CHAPTER 26.
Knights and Squires.
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck,
a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent.
He was a long, earnest man, and though born
on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure
hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked
biscuit.
Transported to the Indies, his live blood
would not spoil like bottled ale.
He must have been born in some time of general
drought and famine, or upon one of those fast
days for which his state is famous.
Only some thirty arid summers had he seen;
those summers had dried up all his physical
superfluousness.
But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed
no more the token of wasting anxieties and
cares, than it seemed the indication of any
bodily blight.
It was merely the condensation of the man.
He was by no means ill-looking; quite the
contrary.
His pure tight skin was an excellent fit;
and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed
with inner health and strength, like a revivified
Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to
endure for long ages to come, and to endure
always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid
sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior
vitality was warranted to do well in all climates.
Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there
the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold
perils he had calmly confronted through life.
A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the
most part was a telling pantomime of action,
and not a tame chapter of sounds.
Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude,
there were certain qualities in him which
at times affected, and in some cases seemed
well nigh to overbalance all the rest.
Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and
endued with a deep natural reverence, the
wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore
strongly incline him to superstition; but
to that sort of superstition, which in some
organizations seems rather to spring, somehow,
from intelligence than from ignorance.
Outward portents and inward presentiments
were his.
And if at times these things bent the welded
iron of his soul, much more did his far-away
domestic memories of his young Cape wife and
child, tend to bend him still more from the
original ruggedness of his nature, and open
him still further to those latent influences
which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain
the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced
by others in the more perilous vicissitudes
of the fishery.
“I will have no man in my boat,” said
Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.”
By this, he seemed to mean, not only that
the most reliable and useful courage was that
which arises from the fair estimation of the
encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless
man is a far more dangerous comrade than a
coward.
“Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate,
“Starbuck, there, is as careful a man as
you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.”
But we shall ere long see what that word “careful”
precisely means when used by a man like Stubb,
or almost any other whale hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in
him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing
simply useful to him, and always at hand upon
all mortally practical occasions.
Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this
business of whaling, courage was one of the
great staple outfits of the ship, like her
beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly
wasted.
Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for
whales after sun-down; nor for persisting
in fighting a fish that too much persisted
in fighting him.
For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical
ocean to kill whales for my living, and not
to be killed by them for theirs; and that
hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck
well knew.
What doom was his own father’s?
Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find
the torn limbs of his brother?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover,
given to a certain superstitiousness, as has
been said; the courage of this Starbuck which
could, nevertheless, still flourish, must
indeed have been extreme.
But it was not in reasonable nature that a
man so organized, and with such terrible experiences
and remembrances as he had; it was not in
nature that these things should fail in latently
engendering an element in him, which, under
suitable circumstances, would break out from
its confinement, and burn all his courage
up.
And brave as he might be, it was that sort
of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid
men, which, while generally abiding firm in
the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales,
or any of the ordinary irrational horrors
of the world, yet cannot withstand those more
terrific, because more spiritual terrors,
which sometimes menace you from the concentrating
brow of an enraged and mighty man.
But were the coming narrative to reveal in
any instance, the complete abasement of poor
Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have
the heart to write it; for it is a thing most
sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall
of valour in the soul.
Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies
and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers
there may be; men may have mean and meagre
faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble
and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing
creature, that over any ignominious blemish
in him all his fellows should run to throw
their costliest robes.
That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves,
so far within us, that it remains intact though
all the outer character seem gone; bleeds
with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle
of a valor-ruined man.
Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight,
completely stifle her upbraidings against
the permitting stars.
But this august dignity I treat of, is not
the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding
dignity which has no robed investiture.
Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that
wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic
dignity which, on all hands, radiates without
end from God; Himself!
The great God absolute!
The centre and circumference of all democracy!
His omnipresence, our divine equality!
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades
and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high
qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic
graces; if even the most mournful, perchance
the most abased, among them all, shall at
times lift himself to the exalted mounts;
if I shall touch that workman’s arm with
some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow
over his disastrous set of sun; then against
all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou
just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread
one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind!
Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God!
who didst not refuse to the swart convict,
Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst
clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest
gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old
Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson
from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon
a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher
than a throne!
Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings,
ever cullest Thy selectest champions from
the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!
CHAPTER 27.
Knights and Squires.
Stubb was the second mate.
He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, according
to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man.
A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant;
taking perils as they came with an indifferent
air; and while engaged in the most imminent
crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and
collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for
the year.
Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided
over his whale-boat as if the most deadly
encounter were but a dinner, and his crew
all invited guests.
He was as particular about the comfortable
arrangement of his part of the boat, as an
old stage-driver is about the snugness of
his box.
When close to the whale, in the very death-lock
of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance
coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker
his hammer.
He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while
flank and flank with the most exasperated
monster.
Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted
the jaws of death into an easy chair.
What he thought of death itself, there is
no telling.
Whether he ever thought of it at all, might
be a question; but, if he ever did chance
to cast his mind that way after a comfortable
dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took
it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble
aloft, and bestir themselves there, about
something which he would find out when he
obeyed the order, and not sooner.
What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb
such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily
trudging off with the burden of life in a
world full of grave pedlars, all bowed to
the ground with their packs; what helped to
bring about that almost impious good-humor
of his; that thing must have been his pipe.
For, like his nose, his short, black little
pipe was one of the regular features of his
face.
You would almost as soon have expected him
to turn out of his bunk without his nose as
without his pipe.
He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded,
stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his
hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked
them all out in succession, lighting one from
the other to the end of the chapter; then
loading them again to be in readiness anew.
For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first
putting his legs into his trowsers, he put
his pipe into his mouth.
I say this continual smoking must have been
one cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition;
for every one knows that this earthly air,
whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected
with the nameless miseries of the numberless
mortals who have died exhaling it; and as
in time of the cholera, some people go about
with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths;
so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations,
Stubb’s tobacco smoke might have operated
as a sort of disinfecting agent.
The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury,
in Martha’s Vineyard.
A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious
concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think
that the great leviathans had personally and
hereditarily affronted him; and therefore
it was a sort of point of honor with him,
to destroy them whenever encountered.
So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence
for the many marvels of their majestic bulk
and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like
an apprehension of any possible danger from
encountering them; that in his poor opinion,
the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified
mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only
a little circumvention and some small application
of time and trouble in order to kill and boil.
This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of
his made him a little waggish in the matter
of whales; he followed these fish for the
fun of it; and a three years’ voyage round
Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted
that length of time.
As a carpenter’s nails are divided into
wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may
be similarly divided.
Little Flask was one of the wrought ones;
made to clinch tight and last long.
They called him King-Post on board of the
Pequod; because, in form, he could be well
likened to the short, square timber known
by that name in Arctic whalers; and which
by the means of many radiating side timbers
inserted into it, serves to brace the ship
against the icy concussions of those battering
seas.
Now these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb, and
Flask, were momentous men.
They it was who by universal prescription
commanded three of the Pequod’s boats as
headsmen.
In that grand order of battle in which Captain
Ahab would probably marshal his forces to
descend on the whales, these three headsmen
were as captains of companies.
Or, being armed with their long keen whaling
spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers;
even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins.
And since in this famous fishery, each mate
or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old,
is always accompanied by his boat-steerer
or harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures
provides him with a fresh lance, when the
former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed
in the assault; and moreover, as there generally
subsists between the two, a close intimacy
and friendliness; it is therefore but meet,
that in this place we set down who the Pequod’s
harpooneers were, and to what headsman each
of them belonged.
First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck,
the chief mate, had selected for his squire.
But Queequeg is already known.
Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from
Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of
Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists
the last remnant of a village of red men,
which has long supplied the neighboring island
of Nantucket with many of her most daring
harpooneers.
In the fishery, they usually go by the generic
name of Gay-Headers.
Tashtego’s long, lean, sable hair, his high
cheek bones, and black rounding eyes—for
an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but
Antarctic in their glittering expression—all
this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor
of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior
hunters, who, in quest of the great New England
moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal
forests of the main.
But no longer snuffing in the trail of the
wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now
hunted in the wake of the great whales of
the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly
replacing the infallible arrow of the sires.
To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky
limbs, you would almost have credited the
superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans,
and half-believed this wild Indian to be a
son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air.
Tashtego was Stubb the second mate’s squire.
Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a
gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a
lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold.
Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops,
so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts,
and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards
to them.
In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped
on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay
on his native coast.
And never having been anywhere in the world
but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors
most frequented by whalemen; and having now
led for many years the bold life of the fishery
in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful
of what manner of men they shipped; Daggoo
retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect
as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all
the pomp of six feet five in his socks.
There was a corporeal humility in looking
up at him; and a white man standing before
him seemed a white flag come to beg truce
of a fortress.
Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus
Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who
looked like a chess-man beside him.
As for the residue of the Pequod’s company,
be it said, that at the present day not one
in two of the many thousand men before the
mast employed in the American whale fishery,
are Americans born, though pretty nearly all
the officers are.
Herein it is the same with the American whale
fishery as with the American army and military
and merchant navies, and the engineering forces
employed in the construction of the American
Canals and Railroads.
