusiveness and for that one
interval sought speechless refuge as it were among the marble senate of the
dead Captain Pelegs bruited reason for this thing appeared by no means
adequate though indeed as touching all Ahabs deeper part every revelation
partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory light But in the end
it all came out this one matter did at least That direful mishap was at the
bottom of his temporary recluseness And not only this but to that
evercontracting dropping circle ashore who for any reason possessed the
privilege of a less banned approach to him to that timid circle the
abovehinted casualty remaining as it did moodily unaccounted for by Ahab
invested itself with terrors not entirely underived from the land of spirits
and of wails So that through their zeal for him they had all conspired so
far as in them lay to muffle up the knowledge of this thing from others and
hence it was that not till a considerable interval had elapsed did it
transpire upon the Pequods decks
But be all this as it may let the unseen ambiguous synod in the air or
the vindictive princes and potentates of fire have to do or not with earthly
Ahab yet in this present matter of his leg he took plain practical
procedures he called the carpenter
And when that functionary appeared before him he bade him without delay set
about making a new leg and directed the mates to see him supplied with all the
studs and joists of jawivory sperm whale which had thus far been accumulated
on the voyage in order that a careful selection of the stoutest
clearestgrained stuff might be secured This done the carpenter received
orders to have the leg completed that night and to provide all the fittings for
it independent of these pertaining to the distrusted one in use Moreover the
ships forge was ordered to be hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the
hold and to accelerate the affair the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at
once to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed
Chapter CVII
The Carpenter
Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn and take high abstracted
man alone and he seems a wonder a grandeur and a woe But from the same
point take mankind in mass and for the most part they seem a mob of
unnecessary duplicates both contemporary and hereditary But most humble though
he was and far from furnishing an example of the high humane abstraction the
Pequods carpenter was no duplicate hence he now comes in person on this
stage
Like all seagoing shipcarpenters and more especially those belonging to
whalingvessels he was to a certain offhanded practical extent alike
experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own the
carpenters pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all those
numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an auxiliary
material But besides the application to him of the generic remark above this
carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand nameless
mechanical emergencies continually recurring in a large ship upon a three or
four years voyage in uncivilised and fardistant seas For not to speak of his
readiness in ordinary duties repairing stove boats sprung spars reforming
the shape of clumsybladed oars inserting bullseyes in the deck or new
treenails in the side planks and other miscellaneous matters more directly
pertaining to his special business he was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all
manner of conflicting aptitudes both useful and capricious
The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold was
his vicebench a long rude ponderous table furnished with several vices of
different sizes and both of iron and of wood At all times except when whales
were alongside this bench was securely lashed athwartships against the rear of
the tryworks
A belayingpin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole the
carpenter claps it into one of his everready vices and straightway files it
smaller A lost landbird of strange plumage strays on board and is made a
captive out of cleanshaved rods of right whalebone and crossbeams of sperm
whale ivory the carpenter makes a pagodalooking cage for it An oarsman
sprains his wrist the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion Stubb longed for
vermilion stars to be painted upon the blade of his every oar screwing each oar
in his big vice of wood the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation
A sailor takes a fancy to wear sharkbone earrings the carpenter drills his
ears Another has the toothache the carpenter out pincers and clapping one
hand upon his bench bids him be seated there but the poor fellow unmanageably
winces under the unconcluded operation whirling round the handle of his wooden
vice the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that if he would have him draw
the tooth
Thus this carpenter was prepared at all points and alike indifferent and
without respect in all Teeth he accounted bits of ivory heads he deemed but
topblocks men themselves he lightly held for capstans But while now upon so
wide a field thus variously accomplished and with such liveliness of expertness
in him too all this would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of
intelligence But not precisely so For nothing was this man more remarkable
than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it were impersonal I say for it so
shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things that it seemed one with the
general stolidity discernible in the whole visible world which while
pauselessly active in uncounted modes still eternally holds its peace and
ignores you though you dig foundations for cathedrals Yet was this
halfhorrible stolidity in him involving too as it appeared an allramifying
heartlessness yet was it oddly dashed at times with an old crutchlike
antediluvian wheezing humorousness not unstreaked now and then with a certain
grizzled wittiness such as might have served to pass the time during the
midnightwatch on the bearded forecastle of Noahs ark Was it that this old
carpenter had been a lifelong wanderer whose much rolling to and fro not only
had gathered no moss but what is more had rubbed off whatever small outward
clingings might have originally pertained to him He was a stript abstract an
unfractioned integral uncompromised as a newborn babe living without
premeditated reference to this world or the next You might almost say that
this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence for in
his numerous trades he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct
or simply because he had been tutored to it or by any intermixture of all
these even or uneven but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb spontaneous
literal process He was a pure manipulator his brain if he had ever had one
must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers He was like one of
those unreasoning but still highly useful multum in parvo Sheffield
contrivances assuming the exterior though a little swelled of a common
pocketknife but containing not only blades of various sizes but also
screwdrivers corkscrews tweezers awls pens rulers nailfilers
countersinkers So if his superiors wanted to use the carpenter for a
screwdriver all they had to do was to open that part of him and the screw was
fast or if for tweezers take him up by the legs and there they were
Yet as previously hinted this omnitooled openandshut carpenter was
after all no mere machine of an automaton If he did not have a common soul in
him he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty What that
was whether essence of quicksilver or a few drops of hartshorn there is no
telling But there it was and there it had abided for now some sixty years or
more And this it was this same unaccountable cunning lifeprinciple in him
this it was that kept him a great part of the time soliloquising but only like
an unreasoning wheel which also hummingly soliloquises or rather his body was
a sentrybox and this soliloquiser on guard there and talking all the time to
keep himself awake
Chapter CVIII
Ahab and the Carpenter
The Deck First NightWatch
Carpenter standing before his vicebench and by the light of two lanterns
busily filing the ivory joist for the leg which joist is firmly fixed in the
vice Slabs of ivory leather straps pads screws and various tools of all
sorts lying about the bench Forward the red flame of the forge is seen where
the blacksmith is at work
Drat the file and drat the bone That is hard which should be soft and that is
soft which should be hard So we go who file old jaws and shinbones Let s
try another Ay now this works better sneezes Halloa this bone dust is
sneezes why it s sneezes yes it s sneezes bless my soul it wont
let me speak This is what an old fellow gets now for working in dead lumber
Saw a live tree and you dont get this dust amputate a live bone and you
dont get it sneezes Come come you old Smut there bear a hand and let s
have that ferule and bucklescrew I ll be ready for them presently Lucky now
sneezes there s no kneejoint to make that might puzzle a little but a mere
shinbone why it s easy as making hoppoles only I should like to put a good
finish on Time time if I but only had the time I could turn him out as neat
a leg now as ever sneezes scraped to a lady in a parlour Those buckskin legs
and calves of legs I ve seen in shop windows wouldnt compare at all They soak
water they do and of course get rheumatic and have to be doctored sneezes
with washes and lotions just like live legs There before I saw it off now I
must call his old Mogulship and see whether the length will be all right too
short if anything I guess Ha that s the heel we are in luck here he
comes or it s somebody else that s certain
Ahab advancing
During the ensuing scene the carpenter continues sneezing at times
Well manmaker
Just in time sir If the captain pleases I will now mark the length Let
me measure sir
Measured for a leg good Well it s not the first time About it There
keep thy finger on it This is a cogent vice thou hast here carpenter let me
feel its grip once So so it does pinch some
Oh sir it will break bones beware beware
No fear I like a good grip I like to feel something in this slippery world
that can hold man What s Prometheus about there the blacksmith I mean
what s he about
He must be forging the bucklescrew sir now
Right It s a partnership he supplies the muscle part He makes a fierce
red flame there
Ay sir he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work
Umm So he must I do deem it now a most meaning thing that that old
Greek Prometheus who made men they say should have been a blacksmith and
animated them with fire for what s made in fire must properly belong to fire
and so hell s probable How the soot flies This must be the remainder the
Greek made the Africans of Carpenter when he s through with that buckle tell
him to forge a pair of steel shoulderblades there s a peddler aboard with a
crushing pack
Sir
Hold while Prometheus is about it I ll order a complete man after a
desirable pattern Imprimis fifty feet high in his socks then chest modelled
after the Thames tunnel then legs with roots to em to stay in one place
then arms three feet through the wrist no heart at all brass forehead and
about a quarter of an acre of fine brains and let me see shall I order eyes
to see outward No but put a skylight on top of his head to illuminate inward
There take the order and away
Now what s he speaking about and who s he speaking to I should like to
know Shall I keep standing here aside
Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome here s one No no
no I must have a lantern
Ho ho That s it hey Here are two sir one will serve my turn
What art thou thrusting that thiefcatcher into my face for man Thrusted
light is worse than presented pistols
I thought sir that you spoke to carpenter
Carpenter why that s but no a very tidy and I may say an extremely
gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here carpenter or wouldst thou
rather work in clay
Sir Clay clay sir That s 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 bury thyself under living
peoples noses
Sir oh ah I guess so yes oh dear
Look ye carpenter I dare say thou callest thyself a right good workmanlike
workman eh Well then will it speak thoroughly well for thy work if when I
come to mount this leg thou makest I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the
same identical place with it that is carpenter my old lost leg the flesh and
blood one I mean Canst thou not drive that old Adam away
Truly sir I begin to understand somewhat now Yes I have heard something
curious on that score sir how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the
feeling of his old spar but it will be still pricking him at times May I
humbly ask if it be really so sir
It is man Look put thy live leg here in the place where mine once was
so now here is only one distinct leg to the eye yet two to the soul Where
thou feelest tingling life there exactly there there to a hair do I Is t a
riddle
I should humbly call it a poser sir
Hist then How dost thou know that some entire living thinking thing may
not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now
standest ay and standing there in thy spite In thy most solitary hours then
dost thou not fear eavesdroppers Hold dont speak And if I still feel the
smart of my crushed leg though it be now so long dissolved then why mayst not
thou carpenter feel the fiery pains of hell forever and without a body Hah
Good Lord Truly sir if it comes to that I must calculate over again I
think I didnt carry a small figure sir
Look ye puddingheads should never grant premises How long before the
leg is done
Perhaps an hour sir
Bungle away at it then and bring it to me turns to go Oh Life Here I
am proud as Greek god and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to
stand on Cursed be that mortal interindebtedness which will not do away with
ledgers I would be free as air and I m down in the whole worlds books I am
so rich I could have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Prætorians at the
auction of the Roman empire which was the worlds and yet I owe for the flesh
in the tongue I brag with By heavens I ll get a crucible and into it and
dissolve myself down to one small compendious vertebra So
Carpenter resuming his work
Well well well Stubb knows him best of all and Stubb always says he s
queer says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer he s queer says
Stubb he s queer queer queer and keeps dinning it into Mr Starbuck all
the time queer sir queer queer very queer And here s his leg Yes now
that I think of it here s his bedfellow has a stick of whales jawbone for a
wife And this is his leg he ll stand on this What was that now about one leg
standing in three places and all three places standing in one hell how was
that Oh I dont wonder he looked so scornful at me I m a sort of
strangethoughted sometimes they say but that s only haphazardlike Then a
short little old body like me should never undertake to wade out into deep
waters with tall heronbuilt captains the water chucks you under the chin
pretty quick and there s a great cry for lifeboats And here s the herons
leg long and slim sure enough Now for most folks one pair of legs lasts a
lifetime and that must be because they use them mercifully as a tenderhearted
old lady uses her rolypoly old coachhorses But Ahab oh he s a hard driver
Look driven one leg to death and spavined the other for life and now wears
out bone legs by the cord Halloa there you Smut bear a hand there with those
screws and let s finish it before the resurrection fellow comes acalling with
his horn for all legs true or false as brewery men go round collecting old
beer barrels to fill em up again What a leg this is It looks like a real
live leg filed down to nothing but the core he ll be standing on this
tomorrow he ll be taking altitudes on it Halloa I almost forgot the little
oval slate smoothed ivory where he figures up the latitude So so chisel
file and sandpaper now
Chapter CIX
Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin
According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning and lo no
inconsiderable oil came up with the water the casks below must have sprung a
bad leak Much concern was shown and Starbuck went down into the cabin to
report this unfavourable affair21
Now from the south and west the Pequod was drawing nigh to Formosa and the
Bashee isles between which lies one of the tropical outlets from the China
waters into the Pacific And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart of the
oriental archipelagoes spread before him and another separate one representing
the long eastern coasts of the Japanese islands Niphon Matsmai and Sikoke
With his snowwhite new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table
and with a long pruninghook of a jackknife in his hand the wondrous old man
with his back to the gangway door was wrinkling his brow and tracing his old
courses again
»Who s there« hearing the footstep at the door but not turning round to
it »On deck Begone«
»Captain Ahab mistakes it is I The oil in the hold is leaking sir We
must up Burtons and break out«
»Up Burtons and break out Now that we are nearing Japan heaveto here for
a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops«
»Either do that sir or waste in one day more oil than we may make good in
a year What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving sir«
»So it is so it is if we get it«
»I was speaking of the oil in the hold sir«
»And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all Begone Let it leak I
m all aleak myself Ay leaks in leaks not only full of leaky casks but those
leaky casks are in a leaky ship and that s a far worse plight than the Pequod
s man Yet I dont stop to plug my leak for who can find it in the deeploaded
hull or how hope to plug it even if found in this lifes howling gale
Starbuck I ll not have the Burtons hoisted«
»What will the owners say sir«
»Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the typhoons What
cares Ahab Owners owners Thou art always prating to me Starbuck about those
miserly owners as if the owners were my conscience But look ye the only real
owner of anything is its commander and hark ye my conscience is in this ships
keel On deck«
»Captain Ahab« said the reddening mate moving further into the cabin with
a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost seemed not only
every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation of itself but
within also seemed more than half distrustful of itself »A better man than I
might well pass over in thee what he would quickly enough resent in a younger
man ay and in a happier Captain Ahab«
»Devils Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me On
deck«
»Nay sir not yet I do entreat And I do dare sir to be forbearing
Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto Captain Ahab«
Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack forming part of most
SouthSeamens cabin furniture and pointing it toward Starbuck exclaimed
»There is one God that is Lord over the earth and one captain that is lord over
the Pequod On deck«
For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate and his fiery cheeks you
would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled
tube But mastering his emotion he half calmly rose and as he quitted the
cabin paused for an instant and said »Thou hast outraged not insulted me
sir but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck thou wouldst but laugh
but let Ahab beware of Ahab beware of thyself old man«
»He waxes brave but nevertheless obeys most careful bravery that«
murmured Ahab as Starbuck disappeared »What s that he said Ahab beware of
Ahab there s something there« Then unconsciously using the musket for a
staff with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little cabin but presently
the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed and returning the gun to the rack he
went to the deck
»Thou art but too good a fellow Starbuck« he said lowly to the mate then
raising his voice to the crew »Furl the tgallantsails and closereef the
topsails fore and aft back the mainyard up Burtons and break out in the
mainhold«
It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was that as respecting
Starbuck Ahab thus acted It may have been a flash of honesty in him or mere
prudential policy which under the circumstance imperiously forbade the
slightest symptom of open disaffection however transient in the important
chief officer of his ship However it was his orders were executed and the
Burtons were hoisted
Chapter CX
Queequeg in His Coffin
Upon searching it was found that the casks last struck into the hold were
perfectly sound and that the leak must be further off So it being calm
weather they broke out deeper and deeper disturbing the slumbers of the huge
groundtier butts and from that black midnight sending those gigantic moles
into the daylight above So deep did they go and so ancient and corroded and
weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons that you almost looked next for
some mouldy cornerstone cask containing coins of Captain Noah with copies of
the posted placards vainly warning the infatuated old world from the Flood
Tierce after tierce too of water and bread and beef and shooks of staves
and iron bundles of hoops were hoisted out till at last the piled decks were
hard to get about and the hollow hull echoed under foot as if you were
treading over empty catacombs and reeled and rolled in the sea like an
airfreighted demijohn Topheavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all
Aristotle in his head Well was it that the typhoons did not visit them then
Now at this time it was that my poor pagan companion and fast
bosomfriend Queequeg was seized with a fever which brought him nigh to his
endless end
Be it said that in this vocation of whaling sinecures are unknown dignity
and danger go hand in hand till you get to be captain the higher you rise the
harder you toil So with poor Queequeg who as harpooneer must not only face
all the rage of the living whale but as we have elsewhere seen mount his
dead back in a rolling sea and finally descend into the gloom of the hold and
bitterly sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement resolutely
manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their stowage To be short among
whalemen the harpooneers are the holders so called
Poor Queequeg when the ship was about half disembowelled you should have
stooped over the hatchway and peered down upon him there where stripped to
his woollen drawers the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness
and slime like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well And a well or
an icehouse it somehow proved to him poor pagan where strange to say for
all the heat of his sweatings he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a
fever and at last after some days suffering laid him in his hammock close
to the very sill of the door of death How he wasted and wasted away in those
few longlingering days till there seemed but little left of him but his frame
and tattooing But as all else in him thinned and his cheekbones grew sharper
his eyes nevertheless seemed growing fuller and fuller they became of a
strange softness of lustre and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from
his sickness a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could
not die or be weakened And like circles on the water which as they grow
fainter expand so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding like the rings of
Eternity An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the
side of this waning savage and saw as strange things in his face as any beheld
who were bystanders when Zoroaster died For whatever is truly wondrous and
fearful in man never yet was put into words or books And the drawing near of
Death which alike levels all alike impresses all with a last revelation which
only an author from the dead could adequately tell So that let us say it
again no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those
whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg as he
quietly lay in his swaying hammock and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking
him to his final rest and the oceans invisible floodtide lifted him higher
and higher toward his destined heaven
Not a man of the crew but gave him up and as for Queequeg himself what he
thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour he asked He called
one to him in the gray morningwatch when the day was just breaking and taking
his hand said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little
canoes of dark wood like the rich warwood of his native isle and upon
inquiry he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket were laid in
those same dark canoes and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased
him for it was not unlike the custom of his own race who after embalming a
dead warrior stretched him out in his canoe and so left him to be floated away
to the starry archipelagoes for not only do they believe that the stars are
isles but that far beyond all visible horizons their own mild uncontinented
seas interflow with the blue heavens and so form the white breakers of the
Milky Way He added that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his
hammock according to the usual seacustom tossed like something vile to the
deathdevouring sharks No he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket all the
more congenial to him being a whaleman that like a whaleboat these
coffincanoes were without a keel though that involved but uncertain steering
and much leeway adown the dim ages
Now when this strange circumstance was made known aft the carpenter was at
once commanded to do Queequegs bidding whatever it might include There was
some heathenish coffincoloured old lumber aboard which upon a long previous
voyage had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands and
from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made No sooner was the
carpenter apprised of the order than taking his rule he forthwith with all the
indifferent promptitude of his character proceeded into the forecastle and took
Queequegs measure with great accuracy regularly chalking Queequegs person as
he shifted the rule
»Ah poor fellow he ll have to die now« ejaculated the Long Island
sailor
Going to his vicebench the carpenter for convenience sake and general
reference now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin was to
be and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at its
extremities This done he marshalled the planks and his tools and to work
When the last nail was driven and the lid duly planed and fitted he
lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it inquiring whether they
were ready for it yet in that direction
Overhearing the indignant but halfhumorous cries with which the people on
deck began to drive the coffin away Queequeg to everyones consternation
commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to him nor was there any
denying him seeing that of all mortals some dying men are the most
tyrannical and certainly since they will shortly trouble us so little for
evermore the poor fellows ought to be indulged
Leaning over in his hammock Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an