The same, I say, because in all these cases
the native American liberally provides the
brains, the rest of the world as generously
supplying the muscles.
No small number of these whaling seamen belong
to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket
whalers frequently touch to augment their
crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky
shores.
In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing
out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland
Islands, to receive the full complement of
their crew.
Upon the passage homewards, they drop them
there again.
How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders
seem to make the best whalemen.
They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod,
Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging
the common continent of men, but each Isolato
living on a separate continent of his own.
Yet now, federated along one keel, what a
set these Isolatoes were!
An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the
isles of the sea, and all the ends of the
earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod
to lay the world’s grievances before that
bar from which not very many of them ever
come back.
Black Little Pip—he never did—oh, no!
he went before.
Poor Alabama boy!
On the grim Pequod’s forecastle, ye shall
ere long see him, beating his tambourine;
prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for,
to the great quarter-deck on high, he was
bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine
in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero
there!
CHAPTER 28.
Ahab.
For
several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing
above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab.
The mates regularly relieved each other at
the watches, and for aught that could be seen
to the contrary, they seemed to be the only
commanders of the ship; only they sometimes
issued from the cabin with orders so sudden
and peremptory, that after all it was plain
they but commanded vicariously.
Yes, their supreme lord and dictator was there,
though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted
to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of
the cabin.
Every time I ascended to the deck from my
watches below, I instantly gazed aft to mark
if any strange face were visible; for my first
vague disquietude touching the unknown captain,
now in the seclusion of the sea, became almost
a perturbation.
This was strangely heightened at times by
the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences
uninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtle
energy I could not have before conceived of.
But poorly could I withstand them, much as
in other moods I was almost ready to smile
at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish
prophet of the wharves.
But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or
uneasiness—to call it so—which I felt,
yet whenever I came to look about me in the
ship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish
such emotions.
For though the harpooneers, with the great
body of the crew, were a far more barbaric,
heathenish, and motley set than any of the
tame merchant-ship companies which my previous
experiences had made me acquainted with, still
I ascribed this—and rightly ascribed it—to
the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of
that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I
had so abandonedly embarked.
But it was especially the aspect of the three
chief officers of the ship, the mates, which
was most forcibly calculated to allay these
colourless misgivings, and induce confidence
and cheerfulness in every presentment of the
voyage.
Three better, more likely sea-officers and
men, each in his own different way, could
not readily be found, and they were every
one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder,
a Cape man.
Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot
from out her harbor, for a space we had biting
Polar weather, though all the time running
away from it to the southward; and by every
degree and minute of latitude which we sailed,
gradually leaving that merciless winter, and
all its intolerable weather behind us.
It was one of those less lowering, but still
grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition,
when with a fair wind the ship was rushing
through the water with a vindictive sort of
leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I
mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon
watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards
the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over
me.
Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab
stood upon his quarter-deck.
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness
about him, nor of the recovery from any.
He looked like a man cut away from the stake,
when the fire has overrunningly wasted all
the limbs without consuming them, or taking
away one particle from their compacted aged
robustness.
His whole high, broad form, seemed made of
solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable
mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus.
Threading its way out from among his grey
hairs, and continuing right down one side
of his tawny scorched face and neck, till
it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a
slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish.
It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes
made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great
tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts
down it, and without wrenching a single twig,
peels and grooves out the bark from top to
bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving
the tree still greenly alive, but branded.
Whether that mark was born with him, or whether
it was the scar left by some desperate wound,
no one could certainly say.
By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage
little or no allusion was made to it, especially
by the mates.
But once Tashtego’s senior, an old Gay-Head
Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted
that not till he was full forty years old
did Ahab become that way branded, and then
it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal
fray, but in an elemental strife at sea.
Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived,
by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old
sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed
out of Nantucket, had never ere this laid
eye upon wild Ahab.
Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the
immemorial credulities, popularly invested
this old Manxman with preternatural powers
of discernment.
So that no white sailor seriously contradicted
him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab
should be tranquilly laid out—which might
hardly come to pass, so he muttered—then,
whoever should do that last office for the
dead, would find a birth-mark on him from
crown to sole.
So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of
Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which
streaked it, that for the first few moments
I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing
grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg
upon which he partly stood.
It had previously come to me that this ivory
leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished
bone of the sperm whale’s jaw.
“Aye, he was dismasted off Japan,” said
the old Gay-Head Indian once; “but like
his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast
without coming home for it.
He has a quiver of ’em.”
I was struck with the singular posture he
maintained.
Upon each side of the Pequod’s quarter deck,
and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there
was an auger hole, bored about half an inch
or so, into the plank.
His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm
elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain
Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond
the ship’s ever-pitching prow.
There was an infinity of firmest fortitude,
a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness,
in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication
of that glance.
Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers
say aught to him; though by all their minutest
gestures and expressions, they plainly showed
the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness
of being under a troubled master-eye.
And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab
stood before them with a crucifixion in his
face; in all the nameless regal overbearing
dignity of some mighty woe.
Ere long, from his first visit in the air,
he withdrew into his cabin.
But after that morning, he was every day visible
to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole,
or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily
walking the deck.
As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began
to grow a little genial, he became still less
and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had
sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry
bleakness of the sea had then kept him so
secluded.
And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was
almost continually in the air; but, as yet,
for all that he said, or perceptibly did,
on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary
there as another mast.
But the Pequod was only making a passage now;
not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling
preparatives needing supervision the mates
were fully competent to, so that there was
little or nothing, out of himself, to employ
or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away,
for that one interval, the clouds that layer
upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever
all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile
themselves upon.
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling
persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather
we came to, seemed gradually to charm him
from his mood.
For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls,
April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic
woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven
old oak will at least send forth some few
green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted
visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little
respond to the playful allurings of that girlish
air.
More than once did he put forth the faint
blossom of a look, which, in any other man,
would have soon flowered out in a smile.
CHAPTER 29.
Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all
astern, the Pequod now went rolling through
the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost
perpetually reigns on the threshold of the
eternal August of the Tropic.
The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed,
overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal
goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up—flaked
up, with rose-water snow.
The starred and stately nights seemed haughty
dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home
in lonely pride, the memory of their absent
conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!
For sleeping man, ’twas hard to choose between
such winsome days and such seducing nights.
But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather
did not merely lend new spells and potencies
to the outward world.
Inward they turned upon the soul, especially
when the still mild hours of eve came on;
then, memory shot her crystals as the clear
ice most forms of noiseless twilights.
And all these subtle agencies, more and more
they wrought on Ahab’s texture.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer
linked with life, the less man has to do with
aught that looks like death.
Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will
oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked
deck.
It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late,
he seemed so much to live in the open air,
that truly speaking, his visits were more
to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks.
“It feels like going down into one’s tomb,”—he
would mutter to himself—“for an old captain
like me to be descending this narrow scuttle,
to go to my grave-dug berth.”
So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the
watches of the night were set, and the band
on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band
below; and when if a rope was to be hauled
upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it
not rudely down, as by day, but with some
cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear
of disturbing their slumbering shipmates;
when this sort of steady quietude would begin
to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman
would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long
the old man would emerge, gripping at the
iron banister, to help his crippled way.
Some considering touch of humanity was in
him; for at times like these, he usually abstained
from patrolling the quarter-deck; because
to his wearied mates, seeking repose within
six inches of his ivory heel, such would have
been the reverberating crack and din of that
bony step, that their dreams would have been
on the crunching teeth of sharks.
But once, the mood was on him too deep for
common regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-like
pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail
to mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came
up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecating
humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab
was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one
could say nay; but there might be some way
of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly
and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and
the insertion into it, of the ivory heel.
Ah!
Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.
“Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb,” said Ahab,
“that thou wouldst wad me that fashion?
But go thy ways; I had forgot.
Below to thy nightly grave; where such as
ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the
filling one at last.—Down, dog, and kennel!”
Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation
of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb
was speechless a moment; then said excitedly,
“I am not used to be spoken to that way,
sir; I do but less than half like it, sir.”
“Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth,
and violently moving away, as if to avoid
some passionate temptation.
“No, sir; not yet,” said Stubb, emboldened,
“I will not tamely be called a dog, sir.”
“Then be called ten times a donkey, and
a mule, and an ass, and begone, or I’ll
clear the world of thee!”
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with
such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that
Stubb involuntarily retreated.
“I was never served so before without giving
a hard blow for it,” muttered Stubb, as
he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle.
“It’s very queer.
Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don’t well
know whether to go back and strike him, or—what’s
that?—down here on my knees and pray for
him?
Yes, that was the thought coming up in me;
but it would be the first time I ever did
pray.
It’s queer; very queer; and he’s queer
too; aye, take him fore and aft, he’s about
the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with.
How he flashed at me!—his eyes like powder-pans!
is he mad?
Anyway there’s something on his mind, as
sure as there must be something on a deck
when it cracks.
He aint in his bed now, either, more than
three hours out of the twenty-four; and he
don’t sleep then.
Didn’t that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell
me that of a morning he always finds the old
man’s hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled,
and the sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid
almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort
of frightful hot, as though a baked brick
had been on it?
A hot old man!
I guess he’s got what some folks ashore
call a conscience; it’s a kind of Tic-Dolly-row
they say—worse nor a toothache.
Well, well; I don’t know what it is, but
the Lord keep me from catching it.
He’s full of riddles; I wonder what he goes
into the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy
tells me he suspects; what’s that for, I
should like to know?
Who’s made appointments with him in the
hold?
Ain’t that queer, now?
But there’s no telling, it’s the old game—Here
goes for a snooze.
Damn me, it’s worth a fellow’s while to
be born into the world, if only to fall right
asleep.
And now that I think of it, that’s about
the first thing babies do, and that’s a
sort of queer, too.
Damn me, but all things are queer, come to
think of ’em.
But that’s against my principles.
Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and
sleep when you can, is my twelfth—So here
goes again.
But how’s that? didn’t he call me a dog?
blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and
piled a lot of jackasses on top of that!
He might as well have kicked me, and done
with it.
Maybe he did kick me, and I didn’t observe
it, I was so taken all aback with his brow,
somehow.
It flashed like a bleached bone.
What the devil’s the matter with me?
I don’t stand right on my legs.
Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of
turned me wrong side out.
By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though—How?
how? how?—but the only way’s to stash
it; so here goes to hammock again; and in
the morning, I’ll see how this plaguey juggling
thinks over by daylight.”
CHAPTER 30.
The Pipe.
When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a
while leaning over the bulwarks; and then,
as had been usual with him of late, calling
a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for
his ivory stool, and also his pipe.
Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and
planting the stool on the weather side of
the deck, he sat and smoked.
In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving
Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition,
of the tusks of the narwhale.
How could one look at Ahab then, seated on
that tripod of bones, without bethinking him
of the royalty it symbolized?
For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the
sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed, during which the thick
vapor came from his mouth in quick and constant
puffs, which blew back again into his face.
“How now,” he soliloquized at last, withdrawing
the tube, “this smoking no longer soothes.
Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy
charm be gone!
Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not
pleasuring—aye, and ignorantly smoking to
windward all the while; to windward, and with
such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying
whale, my final jets were the strongest and
fullest of trouble.
What business have I with this pipe?
This thing that is meant for sereneness, to
send up mild white vapors among mild white
hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like
mine.
I’ll smoke no more—”
He tossed the still lighted pipe into the
sea.
The fire hissed in the waves; the same instant
the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe
made.
With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the
planks.
CHAPTER 31.
Queen Mab.
Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.
“Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never
had.
You know the old man’s ivory leg, well I
dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried
to kick back, upon my soul, my little man,
I kicked my leg right off!
And then, presto!
Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing
fool, kept kicking at it.
But what was still more curious, Flask—you
know how curious all dreams are—through
all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed
to be thinking to myself, that after all,
it was not much of an insult, that kick from
Ahab.
‘Why,’ thinks I, ‘what’s the row?
It’s not a real leg, only a false leg.’
And there’s a mighty difference between
a living thump and a dead thump.
That’s what makes a blow from the hand,
Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than
a blow from a cane.
The living member—that makes the living
insult, my little man.
And thinks I to myself all the while, mind,
while I was stubbing my silly toes against
that cursed pyramid—so confoundedly contradictory
was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking
to myself, ‘what’s his leg now, but a
cane—a whalebone cane.
Yes,’ thinks I, ‘it was only a playful
cudgelling—in fact, only a whaleboning that
he gave me—not a base kick.
Besides,’ thinks I, ‘look at it once;
why, the end of it—the foot part—what
a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad
footed farmer kicked me, there’s a devilish
broad insult.
But this insult is whittled down to a point
only.’
But now comes the greatest joke of the dream,
Flask.
While I was battering away at the pyramid,
a sort of badger-haired old merman, with a
hump on his back, takes me by the shoulders,
and slews me round.
‘What are you ’bout?’ says he.
Slid! man, but I was frightened.
Such a phiz!
But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright.
‘What am I about?’ says I at last.
‘And what business is that of yours, I should
like to know, Mr. Humpback?
Do you want a kick?’
By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that,
than he turned round his stern to me, bent
over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he
had for a clout—what do you think, I saw?—why
thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck full
of marlinspikes, with the points out.
Says I, on second thoughts, ‘I guess I won’t
kick you, old fellow.’
‘Wise Stubb,’ said he, ‘wise Stubb;’
and kept muttering it all the time, a sort
of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag.
Seeing he wasn’t going to stop saying over
his ‘wise Stubb, wise Stubb,’ I thought
I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid
again.
But I had only just lifted my foot for it,
when he roared out, ‘Stop that kicking!’
‘Halloa,’ says I, ‘what’s the matter
now, old fellow?’
‘Look ye here,’ says he; ‘let’s argue
the insult.
Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did,’ says I—‘right here
it was.’
‘Very good,’ says he—‘he used his
ivory leg, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did,’ says I.
‘Well then,’ says he, ‘wise Stubb, what
have you to complain of?
Didn’t he kick with right good will? it
wasn’t a common pitch pine leg he kicked
with, was it?
No, you were kicked by a great man, and with
a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb.
It’s an honor; I consider it an honor.
Listen, wise Stubb.
In old England the greatest lords think it
great glory to be slapped by a queen, and
made garter-knights of; but, be your boast,
Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and
made a wise man of.
Remember what I say; be kicked by him; account
his kicks honors; and on no account kick back;
for you can’t help yourself, wise Stubb.
Don’t you see that pyramid?’
With that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow,
in some queer fashion, to swim off into the
air.
I snored; rolled over; and there I was in
my hammock!
Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask?”
“I don’t know; it seems a sort of foolish
to me, tho.’”
“May be; may be.
But it’s made a wise man of me, Flask.
D’ye see Ahab standing there, sideways looking
over the stern?
Well, the best thing you can do, Flask, is
to let the old man alone; never speak to him,
whatever he says.
Halloa!
What’s that he shouts?
Hark!”
“Mast-head, there!
Look sharp, all of ye!
There are whales hereabouts!
“If ye see a white one, split your lungs
for him!
“What do you think of that now, Flask?
ain’t there a small drop of something queer
about that, eh?
A white whale—did ye mark that, man?
Look ye—there’s something special in the
wind.
Stand by for it, Flask.
Ahab has that that’s bloody on his mind.
But, mum; he comes
this way.”
CHAPTER 32.
Cetology.
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep;
but soon we shall be lost in its unshored,
harbourless immensities.
Ere that come to pass; ere the Pequod’s
weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled
hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is
but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable
to a thorough appreciative understanding of
the more special leviathanic revelations and
allusions of all sorts which are to follow.
It is some systematized exhibition of the
whale in his broad genera, that I would now
fain put before you.
Yet is it no easy task.
The classification of the constituents of
a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.
Listen to what the best and latest authorities
have laid down.
“No branch of Zoology is so much involved
as that which is entitled Cetology,” says
Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
“It is not my intention, were it in my power,
to enter into the inquiry as to the true method
of dividing the cetacea into groups and families.
* * * Utter confusion exists among the historians
of this animal” (sperm whale), says Surgeon
Beale, A.D. 1839.
“Unfitness to pursue our research in the
unfathomable waters.”
“Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge
of the cetacea.”
“A field strewn with thorns.”
“All these incomplete indications but serve
to torture us naturalists.”
Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier,
and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights
of zoology and anatomy.
Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there
be little, yet of books there are a plenty;
and so in some small degree, with cetology,
or the science of whales.
Many are the men, small and great, old and
new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large
or in little, written of the whale.
Run over a few:—The Authors of the Bible;
Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne;
Gesner; Ray; Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby;
Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacépède;
Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick
Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale;
Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam
Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev.
T. Cheever.
But to what ultimate generalizing purpose
all these have written, the above cited extracts
will show.
Of the names in this list of whale authors,
only those following Owen ever saw living
whales; and but one of them was a real professional
harpooneer and whaleman.
I mean Captain Scoresby.
On the separate subject of the Greenland or
right-whale, he is the best existing authority.
But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing
of the great sperm whale, compared with which
the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning.
And here be it said, that the Greenland whale
is an usurper upon the throne of the seas.
He is not even by any means the largest of
the whales.
Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims,
and the profound ignorance which, till some
seventy years back, invested the then fabulous
or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which
ignorance to this present day still reigns
in all but some few scientific retreats and
whale-ports; this usurpation has been every
way complete.
Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions
in the great poets of past days, will satisfy
you that the Greenland whale, without one
rival, was to them the monarch of the seas.
But the time has at last come for a new proclamation.
This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people
all,—the Greenland whale is deposed,—the
great sperm whale now reigneth!
There are only two books in being which at
all pretend to put the living sperm whale
before you, and at the same time, in the remotest
degree succeed in the attempt.
Those books are Beale’s and Bennett’s;
both in their time surgeons to English South-Sea
whale-ships, and both exact and reliable men.
The original matter touching the sperm whale
to be found in their volumes is necessarily
small; but so far as it goes, it is of excellent
quality, though mostly confined to scientific
description.
As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific
or poetic, lives not complete in any literature.
Far above all other hunted whales, his is
an unwritten life.
Now the various species of whales need some
sort of popular comprehensive classification,
if only an easy outline one for the present,
hereafter to be filled in all its departments
by subsequent laborers.
As no better man advances to take this matter
in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors.