attentive eye He then called for his harpoon had the wooden stock drawn from
it and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of the
paddles of his boat All by his own request also biscuits were then ranged
round the sides within a flask of fresh water was placed at the head and a
small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot and a piece of
sailcloth being rolled up for a pillow Queequeg now entreated to be lifted
into his final bed that he might make trial of its comforts if any it had He
lay without moving a few minutes then told one to go to his bag and bring out
his little god Yojo Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between he
called for the coffin lid hatch he called it to be placed over him The head
part turned over with a leather hinge and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with
little but his composed countenance in view »Rarmai« it will do it is easy
he murmured at last and signed to be replaced in his hammock
But ere this was done Pip who had been slyly hovering near by all this
while drew nigh to him where he lay and with soft sobbings took him by the
hand in the other holding his tambourine
»Poor rover will ye never have done with all this weary roving where go ye
now But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the beaches are
only beat with waterlilies will ye do one little errand for me Seek out one
Pip who s now been missing long I think he s in those far Antilles If ye
find him then comfort him for he must be very sad for look he s left his
tambourine behind I found it Rigadig dig dig Now Queequeg die and I
ll beat ye your dying march«
»I have heard« murmured Starbuck gazing down the scuttle »that in violent
fevers men all ignorance have talked in ancient tongues and that when the
mystery is probed it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood
those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty
scholars So to my fond faith poor Pip in this strange sweetness of his
lunacy brings heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes Where learned he
that but there Hark he speaks again but more wildly now«
»Form two and two Let s make a General of him Ho where s his harpoon
Lay it across here Rigadig dig dig huzza Oh for a game cock now to sit
upon his head and crow Queequeg dies game mind ye that Queequeg dies game
take ye good heed of that Queequeg dies game I say game game game but
base little Pip he died a coward died all ashiver out upon Pip Hark ye
if ye find Pip tell all the Antilles he s a runaway a coward a coward a
coward Tell them he jumped from a whaleboat I d never beat my tambourine
over base Pip and hail him General if he were once more dying here No no
shame upon all cowards shame upon them Let em go drown like Pip that jumped
from a whaleboat Shame shame«
During all this Queequeg lay with closed eyes as if in a dream Pip was
led away and the sick man was replaced in his hammock
But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death now that
his coffin was proved a good fit Queequeg suddenly rallied soon there seemed
no need of the carpenters box and thereupon when some expressed their
delighted surprise he in substance said that the cause of his sudden
convalescence was this at a critical moment he had just recalled a little
duty ashore which he was leaving undone and therefore had changed his mind
about dying he could not die yet he averred They asked him then whether to
live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure He answered
certainly In a word it was Queequegs conceit that if a man made up his mind
to live mere sickness could not kill him nothing but a whale or a gale or
some violent ungovernable unintelligent destroyer of that sort
Now there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilised that
while a sick civilised man may be six months convalescing generally speaking
a sick savage is almost halfwell again in a day So in good time my Queequeg
gained strength and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent
days but eating with a vigorous appetite he suddenly leaped to his feet threw
out his arms and legs gave himself a good stretching yawned a little bit and
then springing into the head of his hoisted boat and poising a harpoon
pronounced himself fit for a fight
With a wild whimsiness he now used his coffin for a seachest and emptying
into it his canvas bag of clothes set them in order there Many spare hours he
spent in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings and
it seemed that hereby he was striving in his rude way to copy parts of the
twisted tattooing on his body And this tattooing had been the work of a
departed prophet and seer of his island who by those hieroglyphic marks had
written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth and a
mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth so that Queequeg in his own
proper person was a riddle to unfold a wondrous work in one volume but whose
mysteries not even himself could read though his own live heart beat against
them and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away
with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed and so be unsolved to the
last And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild
exclamation of his when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg
»Oh devilish tantalisation of the gods«
Chapter CXI
The Pacific
When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South Sea
were it not for other things I could have greeted my dear Pacific with
uncounted thanks for now the long supplication of my youth was answered that
serene ocean rolled eastward from me a thousand leagues of blue
There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea whose gently
awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath like those fabled
undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St John And meet it
is that over these seapastures widerolling watery prairies and Potters
Fields of all four continents the waves should rise and fall and ebb and flow
unceasingly for here millions of mixed shades and shadows drowned dreams
somnambulisms reveries all that we call lives and souls lie dreaming
dreaming still tossing like slumberers in their beds the everrolling waves
but made so by their restlessness
To any meditative Magian rover this serene Pacific once beheld must ever
after be the sea of his adoption It rolls the midmost waters of the world the
Indian Ocean and Atlantic being but its arms The same waves wash the moles of
the newbuilt Californian towns but yesterday planted by the recentest race of
men and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands older than
Abraham while all between float milkyways of coral isles and lowlying
endless unknown archipelagoes and impenetrable Japans Thus this mysterious
divine Pacific zones the worlds whole bulk about makes all coasts one bay to
it seems the tidebeating heart of earth Lifted by those eternal swells you
needs must own the seductive god bowing your head to Pan
But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahabs brain as standing like an iron
statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging with one nostril he
unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles in whose sweet woods
mild lovers must be walking and with the other consciously inhaled the salt
breath of the new found sea that sea in which the hated White Whale must even
then be swimming Launched at length upon these almost final waters and gliding
toward the Japanese cruisingground the old mans purpose intensified itself
His firm lips met like the lips of a vice the Delta of his foreheads veins
swelled like overladen brooks in his very sleep his ringing cry ran through
the vaulted hull »Stern all the White Whale spouts thick blood«
Chapter CXII
The Blacksmith
Availing himself of the mild summercool weather that now reigned in these
latitudes and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits shortly to be
anticipated Perth the begrimed blistered old blacksmith had not removed his
portable forge to the hold again after concluding his contributory work for
Ahabs leg but still retained it on deck fast lashed to ringbolts by the
foremast being now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen and
harpooneers and bowsmen to do some little job for them altering or repairing
or new shaping their various weapons and boat furniture Often he would be
surrounded by an eager circle all waiting to be served holding boatspades
pikeheads harpoons and lances and jealously watching his every sooty
movement as he toiled Nevertheless this old mans was a patient hammer
wielded by a patient arm No murmur no impatience no petulance did come from
him Silent slow and solemn bowing over still further his chronically broken
back he toiled away as if toil were life itself and the heavy beating of his
hammer the heavy beating of his heart And so it was Most miserable
A peculiar walk in this old man a certain slight but painful appearing
yawing in his gait had at an early period of the voyage excited the curiosity
of the mariners And to the importunity of their persisted questionings he had
finally given in and so it came to pass that everyone now knew the shameful
story of his wretched fate
Belated and not innocently one bitter winters midnight on the road
running between two country towns the blacksmith halfstupidly felt the deadly
numbness stealing over him and sought refuge in a leaning dilapidated barn
The issue was the loss of the extremities of both feet Out of this revelation
part by part at last came out the four acts of the gladness and the one long
and as yet uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his lifes drama
He was an old man who at the age of nearly sixty had postponedly
encountered that thing in sorrows technicals called ruin He had been an
artisan of famed excellence and with plenty to do owned a house and garden
embraced a youthful daughterlike loving wife and three blithe ruddy
children every Sunday went to a cheerfullooking church planted in a grove
But one night under cover of darkness and further concealed in a most cunning
disguisement a desperate burglar slid into his happy home and robbed them all
of everything And darker yet to tell the blacksmith himself did ignorantly
conduct this burglar into his familys heart It was the Bottle Conjurer 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 the basement of his dwelling but with a separate entrance to it so that
always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy
nervousness but with vigorous pleasure to the stout ringing of her youngarmed
old husbands hammer whose reverberations muffled by passing through the
floors and walls came up to her not unsweetly in her nursery and so to
stout Labours iron lullaby the blacksmiths infants were rocked to slumber
Oh woe on woe Oh Death why canst thou not sometimes be timely Hadst
thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him then
had the young widow had a delicious grief and her orphans a truly venerable
legendary sire to dream of in their after years and all of them a carekilling
competency But Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother on whose
whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family and
left the worse than useless old man standing till the hideous rot of life
should make him easier to harvest
Why tell the whole The blows of the basement hammer every day grew more and
more between and each blow every day grew fainter than the last the wife sat
frozen at the window with tearless eyes glitteringly gazing into the weeping
faces of her children the bellows fell the forge choked up with cinders the
house was sold the mother dived down into the long churchyard grass her
children twice followed her thither and the houseless familyless old man
staggered off a vagabond in crape his every woe unreverenced his gray head a
scorn to flaxen curls
Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this but Death is
only a launching into the region of the strange Untried it is but the first
salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote the Wild the Watery the
Unshored therefore to the deathlonging eyes of such men who still have left
in them some interior compunctions against suicide does the allcontributed and
allreceptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable
taking terrors and wonderful newlife adventures and from the hearts of
infinite Pacifics the thousand mermaids sing to them »Come hither
brokenhearted here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death
here are wonders supernatural without dying for them Come hither bury thyself
in a life which to your now equally abhorred and abhorring landed world is
more oblivious than death Come hither put up thy gravestone too within the
churchyard and come hither till we marry thee«
Hearkening to these voices East and West by early sunrise and by fall of
eve the blacksmiths soul responded Ay I come And so Perth went awhaling
Chapter CXIII
The Forge
With matted beard and swathed in a bristling sharkskin apron about midday
Perth was standing between his forge and anvil the latter placed upon an
ironwood log with one hand holding a pikehead in the coals and with the
other at his forges lungs when Captain Ahab came along carrying in his hand a
small rustylooking leathern bag While yet a little distance from the forge
moody Ahab paused till at last Perth withdrawing his iron from the fire
began hammering it upon the anvil the red mass sending off the sparks in thick
hovering flights some of which flew close to Ahab
»Are these thy Mother Careys chickens Perth they are always flying in thy
wake birds of good omen too but not to all look here they burn but thou
thou livst among them without a scorch«
»Because I am scorched all over Captain Ahab« answered Perth resting for
a moment on his hammer »I am past scorching not easily 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 impatient of all misery in others that is not
mad Thou shouldst go mad blacksmith say why dost thou not go mad How canst
thou endure without being mad Do the heavens yet hate thee that thou canst not
go mad What wert thou making there«
»Welding an old pikehead sir there were seams and dents in it«
»And canst thou make it all smooth again blacksmith after such hard usage
as it had«
»I think so sir«
»And I suppose thou canst smoothe almost any seams and dents never mind how
hard the metal blacksmith«
»Ay 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 »look ye here here can ye smooth out a seam
like this blacksmith« sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow »if thou
couldst blacksmith glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil and feel
thy heaviest hammer between my eyes Answer Canst thou smoothe this seam«
»Oh that is the one sir Said I not all seams and dents but one«
»Ay blacksmith it is the one ay man it is unsmoothable for though thou
only seest it here in my flesh it has worked down into the bone of my skull
that is all wrinkles But away with childs play no more gaffs and pikes
today 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 finbone
There s the stuff« flinging the pouch upon the anvil »Look ye blacksmith
these are the gathered nailstubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses«
»Horseshoe stubbs sir Why Captain Ahab thou hast here then the best
and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work«
»I know it old man these stubbs will weld together like glue from the
melted bones of murderers Quick forge me the harpoon And forge me first
twelve rods for its shank then wind and twist and hammer these twelve
together like the yarns and strands of a towline Quick I ll blow the fire«
When at last the twelve rods were made Ahab tried them one by one by
spiralling them with his own hand round a long heavy iron bolt »A flaw«
rejecting the last one »Work that over again Perth«
This done Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one when Ahab
stayed his hand and said he would weld his own iron As then with regular
gasping hems he hammered on the anvil Perth passing to him the glowing rods
one after the other and the hardpressed forge shooting up its intense straight
flame the Parsee passed silently and bowing over his head toward the fire
seemed invoking some curse or some blessing on the toil But as Ahab looked up
he slid aside
»What s that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for« muttered Stubb
looking on from the forecastle »That Parsee smells fire like a fusee and
smells of it himself like a hot muskets powderpan«
At last the shank in one complete rod received its final heat and as
Perth to temper it plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near by the
scalding steam shot up into Ahabs bent face
»Wouldst thou brand me Perth« wincing for a moment with the pain »have I
been but forging my own brandingiron then«
»Pray God not that yet I fear something Captain Ahab Is not this harpoon
for the White Whale«
»For the white fiend But now for the barbs thou must make them thyself
man Here are my razors the best of steel here and make the barbs sharp as
the needlesleet of the Icy Sea«
For a moment the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain not
use them
»Take them man I have no need for them for I now neither shave sup nor
pray till but here to work«
Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape and welded by Perth to the shank
the steel soon pointed the end of the iron and as the blacksmith was about
giving the barbs their final heat prior to tempering them he cried to Ahab to
place the watercask near
»No no no water for that I want it of the true deathtemper Ahoy
there Tashtego Queequeg Daggoo What say ye pagans Will ye give me as much
blood as will cover this barb« holding it high up A cluster of dark nods
replied Yes Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh and the White
Whales barbs were then tempered
»Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris sed in nomine diaboli« deliriously
howled Ahab as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood
Now mustering the spare poles from below and selecting one of hickory
with the bark still investing it Ahab fitted the end to the socket of the iron
A coil of new towline was then unwound and some fathoms of it taken to the
windlass and stretched to a great tension Pressing his foot upon it till the
rope hummed like a harpstring then eagerly bending over it and seeing no
strandings Ahab exclaimed »Good and now for the seizings«
At one extremity the rope was unstranded and the separate spread yarns were
all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon the pole was then driven
hard up into the socket from the lower end the rope was traced halfway along
the poles length and firmly secured so with intertwistings of twine This
done pole iron and rope like the Three Fates remained inseparable and
Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon the sound of his ivory leg and the
sound of the hickory pole both hollowly ringing along every plank But ere he
entered his cabin a light unnatural halfbantering yet most piteous sound
was heard Oh Pip thy wretched laugh thy idle but unresting eye all thy
strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the
melancholy ship and mocked it
Chapter CXIV
The Gilder
Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruisingground
the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery Often in mild pleasant weather
for twelve fifteen eighteen and twenty hours on the stretch they were
engaged in the boats steadily pulling or sailing or paddling after the
whales or for an interlude of sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting their
uprising though with but small success for their pains
At such times under an abated sun afloat all day upon smooth slowheaving
swells seated in his boat light as a birch canoe and so sociably mixing with
the soft waves themselves that like hearthstone cats they purr against the
gunwale these are the times of dreamy quietude when beholding the tranquil
beauty and brilliancy of the oceans skin one forgets the tiger heart that
pants beneath it and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but
conceals a remorseless fang
These are the times when in his whaleboat the rover softly feels a certain
filial confident landlike feeling toward the sea that he regards it as so
much flowery earth and the distant ship revealing only the tops of her masts
seems struggling forward not through high rolling waves but through the tall
grass of a rolling prairie as when the Western emigrants horses only show
their erected ears while their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing
verdure
The longdrawn virgin vales the mild blue hillsides as over these there
steals the hush the hum you almost swear that playwearied children lie
sleeping in these solitudes in some glad Maytime when the flowers of the
woods are plucked And all this mixes with your most mystic mood so that fact
and fancy halfway meeting interpenetrate and form one seamless whole
Nor did such soothing scenes however temporary fail of at least as
temporary an effect on Ahab But if these secret golden keys did seem to open in
him his own secret golden treasuries yet did his breath upon them prove but
tarnishing
Oh grassy glades oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul in ye
though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life in ye men yet may
roll like young horses in new morning clover and for some few fleeting
moments feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them Would to God these
blessed calms would last But the mingled mingling threads of life are woven by
warp and woof calms crossed by storms a storm for every calm There is no
steady unretracing progress in this life we do not advance through fixed
gradations and at the last one pause through infancys unconscious spell
boyhoods thoughtless faith adolescence doubt the common doom then
scepticism then disbelief resting at last in manhoods pondering repose of If
But once gone through we trace the round again and are infants boys and men
and Ifs eternally Where lies the final harbour whence we unmoor no more In
what rapt ether sails the world of which the weariest will never weary Where
is the foundlings father hidden Our souls are like those orphans whose
unwedded mothers die in bearing them the secret of our paternity lies in their
grave and we must there to learn it
And that same day too gazing far down from his boats side into that same
golden sea Starbuck lowly murmured
»Loveliness unfathomable as ever lover saw in his young brides eye Tell
me not of thy teethtiered sharks and thy kidnapping cannibal ways Let faith
oust fact let fancy oust memory I look deep down and do believe«
And Stubb fishlike with sparkling scales leaped up in that same golden
light
»I am Stubb and Stubb has his history but here Stubb takes oaths that he
has always been jolly«
Chapter CXV
The Pequod Meets the Bachelor
And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down before
the wind some few weeks after Ahabs harpoon had been welded
It was a Nantucket ship the Bachelor which had just wedged in her last
cask of oil and bolted down her bursting hatches and now in glad holiday
apparel was joyously though somewhat vaingloriously sailing round among the
widely separated ships on the ground previous to pointing her prow for home
The three men at her masthead wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at
their hats from the stern a whaleboat was suspended bottom down and hanging
captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last whale they had
slain Signals ensigns and jacks of all colours were flying from her rigging
on every side Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two
barrels of sperm above which in her topmast crosstrees you saw slender
breakers of the same precious fluid and nailed to her maintruck was a brazen
lamp
As was afterward learned the Bachelor had met with the most surprising
success all the more wonderful for that while cruising in the same seas
numerous other vessels had gone entire months without securing a single fish
Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to make room for the far
more valuable sperm but additional supplemental casks had been bartered for
from the ships she had met and these were stowed along the deck and in the
captains and officers staterooms Even the cabintable itself had been
knocked into kindlingwood and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of an
oilbutt lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece In the forecastle the
sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests and filled them it was
humorously added that the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler and
filled it that the steward had plugged his spare coffeepot and filled it that
the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled them that
indeed everything was filled with sperm except the captains pantaloons
pockets and those he reserved to thrust his hands into in selfcomplacent
testimony of his entire satisfaction
As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod the
barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle and drawing still
nearer a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge trypots which
covered with the parchment poke or stomach skin of the blackfish gave forth a
loud roar to every stroke of the clenched hands of the crew On the
quarterdeck the mates and harpooneers were dancing with the olivehued girls
who had eloped with them from the Polynesian isles while suspended in an
ornamented boat firmly secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast three
Long Island negroes with glittering fiddlebows of whaleivory were presiding
over the hilarious jig Meanwhile others of the ships company were
tumultuously busy at the masonry of the tryworks from which the huge pots had
been removed You would have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed
Bastille such wild cries they raised as the now useless brick and mortar were
being hurled into the sea
Lord and master over all this scene the captain stood erect on the ships
elevated quarterdeck so that the whole rejoicing drama was full before him
and seemed merely contrived for his own individual diversion
And Ahab he too was standing on his quarterdeck shaggy and black with a
stubborn gloom and as the two ships crossed each others wakes one all
jubilations for things past the other all forebodings as to things to come
their two captains in themselves impersonated the whole striking contrast of the
scene
»Come aboard come aboard« cried the gay Bachelors commander lifting a
glass and a bottle in the air
»Hast seen the White Whale« gritted Ahab in reply
»No only heard of him but dont believe in him at all« said the other
goodhumouredly »Come aboard«
»Thou art too damned jolly Sail on Hast lost any men«
»Not enough to speak of two islanders that s all but come aboard old
hearty come along I ll soon take that black from your brow Come along will
ye merry s the play a full ship and homeward bound«
»How wondrous familiar is a fool« muttered Ahab then aloud »Thou art a
full ship and homeward bound thou sayst well then call me an empty ship
and outward bound So go thy ways and I will mine Forward there Set all sail