I promise nothing complete; because any human
thing supposed to be complete, must for that
very reason infallibly be faulty.
I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical
description of the various species, or—in
this place at least—to much of any description.
My object here is simply to project the draught
of a systematization of cetology.
I am the architect, not the builder.
But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter
in the Post-Office is equal to it.
To grope down into the bottom of the sea after
them; to have one’s hands among the unspeakable
foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the
world; this is a fearful thing.
What am I that I should essay to hook the
nose of this leviathan!
The awful tauntings in Job might well appal
me.
Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with
thee?
Behold the hope of him is vain!
But I have swam through libraries and sailed
through oceans; I have had to do with whales
with these visible hands; I am in earnest;
and I will try.
There are some preliminaries to settle.
First: The uncertain, unsettled condition
of this science of Cetology is in the very
vestibule attested by the fact, that in some
quarters it still remains a moot point whether
a whale be a fish.
In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnæus
declares, “I hereby separate the whales
from the fish.”
But of my own knowledge, I know that down
to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives
and herring, against Linnæus’s express
edict, were still found dividing the possession
of the same seas with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain
have banished the whales from the waters,
he states as follows: “On account of their
warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable
eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem
feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally,
“ex lege naturæ jure meritoque.”
I submitted all this to my friends Simeon
Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both
messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and
they united in the opinion that the reasons
set forth were altogether insufficient.
Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.
Be it known that, waiving all argument, I
take the good old fashioned ground that the
whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah
to back me.
This fundamental thing settled, the next point
is, in what internal respect does the whale
differ from other fish.
Above, Linnæus has given you those items.
But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm
blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless
and cold blooded.
Next: how shall we define the whale, by his
obvious externals, so as conspicuously to
label him for all time to come?
To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish
with a horizontal tail.
There you have him.
However contracted, that definition is the
result of expanded meditation.
A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the
walrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious.
But the last term of the definition is still
more cogent, as coupled with the first.
Almost any one must have noticed that all
the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat,
but a vertical, or up-and-down tail.
Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though
it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes
a horizontal position.
By the above definition of what a whale is,
I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic
brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified
with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers;
nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish
hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.*
Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal
tailed fish must be included in this ground-plan
of Cetology.
Now, then, come the grand divisions of the
entire whale host.
*I am aware that down to the present time,
the fish styled Lamatins and Dugongs (Pig-fish
and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket)
are included by many naturalists among the
whales.
But as these pig-fish are a noisy, contemptible
set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers,
and feeding on wet hay, and especially as
they do not spout, I deny their credentials
as whales; and have presented them with their
passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.
First: According to magnitude I divide the
whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible
into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend
them all, both small and large.
I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE;
III.
the DUODECIMO WHALE.
As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm
Whale; of the OCTAVO, the Grampus; of the
DUODECIMO, the Porpoise.
FOLIOS.
Among these I here include the following chapters:—I.
The Sperm Whale; II. the Right Whale; III.
the Fin-Back Whale; IV. the Hump-backed Whale;
V. the Razor Back Whale; VI. the Sulphur Bottom
Whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER I. (Sperm Whale).—This
whale, among the English of old vaguely known
as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale,
and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present
Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich
of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the
Long Words.
He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant
of the globe; the most formidable of all whales
to encounter; the most majestic in aspect;
and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce;
he being the only creature from which that
valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained.
All his peculiarities will, in many other
places, be enlarged upon.
It is chiefly with his name that I now have
to do.
Philologically considered, it is absurd.
Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was
almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality,
and when his oil was only accidentally obtained
from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti,
it would seem, was popularly supposed to be
derived from a creature identical with the
one then known in England as the Greenland
or Right Whale.
It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti
was that quickening humor of the Greenland
Whale which the first syllable of the word
literally expresses.
In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly
scarce, not being used for light, but only
as an ointment and medicament.
It was only to be had from the druggists as
you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb.
When, as I opine, in the course of time, the
true nature of spermaceti became known, its
original name was still retained by the dealers;
no doubt to enhance its value by a notion
so strangely significant of its scarcity.
And so the appellation must at last have come
to be bestowed upon the whale from which this
spermaceti was really derived.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II.
(Right Whale).—In one respect this is the
most venerable of the leviathans, being the
one first regularly hunted by man.
It yields the article commonly known as whalebone
or baleen; and the oil specially known as
“whale oil,” an inferior article in commerce.
Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately
designated by all the following titles: The
Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale;
the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right
Whale.
There is a deal of obscurity concerning the
identity of the species thus multitudinously
baptised.
What then is the whale, which I include in
the second species of my Folios?
It is the Great Mysticetus of the English
naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English
whalemen; the Baleine Ordinaire of the French
whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes.
It is the whale which for more than two centuries
past has been hunted by the Dutch and English
in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which
the American fishermen have long pursued in
the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on
the Nor’ West Coast, and various other parts
of the world, designated by them Right Whale
Cruising Grounds.
Some pretend to see a difference between the
Greenland whale of the English and the right
whale of the Americans.
But they precisely agree in all their grand
features; nor has there yet been presented
a single determinate fact upon which to ground
a radical distinction.
It is by endless subdivisions based upon the
most inconclusive differences, that some departments
of natural history become so repellingly intricate.
The right whale will be elsewhere treated
of at some length, with reference to elucidating
the sperm whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER III.
(Fin-Back).—Under this head I reckon a monster
which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout,
and Long-John, has been seen almost in every
sea and is commonly the whale whose distant
jet is so often descried by passengers crossing
the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks.
In the length he attains, and in his baleen,
the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but
is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour,
approaching to olive.
His great lips present a cable-like aspect,
formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds
of large wrinkles.
His grand distinguishing feature, the fin,
from which he derives his name, is often a
conspicuous object.
This fin is some three or four feet long,
growing vertically from the hinder part of
the back, of an angular shape, and with a
very sharp pointed end.
Even if not the slightest other part of the
creature be visible, this isolated fin will,
at times, be seen plainly projecting from
the surface.
When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly
marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like
fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled
surface, it may well be supposed that the
watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles
a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines
graved on it.
On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back.
The Fin-Back is not gregarious.
He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters.
Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly
rising to the surface in the remotest and
most sullen waters; his straight and single
lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic
spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such
wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as
to defy all present pursuit from man; this
leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable
Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that
style upon his back.
From having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back
is sometimes included with the right whale,
among a theoretic species denominated Whalebone
whales, that is, whales with baleen.
Of these so called Whalebone whales, there
would seem to be several varieties, most of
which, however, are little known.
Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed
whales; bunched whales; under-jawed whales
and rostrated whales, are the fishermen’s
names for a few sorts.
In connection with this appellative of “Whalebone
whales,” it is of great importance to mention,
that however such a nomenclature may be convenient
in facilitating allusions to some kind of
whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a clear
classification of the Leviathan, founded upon
either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth;
notwithstanding that those marked parts or
features very obviously seem better adapted
to afford the basis for a regular system of
Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions,
which the whale, in his kinds, presents.
How then?
The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these
are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately
dispersed among all sorts of whales, without
any regard to what may be the nature of their
structure in other and more essential particulars.
Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale,
each has a hump; but there the similitude
ceases.
Then, this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland
whale, each of these has baleen; but there
again the similitude ceases.
And it is just the same with the other parts
above mentioned.
In various sorts of whales, they form such
irregular combinations; or, in the case of
any one of them detached, such an irregular
isolation; as utterly to defy all general
methodization formed upon such a basis.
On this rock every one of the whale-naturalists
has split.
But it may possibly be conceived that, in
the internal parts of the whale, in his anatomy—there,
at least, we shall be able to hit the right
classification.
Nay; what thing, for example, is there in
the Greenland whale’s anatomy more striking
than his baleen?
Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is
impossible correctly to classify the Greenland
whale.
And if you descend into the bowels of the
various leviathans, why there you will not
find distinctions a fiftieth part as available
to the systematizer as those external ones
already enumerated.
What then remains?
nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily,
in their entire liberal volume, and boldly
sort them that way.
And this is the Bibliographical system here
adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly
succeed, for it alone is practicable.
To proceed.
BOOK I. (Folio) CHAPTER IV.
(Hump Back).—This whale is often seen on
the northern American coast.
He has been frequently captured there, and
towed into harbor.
He has a great pack on him like a peddler;
or you might call him the Elephant and Castle
whale.
At any rate, the popular name for him does
not sufficiently distinguish him, since the
sperm whale also has a hump though a smaller
one.
His oil is not very valuable.
He has baleen.
He is the most gamesome and light-hearted
of all the whales, making more gay foam and
white water generally than any other of them.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER V. (Razor Back).—Of
this whale little is known but his name.
I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn.
Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters
and philosophers.
Though no coward, he has never yet shown any
part of him but his back, which rises in a
long sharp ridge.
Let him go.
I know little more of him, nor does anybody
else.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER VI.
(Sulphur Bottom).—Another retiring gentleman,
with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping
along the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder
divings.
He is seldom seen; at least I have never seen
him except in the remoter southern seas, and
then always at too great a distance to study
his countenance.
He is never chased; he would run away with
rope-walks of line.