and keep her to the wind«
And thus while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze the other
stubbornly fought against it and so the two vessels parted the crew of the
Pequod looking with grave lingering glances toward the receding Bachelor but
the Bachelors men never heeding their gaze for the lively revelry they were in
And as Ahab leaning over the taffrail eyed the homewardbound craft he took
from his pocket a small vial of sand and then looking from the ship to the
vial seemed thereby bringing two remote associations together for that vial
was filled with Nantucket soundings
Chapter CXVI
The Dying Whale
Not seldom in this life when on the right side fortunes favourites sail
close by us we though all adroop before catch somewhat of the rushing breeze
and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out So seemed it with the Pequod For
next day after encountering the gay Bachelor whales were seen and four were
slain and one of them by Ahab
It was far down the afternoon and when all the spearings of the crimson
fight were done and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky sun and whale
both stilly died together then such a sweetness and such plaintiveness such
inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air that it almost seemed as if far
over from the deep green convent valleys of the Manilla isles the Spanish
landbreeze wantonly turned sailor had gone to sea freighted with these
vesper hymns
Soothed again but only soothed to deeper gloom Ahab who had sterned off
from the whale sat intently watching his final wanings from the now tranquil
boat For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales dying the
turning sunward of the head and so expiring that strange spectacle beheld of
such a placid evening somehow to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before
»He turns and turns him to it how slowly but how steadfastly his
homagerendering and invoking brow with his last dying motions He too worships
fire most faithful broad baronial vassal of the sun Oh that these
toofavouring eyes should see these toofavouring sights Look here far
waterlocked beyond all hum of human weal or woe in these most candid and
impartial seas where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets where for long
Chinese ages the billows have still rolled on speechless and unspoken to as
stars that shine upon the Nigers unknown source here too life dies sunward
full of faith but see no sooner dead than death whirls round the corpse and
it heads some other way
Oh thou dark Hindu half of nature who of drowned bones hast builded thy
separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas thou art an
infidel thou queen and too truly speakest to me in the wideslaughtering
typhoon and the hushed burial of its after calm Nor has this thy whale sunward
turned his dying head and then gone round again without a lesson to me
Oh trebly hooped and welded hip of power Oh high aspiring rainbowed jet
that one strivest this one jettest all in vain In vain oh whale dost thou
seek intercedings with yon allquickening sun that only calls forth life but
gives it not again Yet dost thou darker half rock me with a prouder if a
darker faith All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here I am buoyed
by breaths of once living things exhaled as air but water now
Then hail forever hail O sea in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl
finds his only rest Born of earth yet suckled by the sea though hill and
valley mothered me ye billows are my fosterbrothers«
Chapter CXVII
The WhaleWatch
The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart one far to windward
one less distant to leeward one ahead one astern These last three were
brought alongside ere nightfall but the windward one could not be reached till
morning and the boat that had killed it lay by its side all night and that
boat was Ahabs
The waifpole was thrust upright into the dead whales spouthole and the
lantern hanging from its top cast a troubled flickering glare upon the black
glossy back and far out upon the midnight waves which gently chafed the
whales 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 that spectrally played round the whale and
tapped the light cedar planks with their tails A sound like the moaning in
squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of Gomorrah ran shuddering
through the air
Started from his slumbers Ahab face to face saw the Parsee and hooped
round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a flooded world »I
have dreamed it again« said he
»Of the hearses Have I not said old man that neither hearse nor coffin
can be thine«
»And who are hearsed that die on the sea«
»But I said old man that ere thou couldst die on this voyage two hearses
must verily be seen by thee on the sea the first not made by mortal hands and
the visible wood of the last one must be grown in America«
»Ay ay a strange sight that Parsee a hearse and its plumes floating
over the ocean with the waves for the pallbearers Ha Such a sight we shall
not soon see«
»Believe it or not thou canst not die till it be seen old man«
»And what was that saying about thyself«
»Though it come to the last I shall still go before thee thy pilot«
»And when thou art so gone before if that ever befall then ere I can
follow thou must still appear to me to pilot me still Was it not so Well
then did I believe all ye say oh my pilot I have here two pledges that I
shall yet slay MobyDick and survive it«
»Take another pledge old man« said the Parsee as his eyes lighted up like
fireflies in the gloom »Hemp only can kill thee«
»The gallows ye mean I am immortal then on land and on sea« cried
Ahab with a laugh of derision »Immortal on land and on sea«
Both were silent again as one man The gray dawn came on and the
slumbering crew arose from the boats bottom and ere noon the dead whale was
brought to the ship
Chapter CXVIII
The Quadrant
The season for the Line at length drew near and every day when Ahab coming
from his cabin cast his eyes aloft the vigilant helmsman would ostentatiously
handle his spokes and the eager mariners quickly run to the braces and would
stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed on the nailed doubloon
impatient for the order to point the ships prow for the Equator In good time
the order came It was hard upon high noon and Ahab seated in the bows of his
highhoisted boat was about taking his wonted daily observation of the sun to
determine his latitude
Now in that Japanese sea the days in summer are as freshets of
effulgences That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the
glassy oceans immeasurable burningglass The sky looks lacquered clouds there
are none the horizon floats and this nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as
the insufferable splendours of Gods throne Well that Ahabs quadrant was
furnished with coloured glasses through which to take sight of that solar fire
So swinging his seated form to the roll of the ship and with his
astrologicallooking instrument placed to his eye he remained in that posture
for some moments to catch the precise instant when the sun should gain its
precise meridian Meantime while his whole attention was absorbed the Parsee
was kneeling beneath him on the ships deck and with face thrown up like
Ahabs was eyeing the same sun with him only the lids of his eyes half hooded
their orbs and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness At
length the desired observation was taken and with his pencil upon his ivory
leg Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant
Then falling into a moments revery he again looked up toward the sun and
murmured to himself »Thou seamark thou high and mighty Pilot thou tellest me
truly where I am but canst thou cast the least hint where I shall be Or canst
thou tell where some other thing besides me is this moment living Where is
MobyDick This instant thou must be eyeing him These eyes of mine look into
the very eye that is even now beholding him ay and into the eye that is even
now equally beholding the objects on the unknown thither side of thee thou
sun«
Then gazing at his quadrant and handling one after the other its numerous
cabalistical contrivances he pondered again and muttered »Foolish toy
babies plaything of haughty admirals and commodores and captains the world
brags of thee of thy cunning and might but what after all canst thou do but
tell the poor pitiful point where thou thyself happenest to be on this wide
planet and the hand that holds thee no not one jot more Thou canst not tell
where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be tomorrow noon and yet
with thy impotence thou insultest the sun Science Curse thee thou vain toy
and cursed be all the things that cast mans eyes aloft to that heaven whose
live vividness but scorches him as these old eyes are even now scorched with
thy light O sun Level by nature to this earths horizon are the glances of
mans eyes not shot from the crown of his head as if God had meant him to gaze
on his firmament Curse thee thou quadrant« dashing it to the deck »no longer
will I guide my earthly way by thee the level ships compass and the level
deadreckoning by log and by line these shall conduct me and show me my place
on the sea Ay« lighting from the boat to the deck »thus I trample on thee
thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high thus I split and destroy thee«
As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live and dead
feet a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab and a fatalistic despair
that seemed meant for himself these passed over the mute motionless Parsees
face Unobserved he rose and glided away while awestruck by the aspect of
their commander the seamen clustered together on the forecastle till Ahab
troubledly pacing the deck shouted out »To the braces Up helm square in«
In an instant the yards swung round and as the ship halfwheeled upon her
heel her three firmseated graceful masts erectly poised upon her long ribbed
hull seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one sufficient steed
Standing between the knightheads Starbuck watched the Pequods tumultuous
way and Ahabs also as he went lurching along the deck
»I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow full of its
tormented flaming life and I have seen it wane at last down down to dumbest
dust Old man of oceans of all this fiery life of thine what will at length
remain but one little heap of ashes«
»Ay« cried Stubb »but seacoal ashes mind ye that Mr Starbuck
seacoal not your common charcoal Well well I heard Ahab mutter »Here
someone thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine swears that I must
play them and no others« And damn me Ahab but thou actest right live in the
game and die it«
Chapter CXIX
The Candles
Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs the tiger of Bengal crouches in
spiced groves of ceaseless verdure Skies the most effulgent but basket the
deadliest thunders gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame Northern
lands So too it is that in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner
encounters the direst of all storms the typhoon It will sometimes burst from
out that cloudless sky like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town
Toward evening of that day the Pequod was torn of her canvas and
barepoled was left to fight a typhoon which had struck her directly ahead When
darkness came on sky and sea roared and split with the thunder and blazed with
the lightning that showed the disabled masts fluttering here and there with the
rags which the first fury of the tempest had left for its after sport
Holding by a shroud Starbuck was standing on the quarterdeck at every
flash of the lightning glancing aloft to see what additional disaster might
have befallen the intricate hamper there while Stubb and Flask were directing
the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the boats But all their
pains seemed naught Though lifted to the very top of the cranes the windward
quarterboat Ahabs did not escape A great rolling sea dashing high up
against the reeling ships high tetering side stove in the boats bottom at the
stern and left it again all dripping through like a sieve
»Bad work bad work Mr Starbuck« said Stubb regarding the wreck »but
the sea will have its way Stubb for one cant fight it You see Mr
Starbuck a wave has such a great long start before it leaps all round the
world it runs and then comes the spring But as for me all the start I have to
meet it is just across the deck here But never mind it s all in fun so the
old song says « sings
»Oh jolly is the gale
And a joker is the whale
Aflourishin his tail
Such a funny sporty gamy jesty joky hokypoky lad is the Ocean oh
The scud all aflyin
That s his flip only foamin
When he stirs in the spicin
Such a funny sporty gamy jesty joky hokypoky 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 hokypoky lad is the Ocean oh«
»Avast Stubb« cried Starbuck »let the typhoon sing and strike his harp here
in our rigging but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy peace«
»But I am not a brave man never said I was a brave man I am a coward and
I sing to keep up my spirits And I tell you what it is Mr Starbuck there s
no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my throat And when that s
done ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a windup«
»Madman look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own«
»What how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else never mind
how foolish«
»Here« cried Starbuck seizing Stubb by the shoulder and pointing his hand
toward the weatherbow »markest thou not that the gale comes from the eastward
the very course Ahab is to run for MobyDick the very course he swung to this
day noon now mark his boat there where is that stove In the sternsheets
man where he is wont to stand his standpoint is stove man Now jump
overboard and sing away if thou must«
»I dont half understand ye what s in the wind«
»Yes yes round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to Nantucket«
soliloquised Starbuck suddenly heedless of Stubbs question »The gale that now
hammers at us to stave us we can turn it into a fair wind that will drive us
toward home Yonder to windward all is blackness of doom but to leeward
homeward I see it lightens up there but not with the lightning«
At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness following the
flashes a voice was heard at his side and almost at the same instant a volley
of thunder peals rolled overhead
»Who s there«
»Old Thunder« said Ahab groping his way along the bulwarks to his
pivothole but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed lances of
fire
Now as the lightningrod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off the
perilous fluid into the soil so the kindred rod which at sea some ships carry
to each mast is intended to conduct it into the water But as this conductor
must descend to considerable depth that its end may avoid all contact with the
hull and as moreover if kept constantly towing there it would be liable to
many mishaps besides interfering not a little with some of the rigging and
more or less impeding the vessels way in the water because of all this the
lower parts of a ships lightningrods are not always overboard but are
generally made in long slender links so as to be the more readily hauled up
into the chains outside or thrown down into the sea as occasion may require
»The rods the rods« cried Starbuck to the crew suddenly admonished to
vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux to light
Ahab to his post »Are they overboard drop them over fore and aft Quick«
»Avast« cried Ahab »lets have fair play here though we be the weaker
side Yet I ll contribute to raise rods on the Himalayas and Andes that all
the world may be secured but out on privileges Let them be sir«
»Look aloft« cried Starbuck »The corpusants the corpusants«
All the yardarms were tipped with a pallid fire and touched at each
tripointed lightningrodend with three tapering white flames each of the
three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air like three
gigantic wax tapers before an altar
»Blast the boat let it go« cried Stubb at this instant as a swashing sea
heaved up under his own little craft so that its gunwale violently jammed his
hand as he was passing a lashing »Blast it« but slipping backward on the
deck his uplifted eyes caught the flames and immediately shifting his tone he
cried »The corpusants have mercy on us all«
To sailors oaths are household words they will swear in the trance of the
calm and in the teeth of the tempest they will imprecate curses from the
topsailyardarms when most they teter over to a seething sea but in all my
voyagings seldom have I heard a common oath when Gods burning finger has been
laid on the ship when His Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin has been woven into the
shrouds and the cordage
While this pallidness was burning aloft few words were heard from the
enchanted crew who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle all their eyes
gleaming in that pale phosphorescence like a faraway constellation of stars
Relieved against the ghostly light the gigantic jet negro Daggoo loomed up to
thrice his real stature and seemed the black cloud from which the thunder had
come The parted mouth of Tashtego revealed his sharkwhite teeth which
strangely gleamed as if they too had been tipped by corpusants while lit up by
the preternatural light Queequegs tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames on
his body
The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft and once more the
Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall A moment or two
passed when Starbuck going forward pushed against someone It was Stubb
»What thinkest thou now man I heard thy cry it was not 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 on long faces have they no
bowels for a laugh And look ye Mr Starbuck but it s too dark to look Hear
me then I take that masthead flame we saw for a sign of good luck for those
masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be chockablock with sperm oil d
ye see and so all that sperm will work up into the masts like sap in a tree
Yes our three masts will yet be as three spermaceti candles that s the good
promise we saw«
At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb s face slowly beginning to
glimmer into sight Glancing upward he cried »See see« and once more the
high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled supernaturalness in
their pallor
»The corpusants have mercy on us all« cried Stubb again
At the base of the mainmast full beneath the doubloon and the flame the
Parsee was kneeling in Ahabs front but with his head bowed away from him
while near by from the arched and overhanging rigging where they had just been
engaged securing a spar a number of the seamen arrested by the glare now
cohered together and hung pendulous like a knot of numbed wasps from a
drooping orchard twig In various enchanted attitudes like the standing or
stepping or running skeletons in Herculaneum others remained rooted to the
deck but all their eyes upcast
»Ay ay men« cried Ahab »Look up at it mark it well the white flame but
lights the way to the White Whale Hand me those mainmast links there I would
fain feel this pulse and let mine beat against it blood against fire So«
Then turning the last link held fast in his left hand he put his foot
upon the Parsee and with fixed upward eye and highflung right arm he stood
erect before the lofty tripointed trinity of flames
»Oh thou clear spirit of clear fire whom on these seas I as Persian once
did worship till in the sacramental act so burned by thee that to this hour I
bear the scar I now know thee thou clear spirit and I now know that thy right
worship is defiance To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind and een
for hate thou canst but kill and all are killed No fearless fool now fronts
thee I own thy speechless placeless power but to the last gasp of my
earthquake life will dispute its unconditional unintegral mastery in me In the
midst of the personified impersonal a personality stands here Though but a
point at best whencesoeer I came wheresoeer I go yet while I earthly live
the queenly personality lives in me and feels her royal rights But war is
pain and hate is woe Come in thy lowest form of love and I will kneel and
kiss thee but at thy highest come as mere supernal power and though thou
launchest navies of fullfreighted worlds there s that in here that still
remains indifferent Oh thou clear spirit of thy fire thou madest me and like
a true child of fire I breathe it back to thee«
Sudden repeated flashes of lightning the nine flames leap lengthwise to
thrice their previous height Ahab with the rest closes his eyes his right
hand pressed hard upon them
»I own thy speechless placeless power said I not so Nor was it wrung from me
nor do I now drop these links Thou canst blind but I can then grope Thou
canst consume but I can then be ashes Take the homage of these poor eyes and
shutterhands I would not take it The lightning flashes through my skull mine
eyeballs ache and ache my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded and rolling on
some stunning ground Oh oh Yet blindfold yet will I talk to thee Light
though thou be thou leapest out of darkness but I am darkness leaping out of
light leaping out of thee The javelins cease open eyes see or not There
burn the flames Oh thou magnanimous now I do glory in my genealogy But thou
art but my fiery father my sweet mother I know not Oh cruel what hast thou
done with her There lies my puzzle but thine is greater Thou knowest not how
came ye hence callest thyself unbegotten certainly knowest not thy beginning
hence callest thyself unbegun I know that of me which thou knowest not of
thyself oh thou omnipotent There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee thou
clear spirit to whom all thy eternity is but time all thy creativeness
mechanical Through thee thy flaming self my scorched eyes do dimly see it
Oh thou foundling fire thou hermit immemorial thou too hast thy
incommunicable riddle thy unparticipated grief Here again with haughty agony
I read my sire Leap leap up and lick the sky I leap with thee I burn with
thee would fain be welded with thee defyingly I worship thee«
»The boat the boat« cried Starbuck »look at thy boat old man«
Ahabs harpoon the one forged at Perths fire remained firmly lashed in
its conspicuous crotch so that it projected beyond his whaleboats bow but
the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to drop
off and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flame of pale
forked fire As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpents tongue
Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm »God God is against thee old man forbear
tis an ill voyage ill begun ill continued let me square the yards while we
may old man and make a fair wind of it homeward to go on a better voyage than
this«
Overhearing Starbuck the panicstricken crew instantly ran to the braces
though not a sail was left aloft For the moment all the aghast mates thoughts
seemed theirs they raised a halfmutinous cry But dashing the rattling
lightning links to the deck and snatching the burning harpoon Ahab waved it
like a torch among them swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but
cast loose a ropesend Petrified by his aspect and still more shrinking from
the fiery dart that he held the men fell back in dismay and Ahab again spoke
»All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine and heart
soul and body lungs and life old Ahab is bound And that ye may know to what
tune this heart beats look ye here thus I blow out the last fear« And with
one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame
As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain men fly the neighbourhood of some
lone gigantic elm whose very height and strength but render it so much the
more unsafe because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts so at those last
words of Ahabs many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay
Chapter CXX
The Deck Toward the End of the First NightWatch
Ahab standing by the helm
Starbuck approaching him
»We must send down the maintopsailyard sir The band is working loose and
the lee lift is half stranded Shall I strike it sir«
»Strike nothing lash it If I had skysail poles I d sway them up 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 The wind rises but
it has not got up to my tablelands yet Quick and see to it By masts and
keels he takes me for the hunchbacked skipper of some coasting smack Send down
my maintopsailyard Ho gluepots Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds
and this braintruck of mine now sails amid the cloudscud Shall I strike that
Oh none but cowards send down their braintrucks in tempest time What a
hooroosh aloft there I would een take it for sublime did I not know that the
colic is a noisy malady Oh take medicine take medicine«
Chapter CXXI
Midnight The Forecastle Bulwarks
Stubb and Flask mounted on them and passing additional lashings over the
anchors there hanging
»No Stubb you may pound that knot there as much as you please but you will
never pound into me what you were just now saying And how long ago is it since
you said the very contrary Didnt you once say that whatever ship Ahab sails
in that ship should pay something extra on its insurance policy just as though
it were loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward Stop now
didnt you say so«
»Well suppose I did What then I ve part changed my flesh since that
time why not my mind Besides supposing we are loaded with powder barrels aft
and lucifers forward how the devil could the lucifers get afire in this
drenching spray here Why my little man you have pretty red hair but you
couldnt get afire now Shake yourself you re Aquarius or the waterbearer
Flask might fill pitchers at your coat collar Dont you see then that for
these extra risks the Marine Insurance companies have extra guarantees Here are
hydrants Flask But hark again and I ll answer ye the other thing First
take your leg off from the crown of the anchor here though so I can pass the
rope now listen What s the mighty difference between holding a masts
lightningrod in the storm and standing close by a mast that hasnt got any
lightningrod at all in a storm Dont you see you timberhead that no harm
can come to the holder of the rod unless the mast is first struck What are you
talking about then Not one ship in a hundred carries rods and Ahab ay
man and all of us were in no more danger then in my poor opinion than all
the crews in ten thousand ships now sailing the seas Why you KingPost you I
suppose you would have every man in the world go about with a small
lightningrod running up the corner of his hat like a militia officers
skewered feather and trailing behind like his sash Why dont ye be sensible
Flask it s easy to be sensible why dont 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 it s hard to be sensible that s a
fact And I am about drenched with this spray Never mind catch the turn there
and pass it Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors now as if they were
never going to be used again Tying these two anchors here Flask seems like
tying a mans hands behind him And what big generous hands they are to be
sure These are your iron fists hey What a hold they have too I wonder
Flask whether the world is anchored anywhere if she is she swings with an
uncommon long cable though There hammer that knot down and we ve done So
next to touching land lighting on deck is the most satisfactory I say just
wring out my jacket skirts will ye Thank ye They laugh at longtogs 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 the water d ye
see Same with cocked hats the cocks form gableend eavetroughs Flask No
more monkeyjackets and tarpaulins for me I must mount a swallowtail and
drive down a beaver so Halloa whew there goes my tarpaulin overboard Lord
Lord that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly This is a
nasty night lad«
Chapter CXXII
Midnight Aloft Thunder and Lightning
The Maintopsailyard Tashtego passing new lashings around it
»Um um um Stop that thunder Plenty too much thunder up here What s the use
of thunder Um um um We dont want thunder we want rum give us a glass of
rum Um um um«
Chapter CXXIII
The Musket
During the most violent shocks of the typhoon the man at the Pequods jawbone
tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by its spasmodic
motions even though preventer tackles had been attached to it for they were
slack because some play to the tiller was indispensable
In a severe gale like this while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock to
the blast it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses at
intervals go round and round It was thus with the Pequods at almost every
shock the helmsman had not failed to notice the whirling velocity with which
they revolved upon the cards it is a sight that hardly anyone can behold
without some sort of unwonted emotion
Some hours after midnight the typhoon abated so much that through the
strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb one engaged forward and the other
aft the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and maintopsails were cut
adrift from the spars and went eddying away to leeward like the feathers of an
albatross which sometimes are cast to the winds when that stormtossed bird is
on the wing
The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed and a
stormtrysail was set further aft so that the ship soon went through the water
with some precision again and the course for the present eastsoutheast
which he was to steer if practicable was once more given to the helmsman For
during the violence of the gale he had only steered according to its
vicissitudes But as he was now bringing the ship as near her course as
possible watching the compass meanwhile lo a good sign the wind seemed
coming round astern ay the foul breeze became fair
Instantly the yards were squared to the lively song of »Ho the fair wind
ohheyo cheerily men« the crew singing for joy that so promising an event
should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding it
In compliance with the standing order of his commander to report
immediately and at any one of the twentyfour hours any decided change in the
affairs of the deck Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to the breeze
however reluctantly and gloomily than he mechanically went below to apprise
Captain Ahab of the circumstance
Ere knocking at his stateroom he involuntarily paused before it a moment
The cabin lamp taking long swings this way and that was burning fitfully
and casting fitful shadows upon the old mans bolted door a thin one with
fixed blinds inserted in place of upper panels The isolated subterraneousness
of the cabin made a certain humming silence to reign there though it was hooped
round by all the roar of the elements The loaded muskets in the rack were
shiningly revealed as they stood upright against the forward bulkhead Starbuck
was an honest upright man but out of Starbucks heart at that instant when he
saw the muskets there strangely evolved an evil thought but so blent with its
neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for
itself
»He would have shot me once« he murmured »yes there s the very musket
that he pointed at me that one with the studded stock let me touch it lift
it Strange that I who have handled so many deadly lances strange that I
should shake so now Loaded I must see Ay ay and powder in the pan that
s not good Best spill it wait I ll cure myself of this I ll hold the
musket boldly while I think I come to report a fair wind to him But how
fair Fair for death and doom that s fair for MobyDick It s a fair wind
that s only fair for that accursed fish The very tube he pointed at me
the very one this one I hold it here he would have killed me with the very
thing I handle now Ay and he would fain kill all his crew Does he not say
he will not strike his spars to any gale Has he not dashed his heavenly
quadrant and in these same perilous seas gropes he not his way by mere dead
reckoning of the errorabounding log and in this very typhoon did he not swear
that he would have no lightningrods But shall this crazed old man be tamely
suffered to drag a whole ships company down to doom with him Yes it would
make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and more if this ship come to any
deadly harm and come to deadly harm my soul swears this ship will if Ahab
have his way If then he were this instant put aside that crime would not
be his Ha is he muttering in his sleep Yes just there in there he s
sleeping Sleeping ay but still alive and soon awake again I cant withstand
thee then old man Not reasoning not remonstrance not entreaty wilt thou
hearken to all this thou scornest Flat obedience to thy own flat commands
this is all thou breathest Ay and sayst the men have vowd thy vow sayst
all of us are Ahabs Great God forbid But is there no other way no lawful
way Make him a prisoner to be taken home What hope to wrest this old mans
living power from his own living hands Only a fool would try it Say he were
pinioned even knotted all over with ropes and hawsers chained down to
ringbolts on this cabin floor he would be more hideous than a caged tiger
then I could not endure the sight could not possibly fly his howlings all
comfort sleep itself inestimable reason would leave me on the long intolerable
voyage What then remains The land is hundreds of leagues away and locked
Japan the nearest I stand alone here upon an open sea with two oceans and a
whole continent between me and law Ay ay tis so Is heaven a murderer
when its lightning strikes a wouldbe murderer in his bed tindering sheets and
skin together And would I be a murderer then if « and slowly stealthily
and half sideways looking he placed the loaded muskets end against the door
»On this level Ahabs hammock swings within his head this way A touch
and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again Oh Mary Mary
boy boy boy But if I wake thee not to death old man who can tell to what
unsounded deeps 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 fore and maintopsails are reefed and set she heads her course«
»Stern all Oh MobyDick I clutch thy heart at last«
Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old mans tormented
sleep as if Starbucks voice had caused the long dumb dream to speak
The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkards arm against the panel
Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel but turning from the door he placed
the deathtube in its rack and left the place
»He s too sound asleep Mr Stubb go thou down and wake him and tell
him I must see to the deck here Thou knowst what to say«
Chapter CXXIV
The Needle
Next morning the notyetsubsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty
bulk and striving in the Pequods gurgling track pushed her on like giants
palms outspread The strong unstaggering breeze abounded so that sky and air
seemed vast outbellying sails the whole world boomed before the wind Muffled
in the full morning light the invisible sun was only known by the spread
intensity of his place where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks Emblazonings
as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens reigned over everything The sea was
as a crucible of molten gold that bubblingly leaps with light and heat
Long maintaining an enchanted silence Ahab stood apart and every time the
tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit he turned to eye the bright
suns rays produced ahead and when she profoundly settled by the stern he
turned behind and saw the suns rearward place and how the same yellow rays
were blending with his undeviating wake
»Ha ha my ship thou mightest well be taken now for the seachariot of the
sun Ho ho all ye nations before my prow I bring the sun to ye Yoke on the
further billows halloa a tandem I drive the sea«
But suddenly reined back by some counterthought he hurried toward the
helm huskily demanding how the ship was heading
»Eastsoueast sir« said the frightened steersman
»Thou liest« smiting him with his clenched fist »Heading east at this hour
in the morning and the sun astern«
Upon this every soul was confounded for the phenomenon just then observed
by Ahab had unaccountably escaped everyone else but its very blinding
palpableness must have been the cause
Thrusting his head halfway into the binnacle Ahab caught one glimpse of
the compasses his uplifted arm slowly fell for a moment he almost seemed to
stagger Standing behind him Starbuck looked and lo the two compasses pointed
east and the Pequod was as infallibly going west
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew the old
man with a rigid laugh exclaimed »I have it It has happened before Mr
Starbuck last nights thunder turned our compasses that s all Thou hast
before now heard of such a thing I take it«
»Ay but never before has it happened to me sir« said the pale mate
gloomily
Here it must needs be said that accidents like this have in more than one
case occurred to ships in violent storms The magnetic energy as developed in
the mariners needle is as all know essentially one with the electricity
beheld in heaven hence it is not to be much marvelled at that such things
should be In instances where the lightning has actually struck the vessel so
as to smite down some of the spars and rigging the effect upon the needle has
at times been still more fatal all its loadstone virtue being annihilated so
that the before magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wifes
knittingneedle But in either case the needle never again of itself recovers
the original virtue thus marred or lost and if the binnacle compasses be
affected the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship even
were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson
Deliberately standing before the binnacle and eyeing the transpointed
compasses the old man with the sharp of his extended hand now took the
precise bearing of the sun and satisfied that the needles were exactly
inverted shouted out his orders for the ships course to be changed
accordingly The yards were hard up and once more the Pequod thrust her
undaunted bows into the opposing wind for the supposed fair one had only been
juggling her
Meanwhile whatever were his own secret thoughts Starbuck said nothing but
quietly he issued all requisite orders while Stubb and Flask who in some
small degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings likewise unmurmuringly
acquiesced As for the men though some of them lowly rumbled their fear of
Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate But as ever before the pagan
harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed or if impressed it was only
with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible
Ahabs
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries But chancing to
slip with his ivory heel he saw the crushed copper sighttubes of the quadrant
he had the day before dashed to the deck
»Thou poor proud heavengazer and suns pilot yesterday I wrecked thee
and today the compasses would fain have wrecked me So so But Ahab is lord
over the level loadstone yet Mr Starbuck a lance without the pole a
topmaul and the smallest of the sailmakers needles Quick«
Accessory perhaps to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about to
do were certain prudential motives whose object might have been to revive the
spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtle skill in a matter so wondrous as
that of the inverted compasses Besides the old man well knew that to steer by
transpointed needles though clumsily practicable was not a thing to be passed
over by superstitious sailors without some shudderings and evil portents
»Men« said he steadily turning upon the crew as the mate handed him the
things he had demanded »my men the thunder turned old Ahabs needles but out
of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own that will point as true as
any«
Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors as this was
said and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow But
Starbuck looked away
With a blow from the topmaul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the lance
and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining bade him hold it
upright without its touching the deck Then with the maul after repeatedly
smiting the upper end of this iron rod he placed the blunted needle endwise on
the top of it and less strongly hammered that several times the mate still
holding the rod as before Then going through some small strange motions with it
whether indispensable to the magnetising of the steel or merely intended to
augment the awe of the crew is uncertain he called for linen thread and
moving to the binnacle slipped out the two reversed needles there and
horizontally suspended the sailneedle by its middle over one of the
compasscards At first the steel went round and round quivering and vibrating
at either end but at last it settled to its place when Ahab who had been
intently watching for this result stepped frankly back from the binnacle and
pointing his stretched arm toward it exclaimed »Look ye for yourselves if
Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone The sun is east and that compass
swears it«
One after another they peered in for nothing but their own eyes could
persuade such ignorance as theirs and one after another they slunk away
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph you then saw Ahab in all his fatal
pride
Chapter CXXV
The Log and Line
While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage the log and line
had but very seldom been in use Owing to a confident reliance upon other means
of determining the vessels place some merchantmen and many whalemen
especially when cruising wholly neglect to heave the log though at the same
time and frequently more for forms sake than anything else regularly putting
down upon the customary slate the course steered by the ship as well as the
presumed average rate of progression every hour It had been thus with the
Pequod The wooden reel and angular log attached hung long untouched just
beneath the railing of the afterbulwarks Rains and spray had damped it sun
and wind had warped it all the elements had combined to rot a thing that hung
so idly But heedless of all this his mood seized Ahab as he happened to
glance upon the reel not many hours after the magnet scene and he remembered
how his quadrant was no more and recalled his frantic oath about the level log
and line The ship was sailing plungingly astern the billows rolled in riots
»Forward there Heave the log«
Two seamen came The goldenhued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman »Take the
reel one of ye I ll heave«
They went toward the extreme stern on the ships lee side where the deck
with the oblique energy of the wind was now almost dipping into the creamy
sidelongrushing sea
The Manxman took the reel and holding it high up by the projecting
handleends of the spindle round which the spool of line revolved so stood
with the angular log hanging downward till Ahab advanced to him
Ahab stood before him and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty turns
to form a preliminary handcoil to toss overboard when the old Manxman who was
intently eyeing both him and the line made bold to speak
»Sir I mistrust it this line looks far gone long heat and wet have
spoiled it«
»Twill hold old gentleman Long heat and wet have they spoiled thee Thou
seemst to hold Or truer perhaps life holds thee not thou it«
»I hold the spool sir But just as my captain says With these gray hairs
of mine tis not worth while disputing specially with a superior who ll
neer confess«
»What s that There now s a patched professor in Queen Natures
granitefounded College but methinks he s too subservient Where wert thou
born«
»In the little rocky Isle of Man sir«
»Excellent Thou st hit the world by that«
»I know not sir but I was born there«
»In the Isle of Man hey Well the other way it s good Here s a man
from Man a man born in once independent Man and now unmanned of Man which is
sucked in by what Up with the reel The dead blind wall butts all inquiring
heads at last Up with it So«
The log was heaved The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long
dragging line astern and then instantly the reel began to whirl In turn
jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows the towing resistance of
the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely
»Hold hard«
Snap the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon the tugging log
was gone
»I crush the quadrant the thunder turns the needles and now the mad sea
parts the logline But Ahab can mend all Haul in here Tahitian reel up
Manxman And look ye let the carpenter make another log and mend thou the
line See to it«
»There he goes now to him nothing s happened but to me the skewer seems
loosening out of the middle of the world Haul in haul in Tahitian These
lines run whole and whirling out come in broken and dragging slow Ha Pip
come to help eh Pip«
»Pip whom call ye Pip Pip jumped from the whaleboat Pip s missing Let
s see now if ye havent fished him up here fisherman It drags hard I guess
he s holding on Jerk him Tahiti Jerk him off we haul in no cowards here
Ho there s his arm just breaking water A hatchet a hatchet cut it off we
haul in no cowards here Captain Ahab sir sir here s Pip trying to get on
board again«
»Peace thou crazy loon« cried the Manxman seizing him by the arm »Away
from the quarterdeck«
»The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser« muttered Ahab advancing »Hands
off from that holiness Where sayest thou Pip was boy«
»Astern there sir astern Lo lo«
»And who art thou boy I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of thy
eyes Oh God that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through
Who art thou boy«
»Bellboy sir shipscrier ding dong ding Pip Pip Pip One hundred
pounds of clay reward for Pip five feet high looks cowardly quickest known
by that Ding dong ding Who s seen Pip the coward«
»There can be no hearts above the snowline Oh ye frozen heavens 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 Ahab
lives Thou touchest my inmost centre boy thou art tied to me by cords woven
of my heartstrings Come lets down«
»What s this here s velvet sharkskin« intently gazing at Ahabs hand
and feeling it »Ah now had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this perhaps
he had neer been lost This seems to me sir as a manrope something that
weak souls may hold by Oh sir let old Perth now come and rivet these two
hands together the black one with the white for I will not let this go«
»Oh boy nor will I thee unless I should thereby drag thee to worse
horrors than are here Come then to my cabin Lo ye believers in gods all
goodness and in man all ill lo you see the omniscient gods oblivious of
suffering man and man though idiotic and knowing not what he does yet full
of the sweet things of love and gratitude Come I feel prouder leading thee by
thy black hand than though I grasped an emperors«
»There go two daft ones now« muttered the old Manxman »One daft with
strength the other daft with weakness But here s the end of the rotten line
all dripping too Mend it eh I think we had best have a new line altogether
I ll see Mr Stubb about it«
Chapter CXXVI
The LifeBuoy
Steering now southeastward by Ahabs levelled steel and her progress solely
determined by Ahabs level log and line the Pequod held on her path toward the
Equator Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters descrying no
ships and ere long sideways impelled by unvarying Trade Winds over waves
monotonously mild all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some
riotous and desperate scene
At last when the ship drew near to the outskirts as it were of the
Equatorial fishingground and in the deep darkness that goes before the dawn
was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets the watch then headed by Flask was
startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly like halfarticulated
wailings of the ghosts of all Herods murdered Innocents that one and all
they started from their reveries and for the space of some moments stood or
sat or leaned all transfixedly listening like the carved Roman slave while
that wild cry remained within hearing The Christian or civilised part of the
crew said it was mermaids and shuddered but the pagan harpooneers remained
unappalled Yet the gray Manxman the oldest mariner of all declared that the
wild thrilling sounds that were heard were the voices of newly drowned men in
the sea
Below in his hammock Ahab did not hear of this till gray dawn when he came
to the deck it was then recounted to him by Flask not unaccompanied with
hinted dark meanings He hollowly laughed and thus explained the wonder
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers of
seals and some young seals that had lost their dams or some dams that had lost
their cubs must have risen nigh the ship and kept company with her crying and
sobbing with their human sort of wail But this only the more affected some of
them because most mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals
arising not only from their peculiar tones when in distress but also from the
human look of their round heads and semiintelligent faces seen peeringly
uprising from the water alongside In the sea under certain circumstances
seals have more than once been mistaken for men
But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning At sunrise this
man went from his hammock to his masthead at the fore and whether it was that
he was not yet half waked from his sleep for sailors sometimes go aloft in a
transition state whether it was thus with the man there is now no telling
but be that as it may he had not been long at his perch when a cry was heard
a cry and a rushing and looking up they saw a falling phantom in the air and
looking down a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the sea
The lifebuoy a long slender cask was dropped from the stern where it
always hung obedient to a cunning spring but no hand rose to seize it and the
sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken so that it slowly filled
and the parched wood also filled at its every pore and the studded ironbound
cask followed the sailor to the bottom as if to yield him his pillow though in
sooth but a hard one
And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out for
the White Whale on the White Whales own peculiar ground that man was
swallowed up in the deep But few perhaps thought of that at the time Indeed
in some sort they were not grieved at this event at least as a portent for
they regarded it not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future but as the
fulfilment of an evil already presaged They declared that now they knew the
reason of those wild shrieks they had heard the night before But again the old
Manxman said nay
The lost lifebuoy was now to be replaced Starbuck was directed to see to
it but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found and as in the
feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage all
hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly connected with its final
end whatever that might prove to be therefore they were going to leave the
ships stern unprovided with a buoy when by certain strange signs and
innuendoes Queequeg hinted a hint concerning his coffin
»A lifebuoy of a coffin« cried Starbuck starting
»Rather queer that I should say« said Stubb
»It will make a good enough one« said Flask »the carpenter here can
arrange it easily«
»Bring it up there s nothing else for it« said Starbuck after a
melancholy pause »Rig it carpenter do not look at me so the coffin I mean
Dost thou hear me Rig it«
»And shall I nail down the lid sir« moving his hand as with a hammer
»Ay«
»And shall I caulk the seams sir« moving his hand as with a caulkingiron
»Ay«
»And shall I then pay over the same with pitch sir« moving his hand as
with a pitchpot
»Away what possesses thee to this Make a lifebuoy of the coffin and no
more Mr Stubb Mr Flask come forward with me«
»He goes off in a huff The whole he can endure at the part he baulks Now
I dont like this I make a leg for Captain Ahab and he wears it like a
gentleman but I make a bandbox for Queequeg and he wont put his head into it
Are all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin And now I m ordered to
make a lifebuoy of it It s like turning an old coat going to bring the flesh
on the other side now I dont like this cobbling sort of business I dont
like it at all it s undignified it s not my place Let tinkers brats do
tinkerings we are their betters I like to take in hand none but clean virgin
fairandsquare mathematical jobs something that regularly begins at the
beginning and is at the middle when midway and comes to an end at the
conclusion not a cobblers job that s at an end in the middle and at the
beginning at the end It s the old womans tricks to be giving cobbling jobs
Lord what an affection all old women have for tinkers I know an old woman of
sixtyfive who ran away with a baldheaded young tinker once And that s the
reason I never would work for lonely widow old women ashore when I kept my
jobshop in the Vineyard they might have taken it into their lonely old heads
to run off with me But heighho there are no caps at sea but snowcaps Let me
see Nail down the lid caulk the seams pay over the same with pitch batten
them down tight and hang it with the snapspring over the ships stern Were
ever such things done before with a coffin Some superstitious old carpenters
now would be tied up in the rigging ere they would do the job But I m made
of knotty Aroostook hemlock I dont budge Cruppered with a coffin Sailing
about with a graveyard tray But never mind We workers in woods make
bridalbedsteads and cardtables as well as coffins and hearses We work by the
month or by the job or by the profit not for us to ask the why and wherefore
of our work unless it be too confounded cobbling and then we stash it if we
can Hem I ll do the job now tenderly I ll have me lets see how many
in the ships company all told But I ve forgotten Anyway I ll have me
thirty separate Turks headed lifelines each three feet long hanging all
round to the coffin Then if the hull go down there ll be thirty lively
fellows all fighting for one coffin a sight not seen very often beneath the
sun Come hammer caulkingiron pitchpot and marlingspike Lets to it«
Chapter CXXVII
The Deck