Prodigies are told of him.
Adieu, Sulphur Bottom!
I can say nothing more that is true of ye,
nor can the oldest Nantucketer.
Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins
BOOK II.
(Octavo).
OCTAVOES.*—These embrace the whales of middling
magnitude, among which present may be numbered:—I.,
the Grampus; II., the Black Fish; III., the
Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer.
*Why this book of whales is not denominated
the Quarto is very plain.
Because, while the whales of this order, though
smaller than those of the former order, nevertheless
retain a proportionate likeness to them in
figure, yet the bookbinder’s Quarto volume
in its dimensioned form does not preserve
the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo
volume does.
BOOK II.
(Octavo), CHAPTER I. (Grampus).—Though this
fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather
blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen,
is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet
is he not popularly classed among whales.
But possessing all the grand distinctive features
of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised
him for one.
He is of moderate octavo size, varying from
fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and
of corresponding dimensions round the waist.
He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted,
though his oil is considerable in quantity,
and pretty good for light.
By some fishermen his approach is regarded
as premonitory of the advance of the great
sperm whale.
BOOK II.
(Octavo), CHAPTER II.
(Black Fish).—I give the popular fishermen’s
names for all these fish, for generally they
are the best.
Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive,
I shall say so, and suggest another.
I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called,
because blackness is the rule among almost
all whales.
So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please.
His voracity is well known, and from the circumstance
that the inner angles of his lips are curved
upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean
grin on his face.
This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen
feet in length.
He is found in almost all latitudes.
He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal
hooked fin in swimming, which looks something
like a Roman nose.
When not more profitably employed, the sperm
whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena
whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil
for domestic employment—as some frugal housekeepers,
in the absence of company, and quite alone
by themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead
of odorous wax.
Though their blubber is very thin, some of
these whales will yield you upwards of thirty
gallons of oil.
BOOK II.
(Octavo), CHAPTER III.
(Narwhale), that is, Nostril whale.—Another
instance of a curiously named whale, so named
I suppose from his peculiar horn being originally
mistaken for a peaked nose.
The creature is some sixteen feet in length,
while its horn averages five feet, though
some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen
feet.
Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened
tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a
little depressed from the horizontal.
But it is only found on the sinister side,
which has an ill effect, giving its owner
something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy
left-handed man.
What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance
answers, it would be hard to say.
It does not seem to be used like the blade
of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some
sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs
it for a rake in turning over the bottom of
the sea for food.
Charley Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer;
for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of
the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with
ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through.
But you cannot prove either of these surmises
to be correct.
My own opinion is, that however this one-sided
horn may really be used by the Narwhale—however
that may be—it would certainly be very convenient
to him for a folder in reading pamphlets.
The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked
whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale.
He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism
to be found in almost every kingdom of animated
nature.
From certain cloistered old authors I have
gathered that this same sea-unicorn’s horn
was in ancient days regarded as the great
antidote against poison, and as such, preparations
of it brought immense prices.
It was also distilled to a volatile salts
for fainting ladies, the same way that the
horns of the male deer are manufactured into
hartshorn.
Originally it was in itself accounted an object
of great curiosity.
Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher
on his return from that voyage, when Queen
Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand
to him from a window of Greenwich Palace,
as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; “when
Sir Martin returned from that voyage,” saith
Black Letter, “on bended knees he presented
to her highness a prodigious long horn of
the Narwhale, which for a long period after
hung in the castle at Windsor.”
An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester,
on bended knees, did likewise present to her
highness another horn, pertaining to a land
beast of the unicorn nature.
The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like
look, being of a milk-white ground colour,
dotted with round and oblong spots of black.
His oil is very superior, clear and fine;
but there is little of it, and he is seldom
hunted.
He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.
BOOK II.
(Octavo), CHAPTER IV.
(Killer).—Of this whale little is precisely
known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all
to the professed naturalist.
From what I have seen of him at a distance,
I should say that he was about the bigness
of a grampus.
He is very savage—a sort of Feegee fish.
He sometimes takes the great Folio whales
by the lip, and hangs there like a leech,
till the mighty brute is worried to death.
The Killer is never hunted.
I never heard what sort of oil he has.
Exception might be taken to the name bestowed
upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness.
For we are all killers, on land and on sea;
Bonapartes and Sharks included.
BOOK II.
(Octavo), CHAPTER V. (Thrasher).—This gentleman
is famous for his tail, which he uses for
a ferule in thrashing his foes.
He mounts the Folio whale’s back, and as
he swims, he works his passage by flogging
him; as some schoolmasters get along in the
world by a similar process.
Still less is known of the Thrasher than of
the Killer.
Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.
Thus ends BOOK II.
(Octavo), and begins BOOK III.
(Duodecimo).
DUODECIMOES.—These include the smaller whales.
I.
The Huzza Porpoise.
II.
The Algerine Porpoise.
III.
The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.
To those who have not chanced specially to
study the subject, it may possibly seem strange,
that fishes not commonly exceeding four or
five feet should be marshalled among WHALES—a
word, which, in the popular sense, always
conveys an idea of hugeness.
But the creatures set down above as Duodecimoes
are infallibly whales, by the terms of my
definition of what a whale is—i.e. a spouting
fish, with a horizontal tail.
BOOK III.
(Duodecimo), CHAPTER 1.
(Huzza Porpoise).—This is the common porpoise
found almost all over the globe.
The name is of my own bestowal; for there
are more than one sort of porpoises, and something
must be done to distinguish them.
I call him thus, because he always swims in
hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea
keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps
in a Fourth-of-July crowd.
Their appearance is generally hailed with
delight by the mariner.
Full of fine spirits, they invariably come
from the breezy billows to windward.
They are the lads that always live before
the wind.
They are accounted a lucky omen.
If you yourself can withstand three cheers
at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven
help ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness
is not in ye.
A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield
you one good gallon of good oil.
But the fine and delicate fluid extracted
from his jaws is exceedingly valuable.
It is in request among jewellers and watchmakers.
Sailors put it on their hones.
Porpoise meat is good eating, you know.
It may never have occurred to you that a porpoise
spouts.
Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not
very readily discernible.
But the next time you have a chance, watch
him; and you will then see the great Sperm
whale himself in miniature.
BOOK III.
(Duodecimo), CHAPTER II.
(Algerine Porpoise).—A pirate.
Very savage.
He is only found, I think, in the Pacific.
He is somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise,
but much of the same general make.
Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark.
I have lowered for him many times, but never
yet saw him captured.
BOOK III.
(Duodecimo), CHAPTER III.
(Mealy-mouthed Porpoise).—The largest kind
of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific,
so far as it is known.
The only English name, by which he has hitherto
been designated, is that of the fishers—Right-Whale
Porpoise, from the circumstance that he is
chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio.
In shape, he differs in some degree from the
Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and
jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat
and gentleman-like figure.
He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises
have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental
Indian eyes of a hazel hue.
But his mealy-mouth spoils all.
Though his entire back down to his side fins
is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct
as the mark in a ship’s hull, called the
“bright waist,” that line streaks him
from stem to stern, with two separate colours,
black above and white below.
The white comprises part of his head, and
the whole of his mouth, which makes him look
as if he had just escaped from a felonious
visit to a meal-bag.
A most mean and mealy aspect!
His oil is much like that of the common porpoise.
* * * * * *
Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not
proceed, inasmuch as the Porpoise is the smallest
of the whales.
Above, you have all the Leviathans of note.
But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive,
half-fabulous whales, which, as an American
whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally.
I shall enumerate them by their fore-castle
appellations; for possibly such a list may
be valuable to future investigators, who may
complete what I have here but begun.
If any of the following whales, shall hereafter
be caught and marked, then he can readily
be incorporated into this System, according
to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:—The
Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed
Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale;
the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered
Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale;
the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc.
From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities,
there might be quoted other lists of uncertain
whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth
names.
But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and
can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds,
full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that
this system would not be here, and at once,
perfected.
You cannot but plainly see that I have kept
my word.
But I now leave my cetological System standing
thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral
of Cologne was left, with the crane still
standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower.
For small erections may be finished by their
first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever
leave the copestone to posterity.
God keep me from ever completing anything.
This whole book is but a draught—nay, but
the draught of a draught.
Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
CHAPTER 33.
The Specksnyder.
Concerning the officers of the whale-craft,
this seems as good a place as any to set down
a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board,
arising from the existence of the harpooneer
class of officers, a class unknown of course
in any other marine than the whale-fleet.
The large importance attached to the harpooneer’s
vocation is evinced by the fact, that originally
in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries and
more ago, the command of a whale ship was
not wholly lodged in the person now called
the captain, but was divided between him and
an officer called the Specksnyder.
Literally this word means Fat-Cutter; usage,
however, in time made it equivalent to Chief
Harpooneer.
In those days, the captain’s authority was
restricted to the navigation and general management
of the vessel; while over the whale-hunting
department and all its concerns, the Specksnyder
or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme.
In the British Greenland Fishery, under the
corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old
Dutch official is still retained, but his
former dignity is sadly abridged.
At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer;
and as such, is but one of the captain’s
more inferior subalterns.
Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of
the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage
largely depends, and since in the American
Fishery he is not only an important officer
in the boat, but under certain circumstances
(night watches on a whaling ground) the command
of the ship’s deck is also his; therefore
the grand political maxim of the sea demands,
that he should nominally live apart from the
men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished
as their professional superior; though always,
by them, familiarly regarded as their social
equal.
Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer
and man at sea, is this—the first lives
aft, the last forward.
Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen alike,
the mates have their quarters with the captain;
and so, too, in most of the American whalers
the harpooneers are lodged in the after part
of the ship.
That is to say, they take their meals in the
captain’s cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly
communicating with it.
Though the long period of a Southern whaling
voyage (by far the longest of all voyages
now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils
of it, and the community of interest prevailing
among a company, all of whom, high or low,
depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages,
but upon their common luck, together with
their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard
work; though all these things do in some cases
tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than
in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind
how much like an old Mesopotamian family these
whalemen may, in some primitive instances,
live together; for all that, the punctilious
externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are
seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance
done away.
Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which
you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck
with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any
military navy; nay, extorting almost as much
outward homage as if he wore the imperial
purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of
the Pequod was the least given to that sort
of shallowest assumption; and though the only
homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous
obedience; though he required no man to remove
the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon
the quarter-deck; and though there were times
when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected
with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed
them in unusual terms, whether of condescension
or in terrorem, or otherwise; yet even Captain
Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount
forms and usages of the sea.
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually
perceived, that behind those forms and usages,
as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally
making use of them for other and more private
ends than they were legitimately intended
to subserve.
That certain sultanism of his brain, which
had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested;
through those forms that same sultanism became
incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship.
For be a man’s intellectual superiority
what it will, it can never assume the practical,
available supremacy over other men, without
the aid of some sort of external arts and
entrenchments, always, in themselves, more
or less paltry and base.
This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true
princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings;
and leaves the highest honors that this air
can give, to those men who become famous more
through their infinite inferiority to the
choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert,
than through their undoubted superiority over
the dead level of the mass.
Such large virtue lurks in these small things
when extreme political superstitions invest
them, that in some royal instances even to
idiot imbecility they have imparted potency.
But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar,
the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles
an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds
crouch abased before the tremendous centralization.
Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict
mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep
and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally
so important in his art, as the one now alluded
to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me
in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess;
and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only
to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him;
and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings
and housings are denied me.
Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it
must needs be plucked at from the skies, and
dived for in the deep, and featured in the
unbodied air!
CHAPTER 34.
The Cabin-Table.
It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting
his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle,
announces dinner to his lord and master; who,
sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just
been taking an observation of the sun; and
is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the
smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved
for that daily purpose on the upper part of
his ivory leg.
From his complete inattention to the tidings,
you would think that moody Ahab had not heard
his menial.
But presently, catching hold of the mizen
shrouds, he swings himself to the deck, and
in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, “Dinner,
Mr. Starbuck,” disappears into the cabin.
When the last echo of his sultan’s step
has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir,
has every reason to suppose that he is seated,
then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes
a few turns along the planks, and, after a
grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some
touch of pleasantness, “Dinner, Mr. Stubb,”
and descends the scuttle.
The second Emir lounges about the rigging
awhile, and then slightly shaking the main
brace, to see whether it will be all right
with that important rope, he likewise takes
up the old burden, and with a rapid “Dinner,
Mr. Flask,” follows after his predecessors.
But the third Emir, now seeing himself all
alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved
from some curious restraint; for, tipping
all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of
directions, and kicking off his shoes, he
strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall
of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk’s
head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching
his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf,
he goes down rollicking so far at least as
he remains visible from the deck, reversing
all other processions, by bringing up the
rear with music.
But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below,
he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and,
then, independent, hilarious little Flask
enters King Ahab’s presence, in the character
of Abjectus, or the Slave.
It is not the least among the strange things
bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages,
that while in the open air of the deck some
officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves
boldly and defyingly enough towards their
commander; yet, ten to one, let those very
officers the next moment go down to their
customary dinner in that same commander’s
cabin, and straightway their inoffensive,
not to say deprecatory and humble air towards
him, as he sits at the head of the table;
this is marvellous, sometimes most comical.
Wherefore this difference?
A problem?
Perhaps not.
To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon;
and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily
but courteously, therein certainly must have
been some touch of mundane grandeur.
But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent
spirit presides over his own private dinner-table
of invited guests, that man’s unchallenged
power and dominion of individual influence
for the time; that man’s royalty of state
transcends Belshazzar’s, for Belshazzar
was not the greatest.
Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted
what it is to be Cæsar.
It is a witchery of social czarship which
there is no withstanding.
Now, if to this consideration you superadd
the official supremacy of a ship-master, then,
by inference, you will derive the cause of
that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided
like a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral
beach, surrounded by his warlike but still
deferential cubs.
In his own proper turn, each officer waited
to be served.
They were as little children before Ahab;
and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk
the smallest social arrogance.
With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened
upon the old man’s knife, as he carved the
chief dish before him.
I do not suppose that for the world they would
have profaned that moment with the slightest
observation, even upon so neutral a topic
as the weather.
No!
And when reaching out his knife and fork,
between which the slice of beef was locked,
Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards
him, the mate received his meat as though
receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a
little started if, perchance, the knife grazed
against the plate; and chewed it noiselessly;
and swallowed it, not without circumspection.
For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort,
where the German Emperor profoundly dines
with the seven Imperial Electors, so these
cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten
in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab
forbade not conversation; only he himself
was dumb.
What a relief it was to choking Stubb, when
a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below.
And poor little Flask, he was the youngest
son, and little boy of this weary family party.
His were the shinbones of the saline beef;
his would have been the drumsticks.
For Flask to have presumed to help himself,
this must have seemed to him tantamount to
larceny in the first degree.
Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless,
never more would he have been able to hold
his head up in this honest world; nevertheless,
strange to say, Ahab never forbade him.
And had Flask helped himself, the chances
were Ahab had never so much as noticed it.
Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself
to butter.
Whether he thought the owners of the ship
denied it to him, on account of its clotting
his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he
deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless
waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore
was not for him, a subaltern; however it was,
Flask, alas! was a butterless man!
Another thing.
Flask was the last person down at the dinner,
and Flask is the first man up.
Consider!
For hereby Flask’s dinner was badly jammed
in point of time.
Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him;
and yet they also have the privilege of lounging
in the rear.
If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than
Flask, happens to have but a small appetite,
and soon shows symptoms of concluding his
repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he
will not get more than three mouthfuls that
day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb
to precede Flask to the deck.
Therefore it was that Flask once admitted
in private, that ever since he had arisen
to the dignity of an officer, from that moment
he had never known what it was to be otherwise
than hungry, more or less.
For what he ate did not so much relieve his
hunger, as keep it immortal in him.
Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have
for ever departed from my stomach.
I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish
a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle,
as I used to when I was before the mast.
There’s the fruits of promotion now; there’s
the vanity of glory: there’s the insanity
of life!
Besides, if it were so that any mere sailor
of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in
Flask’s official capacity, all that sailor
had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance,
was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep
at Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting
silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.
Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what
may be called the first table in the Pequod’s
cabin.
After their departure, taking place in inverted
order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was
cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried
order by the pallid steward.
And then the three harpooneers were bidden
to the feast, they being its residuary legatees.
They made a sort of temporary servants’
hall of the high and mighty cabin.
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable
constraint and nameless invisible domineerings
of the captain’s table, was the entire care-free
license and ease, the almost frantic democracy
of those inferior fellows the harpooneers.
While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid
of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws,
the harpooneers chewed their food with such
a relish that there was a report to it.
They dined like lords; they filled their bellies
like Indian ships all day loading with spices.
Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and
Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made
by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy
was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk,
seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.
And if he were not lively about it, if he
did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump,
then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of
accelerating him by darting a fork at his
back, harpoon-wise.
And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor,
assisted Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching
him up bodily, and thrusting his head into
a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego,
knife in hand, began laying out the circle
preliminary to scalping him.
He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering
sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward;
the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital
nurse.
And what with the standing spectacle of the
black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous
visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy’s
whole life was one continual lip-quiver.
Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished
with all things they demanded, he would escape
from their clutches into his little pantry
adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them
through the blinds of its door, till all was
over.
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over
against Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth
to the Indian’s: crosswise to them, Daggoo
seated on the floor, for a bench would have
brought his hearse-plumed head to the low
carlines; at every motion of his colossal
limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake,
as when an African elephant goes passenger
in a ship.
But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully
abstemious, not to say dainty.
It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively
small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality
diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb
a person.
But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong
and drank deep of the abounding element of
air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed
in the sublime life of the worlds.
Not by beef or by bread, are giants made or
nourished.
But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack
of the lip in eating—an ugly sound enough—so
much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost
looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked
in his own lean arms.
And when he would hear Tashtego singing out
for him to produce himself, that his bones
might be picked, the simple-witted steward
all but shattered the crockery hanging round
him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the
palsy.
Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers
carried in their pockets, for their lances
and other weapons; and with which whetstones,
at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen
their knives; that grating sound did not at
all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy.
How could he forget that in his Island days,
Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been
guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions.