The coffin laid upon two linetubs between the vicebench and the open
hatchway the carpenter caulking its seams the string of twisted oakum slowly
unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock Ahab comes
slowly from the cabingangway and hears Pip following him
»Back lad I will be with ye again presently He goes Not this hand complies
with my humour more genially than that boy Middle aisle of a church What s
here«
»Lifebuoy sir Mr Starbucks orders Oh look sir Beware the hatchway«
»Thank ye man Thy coffin lies handy to the vault«
»Sir The hatchway oh So it does sir so it does«
»Art not thou the legmaker Look did not this stump come from thy shop«
»I believe it did sir does the ferule stand sir«
»Well enough But art thou not also the undertaker«
»Ay sir I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg but they
ve set me now to turning it into something else«
»Then tell me art thou not an arrant allgrasping intermeddling
monopolising heathenish old scamp to be one day making legs and the next day
coffins to clap them in and yet again lifebuoys out of those same coffins
Thou art as unprincipled as the gods and as much of a jackofalltrades«
»But I do not mean anything sir I do as I do«
»The gods again Hark ye dost thou not ever sing working about a coffin
The Titans they say hummed snatches when chipping out the craters for
volcanoes and the gravedigger in the play sings spade in hand Dost thou
never«
»Sing sir Do I sing Oh I m indifferent enough sir for that but the
reason why the gravedigger made music must have been because there was none in
his spade sir But the caulking mallet is full of it Hark to it«
»Ay and that s because the lid there s a soundingboard and what in all
things makes the soundingboard is this there s naught beneath And yet a
coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same carpenter Hast thou ever
helped carry a bier and heard the coffin knock against the churchyard gate
going in«
»Faith sir I ve «
»Faith What s that«
»Why faith sir it s only a sort of exclamationlike that s all sir«
»Um um go on«
»I was about to say sir that «
»Art thou a silkworm Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself Look at
thy bosom Dispatch and get these traps out of sight«
»He goes aft That was sudden now but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes I ve heard that the Isle of Albemarle one of the Gallipagos is cut
by the Equator right in the middle Seems to me some sort of Equator cuts yon
old man too right in his middle He s always under the Line fiery hot I
tell ye He s looking this way come oakum quick Here we go again This
wooden mallet is the cork and I m the professor of musical glasses tap
tap«
Ahab to himself
»There s a sight There s a sound The grayheaded woodpecker tapping the
hollow tree Blind and dumb might well be envied now See that thing rests on
two linetubs full of towlines A most malicious wag that fellow Rattat So
mans seconds tick Oh how immaterial are all materials What things real are
there but imponderable thoughts Here now s the very dreaded symbol of grim
death by a mere hap made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most
endangered life A lifebuoy of a coffin Does it go further Can it be that in
some spiritual sense the coffin is after all but an immortalitypreserver I
ll think of that But no So far gone am I in the dark side of earth that its
other side the theoretic bright one seems but uncertain twilight to me Will
ye never have done carpenter with that accursed sound I go below let me not
see that thing here when I return again Now then Pip we ll talk this over
I do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee Some unknown conduits from the
unknown worlds must empty into thee«
Chapter CXXVIII
The Pequod Meets the Rachel
Next day a large ship the Rachel was descried bearing directly down upon the
Pequod all her spars thickly clustering with men At the time the Pequod was
making good speed through the water but as the broadwinged windward stranger
shot nigh to her the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that
are burst and all life fled from the smitten hull
»Bad news she brings bad news« muttered the old Manxman But ere her
commander who with trumpet to mouth stood up in his boat ere he could
hopefully hail Ahabs voice was heard
»Hast seen the White Whale«
»Ay yesterday Have ye seen a whaleboat adrift«
Throttling his joy Ahab negatively answered this unexpected question and
would then have fain boarded the stranger when the stranger captain himself
having stopped his vessels way was seen descending her side A few keen pulls
and his boathook soon clinched the Pequods mainchains and he sprang to the
deck Immediately he was recognised by Ahab for a Nantucketer he knew But no
formal salutation was exchanged
»Where was he not killed not killed« cried Ahab closely advancing
»How was it«
It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous while
three of the strangers boats were engaged with a shoal of whales which had led
them some four or five miles from the ship and while they were yet in swift
chase to windward the white hump and head of MobyDick had suddenly loomed up
out of the blue water not very far to leeward whereupon the fourth rigged
boat a reserved one had been instantly lowered in chase After a keen sail
before the wind this fourth boat the swiftest keeled of all seemed to have
succeeded in fastening at least as well as the man at the masthead could
tell anything about it In the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat and
then a swift gleam of bubbling white water and after that nothing more whence
it was concluded that the stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with
his pursuers as often happens There was some apprehension but no positive
alarm as yet The recall signals were placed in the rigging darkness came on
and forced to pick up her three far to windward boats ere going in quest of
the fourth one in the precisely opposite direction the ship had not only been
necessitated to leave that boat to its fate till near midnight but for the
time to increase her distance from it But the rest of her crew being at last
safe aboard she crowded all sail stunsail on stunsail after the missing
boat kindling a fire in her trypots for a beacon and every other man aloft on
the lookout But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain
the presumed place of the absent ones when last seen though she then paused to
lower her spare boats to pull all around her and not finding anything had
again dashed on again paused and lowered her boats and though she had thus
continued doing till daylight yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel had
been seen
The story told the stranger captain immediately went on to reveal his
object in boarding the Pequod He desired that ship to unite with his own in the
search by sailing over the sea some four or five miles apart on parallel
lines and so sweeping a double horizon as it were
»I will wager something now« whispered Stubb to Flask »that someone in
that missing boat wore off that captains best coat mayhap his watch he s
so cursed anxious to get it back Who ever heard of two pious whaleships
cruising after one missing whaleboat in the height of the whaling season See
Flask only see how pale he looks pale in the very buttons of his eyes look
it wasnt the coat it must have been the «
»My boy my own boy is among them For Gods sake I beg I conjure« here
exclaimed the stranger captain to Ahab who thus far had but icily received his
petition »For eightandforty hours let me charter your ship I will gladly
pay for it and roundly pay for it if there be no other way for
eightandforty hours only only that you must oh you must and you shall
do this thing«
»His son« cried Stubb »oh it s his son he s lost I take back the coat
and watch what says Ahab We must save that boy«
»He s drowned with the rest on em last night« said the old Manx sailor
standing behind them »I heard all of ye heard their spirits«
Now as it shortly turned out what made this incident of the Rachels the
more melancholy was the circumstance that not only was one of the captains
sons among the number of the missing boats crew but among the number of the
other boats crews at the same time but on the other hand separated from the
ship during the dark vicissitudes of the chase there had been still another
son as that for a time the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the
cruellest perplexity which was only solved for him by his chief mates
instinctively adopting the ordinary procedure of a whaleship in such
emergencies that is when placed between jeopardised but divided boats always
to pick up the majority first But the captain for some unknown constitutional
reason had refrained from mentioning all this and not till forced to it by
Ahabs iciness did he allude to his one yet missing boy a little lad but
twelve years old whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a
Nantucketers paternal love had thus early sought to initiate him in the perils
and wonders of a vocation almost immemorially the destiny of all his race Nor
does it unfrequently occur that Nantucket captains will send a son of such
tender age away from them for a protracted three or four years voyage in some
other ship than their own so that their first knowledge of a whalemans career
shall be unenervated by any chance display of a fathers natural but untimely
partiality or undue apprehensiveness and concern
Meantime now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of Ahab and
Ahab still stood like an anvil receiving every shock but without the least
quivering of his own
»I will not go« said the stranger »till you say ay to me Do to me as you
would have me do to you in the like case For you too have a boy Captain Ahab
though but a child and nestling safely at home now a child of your old age
too Yes yes you relent I see it run run men now and stand by to
square in the yards«
»Avast« cried Ahab »touch not a ropeyarn« then in a voice that
prolongingly moulded every word »Captain Gardiner I will not do it Even now
I lose time Goodbye goodbye God bless ye man and may I forgive myself
but I must go Mr Starbuck look at the binnacle watch and in three minutes
from this present instant warn off all strangers then brace forward again and
let the ship sail as before«
Hurriedly turning with averted face he descended into his cabin leaving
the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter rejection of his
so earnest suit But starting from his enchantment Gardiner silently hurried to
the side more fell than stepped into his boat and returned to his ship
Soon the two ships diverged their wakes and long as the strange vessel was
in view she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot however
small on the sea This way and that her yards were swung round starboard and
larboard she continued to tack now she beat against a head sea and again it
pushed her before it while all the while her masts and yards were thickly
clustered with men as three tall cherrytrees when the boys are cherrying
among the boughs
But by her still halting course and winding woeful way you plainly saw
that this ship that so wept with spray still remained without comfort She was
Rachel weeping for her children because they were not
Chapter CXXIX
The Cabin
Ahab moving to go on deck Pip catches him by the hand to follow
»Lad lad I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now The hour is coming when
Ahab would not scare thee from him yet would not have thee by him There is
that in thee poor lad which I feel too curing to my malady Like cures like
and for this hunt my malady becomes my most desired health Do thou abide below
here where they shall serve thee as if thou wert the captain Ay lad thou
shalt sit here in my own screwed chair another screw to it thou must be«
»No no no ye have not a whole body sir do ye but use poor me for your
one lost leg only tread upon me sir I ask no more so I remain a part of ye«
»Oh spite of million villains this makes me a bigot in the fadeless
fidelity of man and a black and crazy but methinks likecureslike
applies to him too he grows so sane again«
»They tell me sir that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip whose
drowned bones now show white for all the blackness of his living skin But I
will never desert ye sir as Stubb did him Sir I must go with ye«
»If thou speakest thus to me much more Ahabs purpose keels up in him I
tell thee no it cannot be«
»Oh good master master master«
»Weep so and I will murder thee have a care for Ahab too is mad Listen
and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck and still know that I am
there And now I quit thee Thy hand Met True art thou lad as the
circumference to its centre So God forever bless thee and if it come to that
God forever save thee let what will befall«
Ahab goes Pip steps one step forward
»Here he this instant stood I stand in his air but I m alone Now were even
poor Pip here I could endure it but he s missing Pip Pip Ding dong ding
Who s seen Pip He must be up here lets try the door What neither lock nor
bolt nor bar and yet there s no opening it It must be the spell he told me
to stay here Ay and told me this screwed chair was mine Here then I ll
seat me against the transom in the ships full middle all her keel and her
three masts before me Here our old sailors say in their black seventyfours
great admirals sometimes sit at table and lord it over rows of captains and
lieutenants Ha what s this epaulets epaulets the epaulets all come
crowding Pass round the decanters glad to see ye fill up monsieurs What an
odd feeling now when a black boy s host to white men with gold lace upon their
coats Monsieurs have ye seen one Pip a little negro lad five feet high
hangdog look and cowardly Jumped from a whaleboat once seen him No
Well then fill up again captains and lets drink shame upon all cowards I
name no names Shame upon them Put one foot upon the table Shame upon all
cowards Hist above there I hear ivory Oh master master I am indeed
downhearted when you walk over me But here I ll stay though this stern
strikes rocks and they bulge through and oysters come to join me«
Chapter CXXX
The Hat
And now that at the proper time and place after so long and wide a preliminary
cruise Ahab all other whaling waters swept seemed to have chased his foe
into an oceanfold to slay him the more securely there now that he found
himself hard by the very latitude and longitude where his tormenting wound had
been inflicted now that a vessel had been spoken which on the very day
preceding had actually encountered MobyDick and now that all his successive
meetings with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac
indifference with which the White Whale tore his hunters whether sinning or
sinned against now it was that there lurked a something in the old mans eyes
which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see As the unsetting Polar
star which through the livelong Arctic six months night sustains its
piercing steady central gaze so Ahabs purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon
the constant midnight of the gloomy crew It domineered above them so that all
their bodings doubts misgivings fears were fain to hide beneath their souls
and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf
In this foreshadowing interval too all humour forced or natural
vanished Stubb no more strove to raise a smile Starbuck no more strove to
check one Alike joy and sorrow hope and fear seemed ground to finest dust
and powdered for the time in the clamped mortar of Ahabs iron soul Like
machines they dumbly moved about the deck ever conscious that the old mans
despot eye was on them
But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours when he
thought no glance but one was on him then you would have seen that even as
Ahabs eyes so awed the crews the inscrutable Parsees glance awed his or
somehow at least in some wild way at times affected it Such an added
gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now such ceaseless
shudderings shook him that the men looked dubious at him half uncertain as it
seemed whether indeed he were a mortal substance or else a tremulous shadow
cast upon the deck by some unseen beings body And that shadow was always
hovering there For not by night even had Fedallah ever certainly been known
to slumber or go below He would stand still for hours but never sat or
leaned his wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say We two watchmen never rest
Nor at any time by night or day could the mariners now step upon the deck
unless Ahab was before them either standing in his pivothole or exactly
pacing the planks between two undeviating limits the mainmast and the mizen
or else they saw him standing in the cabinscuttle his living foot advanced
upon the deck as if to step his hat slouched heavily over his eyes so that
however motionless he stood however the days and nights were added on that he
had not swung in his hammock yet hidden beneath that slouching hat they could
never tell unerringly whether for all this his eyes were really closed at
times or whether he was still intently scanning them no matter though he
stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch and the unheeded
nightdamp gathered in beads of dew upon that stonecarved coat and hat The
clothes that the night had wet the next days sunshine dried upon him and so
day after day and night after night he went no more beneath the planks
whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for
He ate in the same open air that is his two only meals breakfast and
dinner supper he never touched nor reaped his beard which darkly grew all
gnarled as unearthed roots of trees blown over which still grow idly on at
naked base though perished in the upper verdure But though his whole life was
now become one watch on deck and though the Parsees mystic watch was without
intermission as his own yet these two never seemed to speak one man to the
other unless at long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it
necessary Though such a potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain openly
and to the awestruck crew they seemed polelike asunder If by day they
chanced to speak one word by night dumb men were both so far as concerned the
slightest verbal interchange At times for longest hours without a single
hail they stood far parted in the starlight Ahab in his scuttle the Parsee by
the mainmast but still fixedly gazing upon each other as if in the Parsee Ahab
saw his forethrown shadow in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance
And yet somehow did Ahab in his own proper self as daily hourly and
every instant commandingly revealed to his subordinates Ahab seemed an
independent lord the Parsee but his slave Still again both seemed yoked
together and an unseen tyrant driving them the lean shade siding the solid
rib For be this Parsee what he may all rib and keel was solid Ahab
At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn his iron voice was heard from
aft »Man the mastheads« and all through the day till after sunset and
after twilight the same voice every hour at the striking of the helmsmans
bell was heard »What d ye see sharp sharp«
But when three or four days had slided by after meeting the
childrenseeking Rachel and no spout had yet been seen the monomaniac old man
seemed distrustful of his crews fidelity at least of nearly all except the
pagan harpooneers he seemed to doubt even whether Stubb and Flask might not
willingly overlook the sight he sought But if these suspicions were really his
he sagaciously refrained from verbally expressing them however his actions
might seem to hint them
»I will have the first sight of the whale myself« he said »Ay Ahab must
have the doubloon« and with his own hands he rigged a nest of basketed
bowlines and sending a hand aloft with a single sheaved block to secure to
the mainmasthead he received the two ends of the downwardreeved rope and
attaching one to his basket prepared a pin for the other end in order to fasten
it at the rail This done with that end yet in his hand and standing beside the
pin he looked round upon his crew sweeping from one to the other pausing his
glance long upon Daggoo Queequeg Tashtego but shunning Fedallah and then
settling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate said »Take the rope sir
I give it into thy hands Starbuck« Then arranging his person in the basket he
gave the word for them to hoist him to his perch Starbuck being the one who
secured the rope at last and afterward stood near it And thus with one hand
clinging round the royalmast Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for miles and
miles ahead astern this side and that within the wide expanded circle
commanded at so great a height
When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in the
rigging which chances to afford no foothold the sailor at sea is hoisted up to
that spot and sustained there by the rope under these circumstances its
fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge to some one man who has
the special watch of it Because in such a wilderness of running rigging whose
various different relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what
is seen of them at the deck and when the deckends of these ropes are being
every few minutes cast down from the fastenings it would be but a natural
fatality if unprovided with a constant watchman the hoisted sailor should by
some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the sea
So Ahabs proceedings in this matter were not unusual the only strange thing
about them seemed to be that Starbuck almost the one only man who had ever
ventured to oppose him with anything in the slightest degree approaching to
decision one of those too whose faithfulness on the lookout he had seemed to
doubt somewhat it was strange that this was the very man he should select for
his watchman freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted
persons hands
Now the first time Ahab was perched aloft ere he had been there ten
minutes one of those redbilled savage seahawks which so often fly
incommodiously close round the manned mastheads of whalemen in these latitudes
one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head in a maze of
untrackably swift circlings Then it darted a thousand feet straight up into the
air then spiralised downward 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 anyone else have marked it much it
being no uncommon circumstance only now almost the least heedful eye seemed to
see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight
»Your hat your hat sir« suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman who being
posted at the mizenmasthead stood directly behind Ahab though somewhat lower
than his level and with a deep gulf of air dividing them
But already the sable wing was before the old mans eyes the longhooked
bill at his head with a scream the black hawk darted away with his prize
An eagle flew thrice round Tarquins head removing his cap to replace it
and thereupon Tanaquil his wife declared that Tarquin would be king of Rome
But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good Ahabs hat
was never restored the wild hawk flew on and on with it far in advance of the
prow and at last disappeared while from the point of that disappearance a
minute black spot was dimly discerned falling from that vast height into the
sea
Chapter CXXXI
The Pequod Meets The Delight
The intense Pequod sailed on the rolling waves and days went by the lifebuoy
coffin still lightly swung and another ship most miserably misnamed the
Delight was descried As she drew nigh all eyes were fixed upon her broad
beams called shears which in some whalingships cross the quarterdeck 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 white ribs and some
few splintered planks of what had once been a whaleboat but you now saw
through this wreck as plainly as you see through the peeled halfunhinged and
bleaching skeleton of a horse
»Hast seen the White Whale«
»Look« replied the hollowcheeked captain from his taffrail and with his
trumpet he pointed to the wreck
»Hast killed him«
»The harpoon is not yet forged that will ever do that« answered the other
sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck whose gathered sides some
noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together
»Not forged« and snatching Perths levelled iron from the crotch Ahab held
it out exclaiming »Look ye Nantucketer here in this hand I hold his death
Tempered in blood and tempered by lightning are these barbs and I swear to
temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin where the White Whale most
feels his accursed life«
»Then God keep thee old man seest thou that« pointing to the hammock
»I bury but one of five stout men who were alive only yesterday but were dead
ere night Only that one I bury the rest were buried before they died you sail
upon their tomb« Then turning to his crew »Are ye ready there place the
plank then on the rail and lift the body so then Oh God« advancing
toward the hammock with uplifted hands »may the resurrection and the life «
»Brace forward Up helm« cried Ahab like lightning to his men
But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the sound of
the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea not so quick indeed
but that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled her hull with their
ghostly baptism
As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight the strange lifebuoy hanging
at the Pequods stern came into conspicuous relief
»Ha yonder look yonder men« cried a foreboding voice in her wake »In
vain oh ye strangers ye fly our sad burial ye but turn us your taffrail to
show us your coffin«
Chapter CXXXII
The Symphony
It was a clear steelblue day The firmaments of air and sea were hardly
separable in that allpervading azure only the pensive air was transparently
pure and soft with a womans look and the robust and manlike sea heaved with
long strong lingering swells as Samsons chest in his sleep
Hither and thither on high glided the snowwhite wings of small
unspeckled birds these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air but to and
fro in the deeps far down in the bottomless blue rushed mighty leviathans
swordfish and sharks and these were the strong troubled murderous thinkings
of the masculine sea
But though thus contrasting within the contrast was only in shades and
shadows without those two seemed one it was only the sex as it were that
distinguished them
Aloft like a royal czar and king the sun seemed giving this gentle air to
this bold and rolling sea even as bride to groom And at the girdling line of
the horizon a soft and tremulous motion most seen here at the Equator
denoted the fond throbbing trust the living alarms with which the poor bride
gave her bosom away
Tied up and twisted gnarled and knotted with wrinkles haggardly firm and
unyielding his eyes glowing like coals that still glow in the ashes of ruin
untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn lifting his
splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girls forehead of heaven
Oh immortal infancy and innocency of the azure Invisible winged creatures
that frolic all round us Sweet childhood of air and sky how oblivious were ye
of old Ahabs closecoiled woe But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha
laughingeyed elves heedlessly gambol around their old sire sporting with the
circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burntout crater of his
brain
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle Ahab leaned over the side and
watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze the more and the
more that he strove to pierce the profundity But the lovely aromas in that
enchanted air did at last seem to dispel for a moment the cankerous thing in
his soul That glad happy air that winsome sky did at last stroke and caress
him the stepmother world so long cruel forbidding now threw affectionate
arms round his stubborn neck and did seem to joyously sob over him as if over
one that however wilful and erring she could yet find it in her heart to save
and to bless From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea
nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop
Starbuck saw the old man saw him how he heavily leaned over the side and
he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out
of the centre of the serenity around Careful not to touch him or be noticed by
him he yet drew near to him and stood there
Ahab turned
»Starbuck«
»Sir«
»Oh Starbuck it is a mild mild wind and a mildlooking sky On such a
day very much such a sweetness as this I struck my first whale a
boyharpooneer of eighteen Forty forty forty years ago ago Forty years
of continual whaling forty years of privation and peril and stormtime forty
years on the pitiless sea for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land
for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep Ay and yes Starbuck
out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore When I think of this
life I have led the desolation of solitude it has been the masoned
walledtown of a captains exclusiveness which admits but small entrance to any
sympathy from the green country without oh weariness heaviness Guineacoast
slavery of solitary command when I think of all this only half suspected
not so keenly known to me before and how for forty years I have fed upon dry
salted fare fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul when the poorest
landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand and broken the worlds fresh
bread to my mouldy crusts away whole oceans away from that young girlwife I
wedded past fifty and sailed for Cape Horn the next day leaving but one dent
in my marriage pillow wife wife rather a widow with her husband alive Ay
I widowed that poor girl when I married her Starbuck and then the madness
the frenzy the boiling blood and the smoking brow with which for a thousand
lowerings old Ahab has furiously foamingly chased his prey more a demon than
a man ay ay what a forty years fool fool old fool has old Ahab been
Why this strife of the chase why weary and palsy the arm at the oar and the
iron and the lance how the richer or better is Ahab now Behold Oh Starbuck
is it not hard that with this weary load I bear one poor leg should have been
snatched from under me Here brush this old hair aside it blinds me that I
seem to weep Locks so gray did never grow but from out some ashes But do I
look very old so very very old Starbuck I feel deadly faint bowed and
humped as though I were Adam staggering beneath the piled centuries since
Paradise God God God crack my heart stave my brain mockery mockery
bitter biting mockery of gray hairs have I lived enough joy to wear ye and
seem and feel thus intolerably old Close stand close to me Starbuck let me
look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into the sea or sky better
than to gaze upon God By the green land by the bright hearthstone this is the
magic glass man I see my wife and my child in thine eye No no stay on
board on board lower not when I do when branded Ahab gives chase to
MobyDick That hazard shall not be thine No no not with the faraway home I
see in that eye«
»Oh my captain my captain noble soul grand old heart after all why
should anyone give chase to that hated fish Away with me let us fly these
deadly waters let us home Wife and child too are Starbucks wife and child
of his brotherly sisterly playfellow youth even as thine sir are the wife
and child of thy loving longing paternal old age Away let us away this
instant let me alter the course How cheerily how hilariously oh my captain
would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again I think sir they have
some such mild blue days even as this in Nantucket«
»They have they have I have seen them some summer days in the morning
About this time yes it is his noon nap now the boy vivaciously wakes sits
up in bed and his mother tells him of me of cannibal old me how I am abroad
upon the deep but will yet come back to dance him again«
»Tis my Mary my Mary herself She promised that my boy every morning
should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his fathers sail
Yes yes no more it is done we head for Nantucket Come my captain study
out the course and let us away See see the boys face from the window the
boys hand on the hill«
But Ahabs glance was averted like a blighted fruittree he shook and cast
his last cindered apple to the soil
»What is it what nameless inscrutable unearthly thing is it what
cozening hidden lord and master and cruel remorseless emperor commands me
that against all natural lovings and longings I so keep pushing and crowding
and jamming myself on all the time recklessly making me ready to do what in my
own proper natural heart I durst not so much as dare Is Ahab Ahab Is it I
God or who that lifts this arm But if the great sun move not of himself but
is as an errandboy in heaven nor one single star can revolve but by some
invisible power how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain
think thoughts unless God does that beating does that thinking does that
living and not I By heaven man we are turned round and round in this world
like yonder windlass and Fate is the handspike And all the time lo that
smiling sky and this unsounded sea Look see yon albicore who put it into him
to chase and fang that flyingfish Where do murderers go man Who s to doom
when the judge himself is dragged to the bar But it is a mild mild wind and a
mildlooking sky and the air smells now as if it blew from a faraway meadow
they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes Starbuck and
the mowers are sleeping among the newmown hay Sleeping Ay toil we how we
may we all sleep at last on the field Sleep Ay and rust amid greenness as
last years scythes flung down and left in the halfcut swaths Starbuck«
But blanched to a corpses hue with despair the mate had stolen away
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side but started at two
reflected fixed eyes in the water there Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over
the same rail
Chapter CXXXIII
The Chase First Day
That night in the midwatch when the old man as his wont at intervals
stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned and went to his pivothole
he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely snuffing up the seaair as a sagacious
ships dog will in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle He declared that a
whale must be near Soon that peculiar odour sometimes to a great distance
given forth by the living sperm whale was palpable to all the watch nor was
any mariner surprised when after inspecting the compass and then the dogvane
and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odour as nearly as possible
Ahab rapidly ordered the ships course to be slightly altered and the sail to
be shortened
The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated at
daybreak by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead
smooth as oil and resembling in the plaited watery wrinkles bordering it the
polished metalliclike marks of some swift tiderip at the mouth of a deep
rapid stream
»Man the mastheads Call all hands«
Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle
deck Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they seemed to
exhale from the scuttle so instantaneously did they appear with their clothes
in their hands
»What d ye see« cried Ahab flattening his face to the sky
»Nothing nothing sir« was the sound hailing down in reply
»Tgallant sails stunsails alow and aloft and on both sides«
All sail being set he now cast loose the lifeline reserved for swaying
him to the main royalmasthead and in a few moments they were hoisting him
thither when while but twothirds of the way aloft and while peering ahead
through the horizontal vacancy between the maintopsail and topgallantsail he
raised a gulllike cry in the air »There she blows there she blows A hump
like a snowhill It is MobyDick«
Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
lookouts the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous whale they
had so long been pursuing Ahab had now gained his final perch some feet above
the other lookouts Tashtego standing just beneath him on the cap of the
topgallantmast so that the Indians head was almost on a level with Ahabs
heel From this height the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead at every
roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump and regularly jetting his
silent spout into the air To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent
spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans
»And did none of ye see it before« cried Ahab hailing the perched men all
around him
»I saw him almost that same instant sir that Captain Ahab did and I cried
out« said Tashtego
»Not the same instant not the same no the doubloon is mine Fate
reserved the doubloon for me I only none of ye could have raised the White
Whale first There she blows there she blows there she blows There again
there again« he cried in longdrawn lingering methodic tones attuned to the
gradual prolongings of the whales visible jets »He s going to sound In
stunsails Down topgallantsails Stand by three boats Mr Starbuck
remember stay on board and keep the ship Helm there Luff luff a point So
steady man steady There go flukes No no only black water All ready the
boats there Stand by stand by Lower me Mr Starbuck lower lower quick
quicker« and he slid through the air to the deck
»He is heading straight to leeward sir« cried Stubb »right away from us
cannot have seen the ship yet«
»Be dumb man Stand by the braces Hard down the helm brace up Shiver
her shiver her So well that Boats boats«
Soon all the boats but Starbucks were dropped all the boatsails set all
the paddles plying with rippling swiftness shooting to leeward and Ahab
heading the onset A pale deathglimmer lit up Fedallahs sunken eyes a
hideous motion gnawed his mouth
Like noiseless nautilus shells their light prows sped through the sea but
only slowly they neared the foe As they neared him the ocean grew still more
smooth seemed drawing a carpet over its waves seemed a noon meadow so
serenely it spread At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly
unsuspecting prey that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible sliding
along the sea as if an isolated thing and continually set in a revolving ring
of finest fleecy greenish foam He saw the vast involved wrinkles of the
slightly projecting head beyond Before it far out on the soft Turkishrugged
waters went the glistening white shadow from his broad milky forehead a
musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade and behind the blue waters
interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake and on
either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side But these were broken
again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea
alternate with their fitful flight and like to some flagstaff rising from the
painted hull of an argosy the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance
projected from the White Whales back and at intervals one of the cloud of
softtoed fowls hovering and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish
silently perched and rocked on this pole the long tail feathers streaming like
pennons
A gentle joyousness a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness invested
the gliding whale Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa
clinging to his graceful horns his lovely leering eyes sideways intent upon
the maid with smooth bewitching fleetness rippling straight for the nuptial
bower in Crete not Jove not that great majesty Supreme did surpass the
glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam
On each soft side coincident with the parted swell that but once leaving
him then flowed so wide away on each bright side the whale shed off
enticings No wonder there had been some among the hunters who namelessly
transported and allured by all this serenity had ventured to assail it but had
fatally found that quietude but the vesture of tornadoes Yet calm enticing
calm oh whale thou glidest on to all who for the first time eye thee no
matter how many in that same way thou mayst have bejuggled and destroyed
before
And thus through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea among waves
whose handclappings were suspended by exceeding rapture MobyDick moved on
still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk entirely
hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw But soon the fore part of him slowly
rose from the water for an instant his whole marbleised body formed a high
arch like Virginias Natural Bridge and warningly waving his bannered flukes
in the air the grand god revealed himself sounded and went out of sight
Hoveringly halting and dipping on the wing the white seafowls longingly
lingered over the agitated pool that he left
With oars apeak and paddles down the sheets of their sails adrift the
three boats now stilly floated awaiting MobyDicks reappearance
»An hour« said Ahab standing rooted in his boats stern and he gazed
beyond the whales place toward the dim blue spaces and wide wooing vacancies
to leeward It was only an instant for again his eyes seemed whirling round in
his head as he swept the watery circle The breeze now freshened the sea began
to swell
»The birds the birds« cried Tashtego
In long Indian file as when herons take wing the white birds were now all
flying toward Ahabs boat and when within a few yards began fluttering over the
water there wheeling round and round with joyous expectant cries Their
vision was keener than mans Ahab could discover no sign in the sea But
suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths he profoundly saw a white
living spot no bigger than a white weasel with wonderful celerity uprising and
magnifying as it rose till it turned and then there were plainly revealed two
long crooked rows of white glistening teeth floating up from the
undiscoverable bottom It was MobyDicks open mouth and scrolled jaw his vast
shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea The glittering mouth
yawned beneath the boat like an opendoored marble tomb and giving one sidelong
sweep with his steeringoar Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous
apparition Then calling upon Fedallah to change places with him went forward
to the bows and seizing Perths harpoon commanded his crew to grasp their oars
and stand by to stern
Now by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis its
bow by anticipation was made to face the whales head while yet under water
But as if perceiving this stratagem MobyDick with that malicious intelligence
ascribed to him sidelingly transplanted himself as it were in an instant
shooting his plaited head lengthwise beneath the boat
Through and through through every plank and each rib it thrilled for an
instant the whale obliquely lying on his back in the manner of a biting shark
slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his mouth so that the long
narrow scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the open air and one of the
teeth caught in a rowlock The bluish pearlwhite of the inside of the jaw was
within six inches of Ahabs head and reached higher than that In this attitude
the White Whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse With
unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed and crossed his arms but the tigeryellow
crew were tumbling over each others head to gain the uttermost stern
And now while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out as the whale
dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way and from his body being
submerged beneath the boat he could not be darted at from the bows for the
bows were almost inside of him as it were and while the other boats
involuntarily paused as before a quick crisis impossible to withstand then it
was that monomaniac Ahab furious with this tantalising vicinity of his foe
which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated frenzied with
all this he seized the long bone with his naked hands and wildly strove to
wrench it from its grip As now he thus vainly strove the jaw slipped from him
the frail gunwales bent in collapsed and snapped as both jaws like an
enormous shears sliding further aft bit the craft completely in twain and
locked themselves fast again in the sea midway between the two floating wrecks
These floated aside the broken ends drooping the crew at the sternwreck
clinging to the gunwales and striving to hold fast to the oars to lash them
across
At that preluding moment ere the boat was yet snapped Ahab the first to
perceive the whales intent by the crafty upraising of his head a movement
that loosed his hold for the time at that moment his hand had made one final
effort to push the boat out of the bite But only slipping further into the
whales mouth and tilting over sideways as it slipped the boat had shaken off
his hold on the jaw spilled him out of it as he leaned to the push and so he
fell flatfaced upon the sea
Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey MobyDick now lay at a little
distance vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the billows
and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body so that when his
vast wrinkled forehead rose some twenty or more feet out of the water the
now rising swells with all their confluent waves dazzlingly broke against it
vindictively tossing their shivered spray still higher into the air22 So in a
gale the but halfbaffled Channel billows only recoil from the base of the
Eddystone triumphantly to overleap its summit with their scud
But soon resuming his horizontal attitude MobyDick swam swiftly round and
round the wrecked crew sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake as if
lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault The sight of the
splintered boat seemed to madden him as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast
before Antiochuss elephants in the book of Maccabees Meanwhile Ahab half
smothered in the foam of the whales insolent tail and too much of a cripple to
swim though he could still keep afloat even in the heart of such a whirlpool
as that helpless Ahabs head was seen like a tossed bubble which the least
chance shock might burst From the boats fragmentary stern Fedallah
incuriously and mildly eyed him the clinging crew at the other drifting end
could not succour him more than enough was it for them to look to themselves
For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whales aspect and so planetarily
swift the evercontracting circles he made that he seemed horizontally swooping
upon them And though the other boats unharmed still hovered hard by still
they dared not pull into the eddy to strike lest that should be the signal for
the instant destruction of the jeopardised castaways Ahab and all nor in that
case could they themselves hope to escape With straining eyes then they
remained on the outer edge of the direful zone whose centre had now become the
old mans head
Meantime from the beginning all this had been descried from the ships
mastheads and squaring her yards she had borne down upon the scene and was
now so nigh that Ahab in the water hailed her »Sail on the« but that
moment a breaking sea dashed on him from MobyDick and whelmed him for the
time But struggling out of it again and chancing to rise on a towering crest
he shouted »Sail on the whale Drive him off«
The Pequods prows were pointed and breaking up the charmed circle she
effectually parted the White Whale from his victim As he sullenly swam off the
boats flew to the rescue
Dragged into Stubbs boat with bloodshot blinded eyes the white brine
caking in his wrinkles the long tension of Ahabs bodily strength did crack
and helplessly he yielded to his bodys doom for a time lying all crushed in
the bottom of Stubbs boat like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants
Far inland nameless wails came from him as desolate sounds from out ravines
But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more
abbreviate it In an instants compass great hearts sometimes condense to one
deep pang the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler
mens whole lives And so such hearts though summary in each one suffering
still if the gods decree it in their lifetime aggregate a whole age of woe
wholly made up of instantaneous intensities for even in their pointless
centres those noble natures contain the entire circumferences of inferior
souls
»The harpoon« said Ahab halfway rising and draggingly leaning on one
bended arm »is it safe«
»Ay sir for it was not darted this is it« said Stubb showing it
»Lay it before me any missing men«
»One two three four five there were five oars sir and here are five
men«
»That s good Help me man I wish to stand So so I see him there
there going to leeward still what a leaping spout Hands off from me The
eternal sap runs up in Ahabs bones again Set the sail out oars the helm«
It is often the case that when a boat is stove its crew being picked up by
another boat help to work that second boat and the chase is thus continued
with what is called doublebanked oars It was thus now But the added power of
the boat did not equal the added power of the whale for he seemed to have
treblebanked his every fin swimming with a velocity which plainly showed that
if now under these circumstances pushed on the chase would prove an
indefinitely prolonged if not a hopeless one nor could any crew endure for so
long a period such an unintermitted intense straining at the oar a thing
barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude The ship itself then as
it sometimes happens offered the most promising intermediate means of
overtaking the chase Accordingly the boats now made for her and were soon
swayed up to their cranes the two parts of the wrecked boats having been
previously secured by her and then hoisting everything to her side and
stacking her canvas high up and sideways outstretching it with stunsails
like the doublejointed wings of an albatross the Pequod bore down in the
leeward wake of MobyDick At the wellknown methodic intervals the whales
glittering spout was regularly announced from the manned mastheads and when he
would be reported as just gone down Ahab would take the time and then pacing
the deck binnacle watch in hand so soon as the last second of the allotted
hour expired his voice was heard »Whose is the doubloon now D ye see him«
and if the reply was No sir straightway he commanded them to lift him to his
perch In this way the day wore on Ahab now aloft and motionless anon
unrestingly pacing the planks
As he was thus walking uttering no sound except to hail the men aloft or
to bid them hoist a sail still higher or to spread one to a still greater
breadth thus to and fro pacing beneath his slouched hat at every turn he
passed his own wrecked boat which had been dropped upon the quarterdeck and
lay there reversed broken bow to shattered stern At last he paused before it
and as in an already overclouded sky fresh troops of clouds will sometimes sail
across so over the old mans face there now stole some such added gloom as
this
Stubb saw him pause and perhaps intending not vainly though to evince
his own unabated fortitude and thus keep up a valiant place in his captains
mind he advanced and eyeing the wreck exclaimed »The thistle the ass
refused it pricked his mouth too keenly sir ha ha«
»What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck Man man did I not
know thee brave as fearless fire and as mechanical I could swear thou wert a
poltroon Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck«
»Ay sir« said Starbuck drawing near »tis a solemn sight an omen and
an ill one«
»Omen omen the dictionary If the gods think to speak outright to man
they will honourably speak outright not shake their heads and give an old
wives darkling hint Begone Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing
Starbuck is Stubb reversed and Stubb is Starbuck and ye two are all mankind
and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth nor gods nor men
his neighbours Cold cold I shiver How now Aloft there D ye see him
Sing out for every spout though he spout ten times a second«
The day was nearly done only the hem of his golden robe was rustling Soon
it was almost dark but the lookout men still remained unset
»Cant see the spout now sir too dark« cried a voice from the air
»How heading when last seen«
»As before sir straight to leeward«
»Good he will travel slower now tis night Down royals and topgallant
stunsails Mr Starbuck We must not run over him before morning he s making
a passage now and may heaveto a while Helm there keep her full before the
wind Aloft come down Mr Stubb send a fresh hand to the foremasthead
and see it manned till morning« Then advancing toward the doubloon in the
mainmast »Men this gold is mine for I earned it but I shall let it abide
here till the White Whale is dead and then whosoever of ye first raises him
upon the day he shall be killed this gold is that mans and if on that day I
shall again raise him then ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye
Away now the deck is thine sir«
And so saying he placed himself halfway within the scuttle and slouching
his hat stood there till dawn except when at intervals rousing himself to see
how the night wore on
Chapter CXXXIV
The Chase Second Day
At daybreak the three mastheads were punctually manned afresh
»D ye see him« cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the light to
spread
»See nothing sir«
»Turn up all hands and make sail he travels faster than I thought for
the topgallantsails ay they should have been kept on her all night But no
matter tis but resting for the rush«
Here be it said that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale
continued through day into night and through night into day is a thing by no
means unprecedented in the South Sea fishery For such is the wonderful skill
prescience of experience and invincible confidence acquired by some great
natural geniuses among the Nantucket commanders that from the simple
observation of a whale when last descried they will under certain given
circumstances pretty accurately foretell both the direction in which he will
continue to swim for a time while out of sight as well as his probable rate of
progression during that period And in these cases somewhat as a pilot when
about losing sight of a coast whose general trending he well knows and which
he desires shortly to return to again but at some further point like as this
pilot stands by his compass and takes the precise bearing of the cape at
present visible in order the more certainly to hit aright the remote unseen
headland eventually to be visited so does the fisherman at his compass with
the whale for after being chased and diligently marked through several hours
of daylight then when night obscures the fish the creatures future wake
through the darkness is almost as established to the sagacious mind of the
hunter as the pilots coast is to him So that to this hunters wondrous skill
the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water a wake is to all desired
purposes wellnigh as reliable as the steadfast land And as the mighty iron
leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known in its every pace that
with watches in their hands men time his rate as doctors that of a babys
pulse and lightly say of it the up train or the down train will reach such or
such a spot at such or such an hour even so almost there are occasions when
these Nantucketers time that other leviathan of the deep according to the
observed humour of his speed and say to themselves so many hours hence this
whale will have gone two hundred miles will have about reached this or that
degree of latitude or longitude But to render this acuteness at all successful
in the end the wind and the sea must be the whalemans allies for of what
present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures him
he is exactly ninetythree leagues and a quarter from his port Inferable from
these statements are many collateral subtle matters touching the chase of
whales
The ship tore on leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannonball
missent becomes a ploughshare and turns up the level field
»By salt and hemp« cried Stubb »but this swift motion of the deck creeps
up ones legs and tingles at the heart This ship and I are two brave fellows
Ha ha Someone take me up and launch me spinewise on the sea for by
liveoaks my spine s a keel Ha ha we go the gait that leaves no dust
behind«
»There she blows she blows she blows right ahead« was now the
masthead cry
»Ay ay« cried Stubb »I knew it ye cant escape blow on and split your
spout O whale the mad fiend himself is after ye blow your trump blister
your lungs Ahab will dam off your blood as a miller shuts his watergate
upon the stream«
And Stubb did but speak out for wellnigh all that crew The frenzies of the
chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up like old wine worked anew
Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before these
were not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab but they
were broken up and on all sides routed as timid prairie hares that scatter
before the bounding bison The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls and by
the stirring perils of the previous day the rack of the past nights suspense
the fixed unfearing blind reckless way in which their wild craft went
plunging toward its flying mark by all these things their hearts were bowled
along The wind that made great bellies of their sails and rushed the vessel on
by arms invisible as irresistible this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency
which so enslaved them to the race
They were one man not thirty For as the one ship that held them all
though it was put together of all contrasting things oak and maple and pine
wood iron and pitch and hemp yet all these ran into each other in the one
concrete hull which shot on its way both balanced and directed by the long
central keel even so all the individualities of the crew this mans valour
that mans fear guilt and guiltiness all varieties were welded into oneness
and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did
point to
The rigging lived The mastheads like the tops of tall palms were
outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs Clinging to a spar with one hand some
reached forth the other with impatient wavings others shading their eyes from
the vivid sunlight sat far out on the rocking yards all the spars in full
bearing of mortals ready and ripe for their fate Ah how they still strove
through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them
»Why sing ye not out for him if ye see him« cried Ahab when after the
lapse of some minutes since the first cry no more had been heard »Sway me up
men ye have been deceived not MobyDick casts one odd jet that way and then
disappears«
It was even so in their headlong eagerness the men had mistaken some other
thing for the whalespout as the event itself soon proved for hardly had Ahab
reached his perch hardly was the rope belayed to its pin on deck when he
struck the keynote to an orchestra that made the air vibrate as with the
combined discharges of rifles The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs
was heard as much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet
less than a mile ahead MobyDick bodily burst into view For not by any calm
and indolent spoutings not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his
head did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity but by the far more wondrous
phenomenon of breaching Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest
depths the sperm whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air
and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam shows his place to the distance of
seven miles and more In those moments the torn enraged waves he shakes off
seem his mane in some cases this breaching is his act of defiance
»There she breaches there she breaches« was the cry as in his
immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmonlike to heaven So
suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea and relieved against the still bluer
margin of the sky the spray that he raised for the moment intolerably
glittered and glared like a glacier and stood there gradually fading and fading
away from its first sparkling intensity to the dim mistiness of an advancing
shower in a vale
»Ay breach your last to the sun MobyDick« cried Ahab »thy hour and thy
harpoon are at hand Down down all of ye but one man at the fore The boats
stand by«
Unmindful of the tedious ropeladders of the shrouds the men like shooting
stars slid to the deck by the isolated backstays and halyards while Ahab
less dartingly but still rapidly was dropped from his perch
»Lower away« he cried so soon as he had reached his boat a spare one
rigged the afternoon previous »Mr Starbuck the ship is thine keep away from
the boats but keep near them Lower all«
As if to strike a quick terror into them by this time being the first
assailant himself MobyDick had turned and was now coming for the three crews
Ahabs boat was central and cheering his men he told them he would take the
whale headandhead that is pull straight up to his forehead a not
uncommon thing for when within a certain limit such a course excludes the
coming onset from the whales sidelong vision But ere that close limit was
gained and while yet all three boats were plain as the ships three masts to
his eye the White Whale churning himself into furious speed almost in an
instant as it were rushing among the boats with open jaws and a lashing tail
offered appalling battle on every side and heedless of the irons darted at him
from every boat seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which
those boats were made But skilfully manoeuvred incessantly wheeling like
trained chargers in the field the boats for a while eluded him though at
times but by a planks breadth while all the time Ahabs unearthly slogan
tore every other cry but his to shreds
But at last in his untraceable evolutions the White Whale so crossed and
recrossed and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three lines now
fast to him that they foreshortened and of themselves warped the devoted
boats toward the planted irons in him though now for a moment the whale drew
aside a little as if to rally for a more tremendous charge Seizing that
opportunity Ahab first paid out more line and then was rapidly hauling and
jerking in upon it again hoping that way to disencumber it of some snarls
when lo a sight more savage than the embattled teeth of sharks
Caught and twisted corkscrewed in the mazes of the line loose harpoons
and lances with all their bristling barbs and points came flashing and
dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahabs boat Only one thing could be
done Seizing the boatknife he critically reached within through and then
without the rays of steel dragged in the line beyond passed it inboard to
the bowsman and then twice sundering the rope near the chocks dropped the
intercepted fagot of steel into the sea and was all fast again That instant
the White Whale made a sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other
lines by so doing irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and
Flask toward his flukes dashed them together like two rolling husks on a
surfbeaten beach and then diving down into the sea disappeared in a boiling
maelstrom in which for a space the odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced
round and round like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch
While the two crews were yet circling in the waters reaching out after the
revolving linetubs oars and other floating furniture while aslope little
Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial twitching his legs upward to escape
the dreaded jaws of sharks and Stubb was lustily singing out for someone to
ladle him up and while the old mans line now parting admitted of his
pulling into the creamy pool to rescue whom he could in that wild
simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils Ahabs yet unstricken boat
seemed drawn up toward heaven by invisible wires as arrowlike shooting
perpendicularly from the sea the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against
its bottom and sent it turning over and over into the air till it fell again
gunwale downward and Ahab and his men struggled out from under it like
seals from a seaside cave
The first uprising momentum of the whale modifying its direction as he
struck the surface involuntarily launched him along it to a little distance
from the centre of the destruction he had made and with his back to it he now
lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from side to side and whenever
a stray oar bit of plank the least chip or crumb of the boats touched his
skin his tail swiftly drew back and came sideways smiting the sea But soon
as if satisfied that his work for that time was done he pushed his plaited
forehead through the ocean and trailing after him the intertangled lines
continued his leeward way at a travellers methodic pace
As before the attentive ship having descried the whole fight again came
bearing down to the rescue and dropping a boat picked up the floating
mariners tubs oars and whatever else could be caught at and safely landed
them on her decks Some sprained shoulders wrists and ankles livid
contusions wrenched harpoons and lances inextricable intricacies of rope
shattered oars and planks all these were there but no fatal or even serious
ill seemed to have befallen anyone As with Fedallah the day before so Ahab was
now found grimly clinging to his boats broken 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 fastened upon him as
instead of standing by himself he still halfhung upon the shoulder of Starbuck
who had thus far been the foremost to assist him His ivory leg had been snapped
off leaving but one short sharp splinter
»Ay ay Starbuck tis sweet to lean sometimes be the leaner who he will
and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has«
»The ferule has not stood sir« said the carpenter now coming up »I put
good work into that leg«
»But no bones broken sir I hope« said Stubb with true concern
»Ay and all splintered to pieces Stubb d ye see it But even with a
broken bone old Ahab is untouched and I account no living bone of mine one jot
more me than this dead one that s lost Nor white whale nor man nor fiend
can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and inaccessible being Can any
lead touch yonder floor any mast scrape yonder roof Aloft there which way«
»Dead to leeward sir«
»Up helm then pile on the sail again shipkeepers down the rest of the
spare boats and rig them Mr Starbuck away and muster the boats crews«
»Let me first help thee toward the bulwarks sir«
»Oh oh oh how this splinter gores me now Accursed fate that the
unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate«
»Sir«
»My body man not thee Give me something for a cane there that shivered
lance will do Muster the men Surely I have not seen him yet By heaven it
cannot be missing quick call them all«
The old mans hinted thought was true Upon mustering the company the
Parsee was not there
»The Parsee« cried Stubb »he must have been caught in «
»The black vomit wrench thee run all of ye above alow cabin forecastle
find him not gone not gone«
But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was
nowhere to be found
»Ay sir« said Stubb »caught among the tangles of your line I thought I
saw him dragging under«
»My line my line Gone gone What means that little word What
deathknell rings in it that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry The
harpoon too toss over the litter there d ye see it the forged iron
men the White Whales no no no blistered fool this hand did dart it
tis in the fish Aloft there Keep him nailed Quick all hands to the
rigging of the boats collect the oars harpooneers the irons the irons
hoist the royals higher a pull on all the sheets helm there steady steady
for your life I ll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe yea and dive
straight through it but I ll slay him yet«
»Great God but for one single instant show thyself« cried Starbuck
»never never wilt thou capture him old man In Jesus name no more of this
that s worse than devils madness Two days chased twice stove to splinters
thy very leg once more snatched from under thee thy evil shadow gone all good
angels mobbing thee with warnings what more wouldst thou have Shall we
keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man Shall we be
dragged by him to the bottom of the sea Shall we be towed by him to the
infernal world Oh oh Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more«
»Starbuck of late I ve felt strangely moved to thee ever since that hour
we both saw thou knowst what in one anothers eyes But in this matter of
the whale be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand a lipless
unfeatured blank Ahab is forever Ahab man This whole act s immutably
decreed Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean
rolled Fool I am the Fates lieutenant I act under orders Look thou
underling that thou obeyest mine Stand round me men Ye see an old man cut
down to the stump leaning on a shivered lance propped up on a lonely foot
Tis Ahab his bodys part but Ahabs soul s a centipede that moves upon a
hundred legs I feel strained halfstranded as ropes that tow dismasted
frigates in a gale and I may look so But ere I break ye ll hear me crack
and till ye hear that know that Ahabs hawser tows his purpose yet Believe ye
men in the things called omens Then laugh aloud and cry encore For ere they
drown drowning things will twice rise to the surface then rise again to sink
for evermore So with MobyDick two days he s floated tomorrow will be the
third Ay men he ll rise once more but only to spout his last D ye feel
brave men brave«
»As fearless fire« cried Stubb
»And as mechanical« muttered Ahab Then as the men went forward he
muttered on »The things called omens And yesterday I talked the same to
Starbuck there concerning my broken boat Oh how valiantly I seek to drive out
of others hearts what s clinched so fast in mine The Parsee the Parsee
gone gone and he was to go before but still was to be seen again ere I
could perish How s that There s a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers
backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges like a hawks beak it pecks
my brain I ll I ll solve it though«
When dusk descended the whale was still in sight to leeward
So once more the sail was shortened and everything passed nearly as on the
previous night only the sound of hammers and the hum of the grindstone was
heard till nearly daylight as the men toiled by lanterns in the complete and
careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening their fresh weapons for the
morrow Meantime of the broken keel of Ahabs wrecked craft the carpenter made
him another leg while still as on the night before slouched Ahab stood fixed
within his scuttle his hid heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on
its dial sat due eastward for the earliest sun
Chapter CXXXV
The Chase Third Day
The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh and once more the solitary
nightman at the foremasthead was relieved by crowds of the daylight lookouts
who dotted every mast and almost every spar
»D ye see him« cried Ahab but the whale was not yet in sight
»In his infallible wake though but follow that wake that s all Helm
there steady as thou goest and hast been going What a lovely day again were
it a newmade world and made for a summerhouse to the angels and this morning
the first of its throwing open to them a fairer day could not dawn upon that
world Here s food for thought had Ahab time to think but Ahab never thinks
he only feels feels feels that s tingling enough for mortal man to think s
audacity God only has that right and privilege Thinking is or ought to be a
coolness and a calmness and our poor hearts throb and our poor brains beat too
much for that And yet I ve sometimes thought my brain was very calm frozen
calm this old skull cracks so like a glass in which the contents turned to
ice and shiver it And still this hair is growing now this moment growing and
heat must breed it but no it s like that sort of common grass that will grow
anywhere between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava How
the wild winds blow it they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails
lash the tossed ship they cling to A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this
through prison corridors and cells and wards of hospitals and ventilated them
and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces Out upon it it s
tainted Were I the wind I d blow no more on such a wicked miserable world I
d crawl somewhere to a cave and slink there And yet tis a noble and heroic
thing the wind who ever conquered it In every fight it has the last and
bitterest blow Run tilting at it and you but run through it Ha a coward wind
that strikes starknaked men but will not stand to receive a single blow Even
Ahab is a braver thing a nobler thing than that Would now the wind but had a
body but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man all these
things are bodiless but only bodiless as objects not as agents There s a
most special a most cunning oh a most malicious difference And yet I say
again and swear it now that there s something all glorious and gracious in
the wind These warm Trade Winds at least that in the clear heavens blow
straight on in strong and steadfast vigorous mildness and veer not from their
mark however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack and mightiest
Mississippies of the land swift and swerve about uncertain where to go at last
And by the eternal Poles these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship
on these Trades or something like them something so unchangeable and full
as strong blow my keeled soul along To it Aloft there What d ye see«
»Nothing sir«
»Nothing and noon at hand The doubloon goes abegging See the sun Ay
ay it must be so I ve oversailed him How got the start Ay he s chasing
me now not I him that s bad I might have known it too Fool the lines
the harpoons he s towing Ay ay I have run him by last night About about
Come down all of ye but the regular lookouts Man the braces«
Steering as she had done the wind had been somewhat on the Pequods
quarter so that now being pointed in the reverse direction the braced ship
sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own white wake
»Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw« murmured Starbuck to
himself as he coiled the newhauled mainbrace upon the rail »God keep us but
already my bones feel damp within me and from the inside wet my flesh I
misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him«
»Stand by to sway me up« cried Ahab advancing to the hempen basket »We
should meet him soon«
»Ay ay sir« and straightway Starbuck did Ahabs bidding and once more
Ahab swung on high
A whole hour now passed goldbeaten out to ages Time itself now held long
breaths with keen suspense But at last some three points off the weatherbow
Ahab descried the spout again and instantly from the three mastheads three
shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it
»Forehead to forehead I meet thee this third time MobyDick On deck
there brace sharper up crowd her into the winds eye He s too far off to
lower yet Mr Starbuck The sails shake Stand over that helmsman with a
topmaul So so he travels fast and I must down But let me have one more
good round look aloft here at the sea there s time for that An old old
sight and yet somehow so young ay and not changed a wink since I first saw
it a boy from the sandhills of Nantucket The same the same the same to
Noah as to me There s a soft shower to leeward Such lovely leewardings They
must lead somewhere to something else than common land more palmy than the
palms Leeward the White Whale goes that way look to windward then the
better if the bitterer quarter But goodbye goodbye old masthead What s
this green ay tiny mosses in these warped cracks No such green
weatherstains on Ahabs head There s the difference now between mans old age
and matters But ay old mast we both grow old together sound in our hulls
though are we not my ship Ay minus a leg that s all By heaven this dead
wood has the better of my live flesh every way I cant compare with it and I
ve known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the
most vital stuff of vital fathers What s that he said he should still go
before me my pilot and yet to be seen again But where Will I have eyes at
the bottom of the sea supposing I descend those endless stairs and all night I
ve been sailing from him wherever he did sink to Ay ay like many more thou
toldst direful truth as touching thyself O Parsee but Ahab there thy shot
fell short Goodbye masthead keep a good eye upon the whale the while I m
gone We ll talk tomorrow nay tonight when the White Whale lies down
there tied by head and tail«
He gave the word and still gazing round him was steadily lowered through
the cloven blue air to the deck
In due time the boats were lowered but as standing in his shallops stern
Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent he waved to the mate who
held one of the tackleropes on deck and bade him pause
»Starbuck«
»Sir«
»For the third time my souls ship starts upon this voyage Starbuck«
»Ay sir thou wilt have it so«
»Some ships sail from their ports and ever afterward are missing
Starbuck«
»Truth sir saddest truth«
»Some men die at ebb tide some at low water some at the full of the flood
and I feel now like a billow that s all one crested comb Starbuck I am old
shake hands with me man«
Their hands met their eyes fastened Starbucks tears the glue
»Oh my captain my captain noble heart go not go not see it s a
brave man that weeps how great the agony of the persuasion then«
»Lower away« cried Ahab tossing the mates arm from him »Stand by the
crew«
In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern
»The sharks the sharks« cried a voice from the low cabinwindow there »O
master my master come back«
But Ahab heard nothing for his own voice was highlifted then and the boat
leaped on
Yet the voice spake true for scarce had he pushed from the ship when
numbers of sharks seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath the hull
maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars every time they dipped in the
water and in this way accompanied the boat with their bites It is a thing not
uncommonly happening to the whaleboats in those swarming seas the sharks at
times apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover
over the banners of marching regiments in the east But these were the first
sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first
descried and whether it was that Ahabs crew were all such tigeryellow
barbarians and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the sharks a
matter sometimes well known to affect them however it was they seemed to
follow that one boat without molesting the others
»Heart of wrought steel« murmured Starbuck gazing over the side and
following with his eyes the receding boat »canst thou yet ring boldly to that
sight lowering thy keel among ravening sharks and followed by them
openmouthed to the chase and this the critical third day For when three
days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit be sure the first is the
morning the second the noon and the third the evening and the end of that
thing be that end what it may Oh my God what is this that shoots through
me and leaves me so deadly calm yet expectant fixed at the top of a
shudder Future things swim before me as in empty outlines and skeletons all
the past is somehow grown dim Mary girl thou fadest in pale glories behind
me boy I seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue Strangest problems of
life seem clearing but clouds sweep between Is my 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 it off move move speak aloud
Masthead there See ye my boys hand on the hill Crazed aloft there
keep thy keenest eye upon the boats mark well the whale Ho again drive
off that hawk see he pecks he tears the vane« pointing to the red flag
flying at the maintruck »Ha he soars away with it Where s the old man
now seest thou that sight oh Ahab shudder shudder«
The boats had not gone very far when by a signal from the mastheads a
downwardpointed arm Ahab knew that the whale had sounded but intending to be
near him at the next rising he held on his way a little sideways from the
vessel the becharmed crew maintaining the profoundest silence as the headbeat
waves hammered and hammered against the opposing bow
»Drive drive in your nails oh ye waves to their uttermost heads drive
them in ye but strike a thing without a lid and no coffin and no hearse can be
mine and hemp only can kill me Ha ha«
Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles then
quickly upheaved as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice swiftly
rising to the surface A low rumbling sound was heard a subterraneous hum and
then all held their breaths as bedraggled with trailing ropes and harpoons
and lances a vast form shot lengthwise but obliquely from the sea Shrouded
in a thin drooping veil of mist it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air
and then fell swamping back into the deep Crushed thirty feet upward the
waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains then brokenly sank in a
shower of flakes leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the
marble trunk of the whale
»Give way« cried Ahab to the oarsmen and the boats darted forward to the
attack but maddened by yesterdays fresh irons that corroded in him MobyDick
seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven The wide
tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad white forehead beneath the
transparent skin looked knitted together as head on he came churning his tail
among the boats and once more flailed them apart spilling out the irons and
lances from the two mates boats and dashing in one side of the upper part of
their bows but leaving Ahabs almost without a scar
While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks and as the
whale swimming out from them turned and showed one entire flank as he shot by
them again at that moment a quick cry went up Lashed round and round to the
fishs back pinioned in the turns upon turns in which during the past night
the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him the halftorn body
of the Parsee was seen his sable raiment frayed to shreds his distended eyes
turned full upon old Ahab
The harpoon dropped from his hand
»Befooled befooled« drawing in a long lean breath »Ay Parsee I see
thee again Ay and thou goest before and this this then is the hearse that
thou didst promise But I hold thee to the last letter of thy word Where is the
second hearse Away mates to the ship those boats are useless now repair
them if ye can in time and return to me if not Ahab is enough to die Down
men the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in that
thing I harpoon Ye are not other men but my arms and my legs and so obey me
Where s the whale gone down again«
But he looked too nigh the boat for as if bent upon escaping with the
corpse he bore and as if the particular place of the last encounter had been
but a stage in his leeward voyage MobyDick was now again steadily swimming
forward and had almost passed the ship which thus far had been sailing in
the contrary direction to him though for the present her headway had been
stopped He seemed swimming with his utmost velocity and now only intent upon
pursuing his own straight path in the sea
»Oh Ahab« cried Starbuck »not too late is it even now the third day to
desist See MobyDick seeks thee not It is thou thou that madly seekest
him«
Setting sail to the rising wind the lonely boat was swiftly impelled to
leeward by both oars and canvas And at last when Ahab was sliding by the
vessel so near as plainly to distinguish Starbucks face as he leaned over the
rail he hailed him to turn the vessel about and follow him not too swiftly
at a judicious interval Glancing upward he saw Tashtego Queequeg and Daggoo
eagerly mounting to the three mastheads while the oarsmen were rocking in the
two staved boats which had but just been hoisted to the side and were busily at
work in repairing them One after the other through the portholes as he sped
he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask busying themselves on deck
among bundles of new irons and lances As he saw all this as he heard the
hammers in the broken boats far other hammers seemed driving a nail into his
heart But he rallied And now marking that the vane or flag was gone from the
mainmasthead he shouted to Tashtego who had just gained that perch to
descend again for another flag and a hammer and nails and so nail it to the
mast
Whether fagged by the three days running chase and the resistance to his
swimming in the knotted hamper he bore or whether it was some latent
deceitfulness and malice in him whichever was true the White Whales way now
began to abate as it seemed from the boat so rapidly nearing him once more
though indeed the whales last start had not been so long a one as before And
still as Ahab glided over the waves the unpitying sharks accompanied him and so
pertinaciously stuck to the boat and so continually bit at the plying oars
that the blades became jagged and crunched and left small splinters in the sea
at almost every dip
»Heed them not those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars Pull on
tis the better rest the sharks jaw than the yielding water«
»But at every bite sir the thin blades grow smaller and smaller«
»They will last long enough pull on But who can tell« he muttered
»whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on Ahab But pull on Ay
all alive now we near him The helm take the helm let me pass« and so
saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward to the bows of the still flying
boat
At length as the craft was cast to one side and ran ranging along with the
White Whales flank he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance as the whale
sometimes will and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist which
thrown off from the whales spout curled round his great Monadnock hump he was
even thus close to him when with body arched back and both arms lengthwise
highlifted to the poise he darted his fierce iron and his far fiercer curse
into the hated whale As both steel and curse sank to the socket as if sucked
into a morass MobyDick sideways writhed spasmodically rolled his nigh flank
against the bow and without staving a hole in it so suddenly canted the boat
over that had it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then
clung Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea As it was three of
the oarsmen who foreknew not the precise instant of the dart and were
therefore unprepared for its effects these were flung out but so fell that
in an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again and rising to its level on
a combing wave hurled themselves bodily inboard again the third man helplessly
dropping astern but still afloat and swimming
Almost simultaneously with a mighty volition of ungraduated instantaneous
swiftness the White Whale darted through the weltering sea But when Ahab cried
out to the steersman to take new turns with the line and hold it so and
commanded the crew to turn round on their seats and tow the boat up to the
mark the moment the treacherous line felt that double strain and tug it
snapped in the empty air
»What breaks in me Some sinew cracks tis whole again oars oars Burst
in upon him«
Hearing the tremendous rush of the seacrashing boat the whale wheeled
round to present his blank forehead at bay but in that evolution catching
sight of the nearing black hull of the ship seemingly seeing in it the source
of all his persecutions bethinking it it may be a larger and nobler foe of
a sudden he bore down upon its advancing prow smiting his jaws amid fiery
showers of foam
Ahab staggered his hand smote his forehead »I grow blind hands stretch
out before me that I may yet grope my way Is t night«
»The whale The ship« cried the cringing oarsmen
»Oars oars Slope downward to thy depths O sea that ere it be forever too
late Ahab may slide this last last time upon his mark I see the ship the
ship Dash on my men Will ye not save my ship«
But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the sledgehammering
seas the before whalesmitten bowends of two planks burst through and in an
instant almost the temporarily disabled boat lay nearly level with the waves
its halfwading splashing crew trying hard to stop the gap and bale out the
pouring water
Meantime for that one beholding instant Tashtegos masthead hammer
remained suspended in his hand and the red flag halfwrapping him as with a
plaid then streamed itself straight out from him as his own forwardflowing
heart while Starbuck and Stubb standing upon the bowsprit beneath caught
sight of the downcoming monster just as soon as he
»The whale the whale Up helm up helm Oh all ye sweet powers of air now
hug me close Let not Starbuck die if die he must in a womans fainting fit
Up helm I say ye fools the jaw the jaw Is this the end of all my bursting
prayers all my lifelong fidelities Oh Ahab Ahab lo thy work Steady
helmsman steady Nay nay Up helm again He turns to meet us Oh his
unappeasable brow drives on toward one whose duty tells him he cannot depart
My God stand by me now«
»Stand not by me but stand under me whoever you are that will now help
Stubb for Stubb too sticks here I grin at thee thou grinning whale Who
ever helped Stubb or kept Stubb awake but Stubb s own unwinking eye And now
poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattress that is all too soft would it were
stuffed with brushwood I grin at thee thou grinning whale Look ye sun moon
and stars I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost
For all that I would yet ring glasses with ye would ye but hand the cup Oh
oh oh oh thou grinning whale but there ll be plenty of gulping soon Why
fly ye not O Ahab For me off shoes and jacket to it let Stubb die in his
drawers A most mouldy and over salted death though cherries cherries
cherries Oh Flask for one red cherry ere we die«
»Cherries I only wish that we were where they grow Oh Stubb I hope my
poor mother s drawn my partpay ere this if not few coppers will now come to
her for the voyage is up«
From the ships bows nearly all the seamen now hung inactive hammers bits
of plank lances and harpoons mechanically retained in their hands just as
they had darted from their various employments all their enchanted eyes intent
upon the whale which from side to side strangely vibrating his predestinating
head sent a broad band of overspreading semicircular foam before him as he
rushed Retribution swift vengeance eternal malice were in his whole aspect
and spite of all that mortal man could do the solid white buttress of his
forehead smote the ships starboard bow till men and timbers reeled Some fell
flat upon their faces Like dislodged trunks the heads of the harpooneers aloft
shook on their bulllike necks Through the breach they heard the waters pour
as mountain torrents down a flume
»The ship The hearse the second hearse« cried Ahab from the boat »its
wood could only be American«
Diving beneath the settling ship the whale ran quivering along its keel
but turning under water swiftly shot to the surface again far off the other
bow but within a few yards of 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 spires of mine thou uncracked keel and only godbullied
hull thou firm deck and haughty helm and Polepointed prow deathglorious
ship must ye then perish and without me Am I cut off from the last fond pride
of meanest shipwrecked captains Oh lonely death on lonely life Oh now I feel
my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief Ho ho from all your furthest
bounds pour ye now in ye bold billows of my whole foregone life and top this
one piled comber of my death Toward thee I roll thou alldestroying but
unconquering whale to the last I grapple with thee from hells heart I stab at
thee for hates sake I spit my last breath at thee Sink all coffins and all
hearses to one common pool and since neither can be mine let me then tow to
pieces while still chasing thee though tied to thee thou damned whale Thus
I give up the spear«
The harpoon was darted the stricken whale flew forward with igniting
velocity the line ran through the groove ran foul Ahab stooped to clear it
he did clear it but the flying turn caught him round the neck and voicelessly
as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim he was shot out of the boat ere the
crew knew he was gone Next instant the heavy eyesplice in the ropes final
end flew out of the starkempty tub knocked down an oarsman and smiting the
sea disappeared in its depths
For an instant the tranced boats crew stood still then turned »The ship
Great God where is the ship« Soon they through dim bewildering mediums saw
her sidelong fading phantom as in the gaseous Fata Morgana only the uppermost
masts out of water while fixed by infatuation or fidelity or fate to their
once lofty perches the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking
lookouts on the sea And now concentric circles seized the lone boat itself
and all its crew and each floating oar and every lancepole and spinning
animate and inanimate all round and round in one vortex carried the smallest
chip of the Pequod out of sight
But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken
head of the Indian at the mainmast leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet
visible together with long streaming yards of the flag which calmly undulated
with ironical coincidings over the destroying billows they almost touched at
that instant a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open
air in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar
A skyhawk that tauntingly had followed the maintruck downward from its natural
home among the stars pecking at the flag and incommoding Tashtego there this
bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and
the wood and simultaneously feeling that ethereal thrill the submerged savage
beneath in his deathgasp kept his hammer frozen there and so the bird of
heaven with archangelic shrieks and his imperial beak thrust upward and his
whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab went down with his ship which
like Satan would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven
along with her and helmeted herself with it
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf a sullen white
surf beat against its steep sides then all collapsed and the great shroud of
the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago
Epilogue
»And I only am escaped alone to tell thee«
Job
The drama s done Why then here does anyone step forth Because one did
survive the wreck
It so chanced that after the Parsees disappearance I was he whom the
Fates ordained to take the place of Ahabs bowsman when that bowsman assumed
the vacant post the same who when on the last day the three men were tossed
from out of the rocking boat was dropped astern So floating on the margin of
the ensuing scene and in full sight of it when the halfspent suction of the
sunk ship reached me I was then but slowly drawn toward the closing vortex
When I reached it it had subsided to a creamy pool Round and round then and
ever contracting toward the buttonlike black bubble at the axis of that slowly
wheeling circle like another Ixion I did revolve Till gaining that vital
centre the black bubble upward burst and now liberated by reason of its
cunning spring and owing to its great buoyancy rising with great force the
coffin lifebuoy shot lengthwise from the sea fell over and floated by my
side Buoyed up by that coffin for almost one whole day and night I floated on
a soft and dirgelike main The unharming sharks they glided by as if with
padlocks on their mouths the savage seahawks sailed with sheathed beaks On
the second day a sail drew near nearer and picked me up at last It was the
deviouscruising »Rachel« that in her retracing search after her missing
children only found another orphan
Notes
1 See subsequent chapters for something more on this head
2 I am aware that down to the present time the fish styled Lamatins and Dugongs
Pigfish and Sowfish of the Coffins of Nantucket are included by many
naturalists among the whales But as these pigfish are a nosy contemptible
set mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers and feeding on wet hay and
especially as they do not spout I deny their credentials as whales and have
presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology
3 Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain Because
while the whales of this order though smaller than those of the former order
nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure yet the
bookbinders Quarto volume in its diminished form does not preserve the shape of
the Folio volume but the Octavo volume does
4 With reference to the Polar bear it may possibly be urged by him who would
fain go still deeper into this matter that it is not the whiteness separately
regarded which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that brute for
analysed that heightened hideousness it might be said only arises from the
circumstance that the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands
invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love and hence by bringing
together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us
with so unnatural a contrast But even assuming all this to be true yet were
it not for the whiteness you would not have that intensified terror
As for the white shark the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that
creature when beheld in his ordinary moods strangely tallies with the same
quality in the Polar quadruped This peculiarity is most vividly hit by the
French in the name they bestow upon that fish The Romish mass for the dead
begins with »Requiem eternam« eternal rest whence Requiem denominating the
mass itself and any other funereal music Now in allusion to the white silent
stillness of death in this shark and the mild deadliness of his habits the
French call him Requin
5 I remember the first albatross I ever saw It was during a prolonged gale in
waters hard upon the Antarctic seas From my forenoon watch below I ascended to
the overclouded deck and there dashed upon the main hatches I saw a regal
feathery thing of unspotted whiteness and with a hooked Roman bill sublime At
intervals it arched forth its vast archangel wings as if to embrace some holy
ark Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it Though bodily unharmed it
uttered cries as some kings ghost in supernatural distress Through its
inexpressible strange eyes methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of
God As Abraham before the angels I bowed myself the white thing was so white
its wings so wide and in those forever exiled waters I had lost the miserable
warping memories of traditions and of towns Long I gazed at that prodigy of
plumage I cannot tell can only hint the things that darted through me then
But at last I awoke and turning asked a sailor what bird was this A goney he
replied Goney I never had heard that name before is it conceivable that this
glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore never But some time after I
learned that goney was some seamans name for albatross So that by no
possibility could Coleridges wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those
mystical impressions which were mine when I saw that bird upon our deck For
neither had I then read the Rhyme nor knew the bird to be an albatross Yet in
saying this I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of
the poem and the poet
I assert then that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks
the secret of the spell a truth the more evinced in this that by a solecism of
terms there are birds called gray albatrosses and these I have frequently seen
but never with such emotions as when I beheld the Antarctic fowl
But how had the mystic thing been caught Whisper it not and I will tell with
a treacherous hook and line as the fowl floated on the sea At last the captain
made a postman of it tying a lettered leathern tally round its neck with the
ships time and place and then letting it escape But I doubt not that
leathern tally meant for man was taken off in Heaven when the white fowl flew
to join the wingfolding the invoking and adoring cherubim
6 Since the above was written the statement is happily borne out by an official
circular issued by Lieutenant Maury of the National Observatory Washington
April 16th 1851 By that circular it appears that precisely such a chart is in
course of completion and portions of it are presented in the circular »This
chart divides the ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude by five
degrees of longitude perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve
columns for the twelve months and horizontally through each of which districts
are three lines one to show the number of days that have been spent in each
month in every district and the two others to show the number of days in which
whales sperm or right have been seen«
7 The following are extracts from Chaces narrative »Every fact seemed to
warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which directed his
operations he made two several attacks upon the ship at a short interval
between them both of which according to their direction were calculated to do
us the most injury by being made ahead and thereby combining the speed of the
two objects for the shock to effect which the exact manoeuvres which he made
were necessary His aspect was most horrible and such as indicated resentment
and fury He came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered and
in which we had struck three of his companions as if fired with revenge for
their sufferings« Again »At all events the whole circumstances taken
together all happening before my own eyes and producing at the time
impressions in my mind of decided calculating mischief on the part of the
whale many of which impressions I cannot now recall induce me to be satisfied
that I am correct in my opinion«
Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship during a black night
in an open boat when almost despairing of reaching any hospitable shore »The
dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing the fears of being swallowed up by
some dreadful tempest or dashed upon hidden rocks with all the other ordinary
subjects of fearful contemplation seemed scarcely entitled to a moments
thought the dismallooking wreck and the horrid aspect and revenge of the
whale wholly engrossed my reflections until day again made its appearance«
In another place p 45 he speaks of the mysterious and mortal attack of the
animal
8 The cabincompass is called the telltale because without going to the
compass at the helm the captain while below can inform himself of the course
of the ship
9 The ancient whalecry upon first sighting a whale from the masthead still
used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin
10 That part of the sea known among whalemen as the Brazil Banks does not bear
that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do because of there being shallows and
soundings there but because of this remarkable meadowlike appearance caused
by the vast drifts of brit continually floating in those latitudes where the
right whale is often chased
11 It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the entire
interior of the sperm whales enormous head consists Though apparently the most
massive it is by far the most buoyant part about him So that with ease he
elevates it in the air and invariably does so when going at his utmost speed
Besides such is the breadth of the upper part of the front of his head and
such the tapering cutwater formation of the lower part that by obliquely
elevating his head he thereby may be said to transform himself from a
bluffbowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New York pilotboat
12 Partly to show the indispensableness of this act it may here be stated that
in the old Dutch fishery a mop was used to dash the running line with water in
many other ships a wooden piggin or bailer is set apart for that purpose
Your hat however is the most convenient
13 A little item may as well be related here The strongest and most reliable
hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside is by the flukes or
tail and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier than any
other excepting the sidefins its flexibility even in death causes it to sink
low beneath the surface so that with the hand you cannot get at it from the
boat in order to put the chain round it But this difficulty is ingeniously
overcome a small strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end
and a weight in its middle while the other end is secured to the ship By
adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side of the
mass so that now having girdled the whale the chain is readily made to follow
suit and being slipped along the body is at last locked fast round the
smallest part of the tail at the point of junction with its broad flukes or
lobes
14 The whalingspade used for cutting in is made of the very best steel is
about the bigness of a mans spread hand and in general shape corresponds to
the garden implement after which it is named only its sides are perfectly flat
and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower This weapon is always
kept as sharp as possible and when being used is occasionally honed just like
a razor In its socket a stiff pole from twenty to thirty feet long is
inserted for a handle
15 The monkeyrope is found in all whalers but it was only in the Pequod that
the monkey and his holder were ever tied together This improvement upon the
original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb in order to afford to
the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible guarantee for the faithfulness
and vigilance of his monkeyrope holder
16 This reminds us that the right whale really has a sort of whisker or rather
a moustache consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the upper part of the
outer end of the lower jaw Sometimes these tufts impart a rather brigandish
expression to his otherwise solemn countenance
17 Quoin is not a Euclidean term Its belongs to the pure nautical mathematics
I know not that it has been defined before A quoin is a solid which differs
from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the steep inclination of one
side instead of the mutual tapering of both sides
18 Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale and the
elephant is preposterous inasmuch as in that particular the elephant stands in
much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to the elephant
nevertheless there are not wanting some points of curious similitude among
these is the spout It is well known that the elephant will often draw up water
or dust in his trunk and then elevating it jet it forth in a stream
19 The sperm whale as with all other species of the leviathan but unlike most
other fish breeds indifferently at all seasons after a gestation which may
probably be set down at nine months producing but one at a time though in some
few known instances giving birth to an Esau and Jacob a contingency provided
for in suckling by two teats curiously situated one on each side of the anus
but the breasts themselves extend upward from that When by chance these
precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunters lance the mothers
pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods The milk is very
sweet and rich it has been tasted by man it might do well with strawberries
When overflowing with mutual esteem the whales salute more hominum
20 Bible leaves Bible leaves This is the invariable cry from the mates to the
mincer It enjoins him to be careful and cut his work into as thin slices as
possible inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the oil is much
accelerated and its quantity considerably increased besides perhaps improving
it in quality
21 In sperm whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board it is a
regular semiweekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold and drench the casks
with seawater which afterward at varying intervals is removed by the ships
pumps Hereby the casks are sought to be kept damply tight while by the changed
character of the withdrawn water the mariners readily detect any serious
leakage in the precious cargo
22 This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale It receives its designation
pitchpoling from its being likened to that preliminary upanddown poise of
the whalelance in the exercise called pitchpoling previously described By
this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively view whatever objects
may be encircling him