Alas!
Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who
waits upon cannibals.
Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but
a buckler.
In good time, though, to his great delight,
the three salt-sea warriors would rise and
depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering
ears, all their martial bones jingling in
them at every step, like Moorish scimetars
in scabbards.
But, though these barbarians dined in the
cabin, and nominally lived there; still, being
anything but sedentary in their habits, they
were scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes,
and just before sleeping-time, when they passed
through it to their own peculiar quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception
to most American whale captains, who, as a
set, rather incline to the opinion that by
rights the ship’s cabin belongs to them;
and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody
else is, at any time, permitted there.
So that, in real truth, the mates and harpooneers
of the Pequod might more properly be said
to have lived out of the cabin than in it.
For when they did enter it, it was something
as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards
for a moment, only to be turned out the next;
and, as a permanent thing, residing in the
open air.
Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin
was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible.
Though nominally included in the census of
Christendom, he was still an alien to it.
He lived in the world, as the last of the
Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri.
And as when Spring and Summer had departed,
that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself
in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter
there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement,
howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in
the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon
the sullen paws of its gloom!
CHAPTER 35.
The Mast-Head.
It was during the more pleasant weather, that
in due rotation with the other seamen my first
mast-head came round.
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are
manned almost simultaneously with the vessel’s
leaving her port; even though she may have
fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail
ere reaching her proper cruising ground.
And if, after a three, four, or five years’
voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything
empty in her—say, an empty vial even—then,
her mast-heads are kept manned to the last;
and not till her skysail-poles sail in among
the spires of the port, does she altogether
relinquish the hope of capturing one whale
more.
Now, as the business of standing mast-heads,
ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting
one, let us in some measure expatiate here.
I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads
were the old Egyptians; because, in all my
researches, I find none prior to them.
For though their progenitors, the builders
of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower,
have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head
in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the
final truck was put to it) as that great stone
mast of theirs may be said to have gone by
the board, in the dread gale of God’s wrath;
therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders
priority over the Egyptians.
And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head
standers, is an assertion based upon the general
belief among archæologists, that the first
pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes:
a theory singularly supported by the peculiar
stair-like formation of all four sides of
those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long
upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers
were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out
for new stars; even as the look-outs of a
modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale
just bearing in sight.
In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit
of old times, who built him a lofty stone
pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter
portion of his life on its summit, hoisting
his food from the ground with a tackle; in
him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless
stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven
from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail,
or sleet; but valiantly facing everything
out to the last, literally died at his post.
Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but
a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and bronze
men; who, though well capable of facing out
a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent
to the business of singing out upon discovering
any strange sight.
There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the
column of Vendome, stands with arms folded,
some one hundred and fifty feet in the air;
careless, now, who rules the decks below;
whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis
the Devil.
Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on
his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like
one of Hercules’ pillars, his column marks
that point of human grandeur beyond which
few mortals will go.
Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal,
stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square;
and ever when most obscured by that London
smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero
is there; for where there is smoke, must be
fire.
But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon,
nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from
below, however madly invoked to befriend by
their counsels the distracted decks upon which
they gaze; however it may be surmised, that
their spirits penetrate through the thick
haze of the future, and descry what shoals
and what rocks must be shunned.
It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any
respect the mast-head standers of the land
with those of the sea; but that in truth it
is not so, is plainly evinced by an item for
which Obed Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket,
stands accountable.
The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early
times of the whale fishery, ere ships were
regularly launched in pursuit of the game,
the people of that island erected lofty spars
along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs
ascended by means of nailed cleats, something
as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house.
A few years ago this same plan was adopted
by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon
descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned
boats nigh the beach.
But this custom has now become obsolete; turn
we then to the one proper mast-head, that
of a whale-ship at sea.
The three mast-heads are kept manned from
sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their
regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving
each other every two hours.
In the serene weather of the tropics it is
exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to
a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.
There you stand, a hundred feet above the
silent decks, striding along the deep, as
if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath
you and between your legs, as it were, swim
the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships
once sailed between the boots of the famous
Colossus at old Rhodes.
There you stand, lost in the infinite series
of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves.
The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy
trade winds blow; everything resolves you
into languor.
For the most part, in this tropic whaling
life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you;
you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras
with startling accounts of commonplaces never
delude you into unnecessary excitements; you
hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt
securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled
with the thought of what you shall have for
dinner—for all your meals for three years
and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your
bill of fare is immutable.
In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long
three or four years’ voyage, as often happens,
the sum of the various hours you spend at
the mast-head would amount to several entire
months.
And it is much to be deplored that the place
to which you devote so considerable a portion
of the whole term of your natural life, should
be so sadly destitute of anything approaching
to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed
a comfortable localness of feeling, such as
pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a
sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other
of those small and snug contrivances in which
men temporarily isolate themselves.
Your most usual point of perch is the head
of the t’ gallant-mast, where you stand
upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar
to whalemen) called the t’ gallant cross-trees.
Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner
feels about as cosy as he would standing on
a bull’s horns.
To be sure, in cold weather you may carry
your house aloft with you, in the shape of
a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest
watch-coat is no more of a house than the
unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside
of its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely
move about in it, nor even move out of it,
without running great risk of perishing (like
an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps
in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much
of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional
skin encasing you.
You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers
in your body, and no more can you make a convenient
closet of your watch-coat.
Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored
that the mast-heads of a southern whale ship
are unprovided with those enviable little
tents or pulpits, called crow’s-nests, in
which the look-outs of a Greenland whaler
are protected from the inclement weather of
the frozen seas.
In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet,
entitled “A Voyage among the Icebergs, in
quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally
for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic
Colonies of Old Greenland;” in this admirable
volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished
with a charmingly circumstantial account of
the then recently invented crow’s-nest of
the Glacier, which was the name of Captain
Sleet’s good craft.
He called it the Sleet’s crow’s-nest,
in honor of himself; he being the original
inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous
false delicacy, and holding that if we call
our own children after our own names (we fathers
being the original inventors and patentees),
so likewise should we denominate after ourselves
any other apparatus we may beget.
In shape, the Sleet’s crow’s-nest is something
like a large tierce or pipe; it is open above,
however, where it is furnished with a movable
side-screen to keep to windward of your head
in a hard gale.
Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you
ascend into it through a little trap-hatch
in the bottom.
On the after side, or side next the stern
of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a
locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters,
and coats.
In front is a leather rack, in which to keep
your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and
other nautical conveniences.
When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head
in this crow’s-nest of his, he tells us
that he always had a rifle with him (also
fixed in the rack), together with a powder
flask and shot, for the purpose of popping
off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns
infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully
shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance
of the water, but to shoot down upon them
is a very different thing.
Now, it was plainly a labor of love for Captain
Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little
detailed conveniences of his crow’s-nest;
but though he so enlarges upon many of these,
and though he treats us to a very scientific
account of his experiments in this crow’s-nest,
with a small compass he kept there for the
purpose of counteracting the errors resulting
from what is called the “local attraction”
of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable
to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in
the ship’s planks, and in the Glacier’s
case, perhaps, to there having been so many
broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I
say, that though the Captain is very discreet
and scientific here, yet, for all his learned
“binnacle deviations,” “azimuth compass
observations,” and “approximate errors,”
he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he
was not so much immersed in those profound
magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted
occasionally towards that well replenished
little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on
one side of his crow’s nest, within easy
reach of his hand.
Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and
even love the brave, the honest, and learned
Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that
he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle,
seeing what a faithful friend and comforter
it must have been, while with mittened fingers
and hooded head he was studying the mathematics
aloft there in that bird’s nest within three
or four perches of the pole.
But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so
snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his
Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is
greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting
serenity of those seductive seas in which
we South fishers mostly float.
For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very
leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat
with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom
I might find there; then ascending a little
way further, and throwing a lazy leg over
the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view
of the watery pastures, and so at last mount
to my ultimate destination.
Let me make a clean breast of it here, and
frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard.
With the problem of the universe revolving
in me, how could I—being left completely
to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude—how
could I but lightly hold my obligations to
observe all whale-ships’ standing orders,
“Keep your weather eye open, and sing out
every time.”
And let me in this place movingly admonish
you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket!
Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries
any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given
to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers
to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch
in his head.
Beware of such an one, I say; your whales
must be seen before they can be killed; and
this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow
you ten wakes round the world, and never make
you one pint of sperm the richer.
Nor are these monitions at all unneeded.
For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes
an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and
absent-minded young men, disgusted with the
carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment
in tar and blubber.
Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself
upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed
whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:—
“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean,
roll!
Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee
in vain.”
Very often do the captains of such ships take
those absent-minded young philosophers to
task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient
“interest” in the voyage; half-hinting
that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable
ambition, as that in their secret souls they
would rather not see whales than otherwise.
But all in vain; those young Platonists have
a notion that their vision is imperfect; they
are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain
the visual nerve?
They have left their opera-glasses at home.
“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer
to one of these lads, “we’ve been cruising
now hard upon three years, and thou hast not
raised a whale yet.
Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever
thou art up here.”
Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might
have been shoals of them in the far horizon;
but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness
of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded
youth by the blending cadence of waves with
thoughts, that at last he loses his identity;
takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the
visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless
soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every
strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing
that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising
fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him
the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that
only people the soul by continually flitting
through it.
In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away
to whence it came; becomes diffused through
time and space; like Cranmer’s sprinkled
Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part
of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that
rocking life imparted by a gently rolling
ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the
sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
But while this sleep, this dream is on ye,
move your foot or hand an inch; slip your
hold at all; and your identity comes back
in horror.
Over Descartian vortices you hover.
And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather,
with one half-throttled shriek you drop through
that transparent air into the summer sea,
no more to rise for ever.
Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
CHAPTER 36.
The Quarter-Deck.
(Enter Ahab: Then, all.)
It was not a great while after the affair
of the pipe, that one morning shortly after
breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended
the cabin-gangway to the deck.
There most sea-captains usually walk at that
hour, as country gentlemen, after the same
meal, take a few turns in the garden.
Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as
to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks
so familiar to his tread, that they were all
over dented, like geological stones, with
the peculiar mark of his walk.
Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed
and dented brow; there also, you would see
still stranger foot-prints—the foot-prints
of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.
But on the occasion in question, those dents
looked deeper, even as his nervous step that
morning left a deeper mark.
And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that
at every uniform turn that he made, now at
the main-mast and now at the binnacle, you
could almost see that thought turn in him
as he turned, and pace in him as he paced;
so completely possessing him, indeed, that
it all but seemed the inward mould of every
outer movement.
“D’ye mark him, Flask?”
whispered Stubb; “the chick that’s in
him pecks the shell.
’Twill soon be out.”
The hours wore on;—Ahab now shut up within
his cabin; anon, pacing the deck, with the
same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.
It drew near the close of day.
Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks,
and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole
there, and with one hand grasping a shroud,
he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft.
“Sir!” said the mate, astonished at an
order seldom or never given on ship-board
except in some extraordinary case.
“Send everybody aft,” repeated Ahab.
“Mast-heads, there! come down!”
When the entire ship’s company were assembled,
and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive
faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not
unlike the weather horizon when a storm is
coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over
the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among
the crew, started from his standpoint; and
as though not a soul were nigh him resumed
his heavy turns upon the deck.
With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued
to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering
among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered
to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them
there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian
feat.
But this did not last long.
Vehemently pausing, he cried:—
“What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?”
“Sing out for him!” was the impulsive
rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices.
“Good!” cried Ahab, with a wild approval
in his tones; observing the hearty animation
into which his unexpected question had so
magnetically thrown them.
“And what do ye next, men?”
“Lower away, and after him!”
“And what tune is it ye pull to, men?”
“A dead whale or a stove boat!”
More and more strangely and fiercely glad
and approving, grew the countenance of the
old man at every shout; while the mariners
began to gaze curiously at each other, as
if marvelling how it was that they themselves
became so excited at such seemingly purposeless
questions.
But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab,
now half-revolving in his pivot-hole, with
one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly,
almost convulsively grasping it, addressed
them thus:—
“All ye mast-headers have before now heard
me give orders about a white whale.
Look ye!
d’ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?”—holding
up a broad bright coin to the sun—“it
is a sixteen dollar piece, men.
D’ye see it?
Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.”
While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab,
without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold
piece against the skirts of his jacket, as
if to heighten its lustre, and without using
any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself,
producing a sound so strangely muffled and
inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical
humming of the wheels of his vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced
towards the main-mast with the hammer uplifted
in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the
other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming:
“Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed
whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw;
whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed
whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard
fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me
that same white whale, he shall have this
gold ounce, my boys!”
“Huzza! huzza!” cried the seamen, as with
swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of
nailing the gold to the mast.
“It’s a white whale, I say,” resumed
Ahab, as he threw down the topmaul: “a white
whale.
Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for
white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing
out.”
All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg
had looked on with even more intense interest
and surprise than the rest, and at the mention
of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they
had started as if each was separately touched
by some specific recollection.
“Captain Ahab,” said Tashtego, “that
white whale must be the same that some call
Moby Dick.”
“Moby Dick?”
shouted Ahab.
“Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?”
“Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir,
before he goes down?” said the Gay-Header
deliberately.
“And has he a curious spout, too,” said
Daggoo, “very bushy, even for a parmacetty,
and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?”
“And he have one, two, three—oh! good
many iron in him hide, too, Captain,” cried
Queequeg disjointedly, “all twiske-tee be-twisk,
like him—him—” faltering hard for a
word, and screwing his hand round and round
as though uncorking a bottle—“like him—him—”
“Corkscrew!” cried Ahab, “aye, Queequeg,
the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched
in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one,
like a whole shock of wheat, and white as
a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great
annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and
he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall.
Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye
have seen—Moby Dick—Moby Dick!”
“Captain Ahab,” said Starbuck, who, with
Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing
his superior with increasing surprise, but
at last seemed struck with a thought which
somewhat explained all the wonder.
“Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick—but
it was not Moby Dick that took off thy leg?”
“Who told thee that?”
cried Ahab; then pausing, “Aye, Starbuck;
aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick
that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought
me to this dead stump I stand on now.
Aye, aye,” he shouted with a terrific, loud,
animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken
moose; “Aye, aye! it was that accursed white
whale that razed me; made a poor pegging lubber
of me for ever and a day!”
Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations
he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I’ll chase
him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and
round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s
flames before I give him up.
And this is what ye have shipped for, men!
to chase that white whale on both sides of
land, and over all sides of earth, till he
spouts black blood and rolls fin out.
What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on
it, now?
I think ye do look brave.”
“Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and
seamen, running closer to the excited old
man: “A sharp eye for the white whale; a
sharp lance for Moby Dick!”
“God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob
and half shout.
“God bless ye, men.
Steward! go draw the great measure of grog.
But what’s this long face about, Mr. Starbuck;
wilt thou not chase the white whale?
art not game for Moby Dick?”
“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for
the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it
fairly comes in the way of the business we
follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not
my commander’s vengeance.
How many barrels will thy vengeance yield
thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab?
it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket
market.”
“Nantucket market! Hoot!
But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest
a little lower layer.
If money’s to be the measurer, man, and
the accountants have computed their great
counting-house the globe, by girdling it with
guineas, one to every three parts of an inch;
then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance
will fetch a great premium here!”
“He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb,
“what’s that for?
methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.”
“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck,
“that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!
Madness!
To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab,
seems blasphemous.”
“Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer.
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard
masks.
But in each event—in the living act, the
undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still
reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of
its features from behind the unreasoning mask.
If man will strike, strike through the mask!
How can the prisoner reach outside except
by thrusting through the wall?
To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved
near to me.
Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond.
But ’tis enough.
He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous
strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing
it.
That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate;
and be the white whale agent, or be the white
whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon
him.
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike
the sun if it insulted me.
For could the sun do that, then could I do
the other; since there is ever a sort of fair
play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations.
But not my master, man, is even that fair
play.
Who’s over me?
Truth hath no confines.
Take off thine eye! more intolerable than
fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare!
So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat
has melted thee to anger-glow.
But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat,
that thing unsays itself.
There are men from whom warm words are small
indignity.
I meant not to incense thee.
Let it go.
Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted
tawn—living, breathing pictures painted
by the sun.
The Pagan leopards—the unrecking and unworshipping
things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons
for the torrid life they feel!
The crew, man, the crew!
Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this
matter of the whale?
See Stubb! he laughs!
See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of
it.
Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one
tost sapling cannot, Starbuck!
And what is it?
Reckon it.
’Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous
feat for Starbuck.
What is it more?
From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance
out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang
back, when every foremast-hand has clutched
a whetstone?
Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow
lifts thee!
Speak, but speak!—Aye, aye! thy silence,
then, that voices thee.
(Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils,
he has inhaled it in his lungs.
Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now,
without rebellion.”
“God keep me!—keep us all!” murmured
Starbuck, lowly.
But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence
of the mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding
invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the
hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of
the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow
flap of the sails against the masts, as for
a moment their hearts sank in.
For again Starbuck’s downcast eyes lighted
up with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean
laugh died away; the winds blew on; the sails
filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as
before.
Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay
ye not when ye come?
But rather are ye predictions than warnings,
ye shadows!
Yet not so much predictions from without,
as verifications of the foregoing things within.
For with little external to constrain us,
the innermost necessities in our being, these
still drive us on.
“The measure! the measure!” cried Ahab.
Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning
to the harpooneers, he ordered them to produce
their weapons.
Then ranging them before him near the capstan,
with their harpoons in their hands, while
his three mates stood at his side with their
lances, and the rest of the ship’s company
formed a circle round the group; he stood
for an instant searchingly eyeing every man
of his crew.
But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot
eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of
their leader, ere he rushes on at their head
in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only
to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.
“Drink and pass!” he cried, handing the
heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman.
“The crew alone now drink.
Round with it, round!
Short draughts—long swallows, men; ’tis
hot as Satan’s hoof.
So, so; it goes round excellently.
It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping
eye.
Well done; almost drained.
That way it went, this way it comes.
Hand it me—here’s a hollow!
Men, ye seem the years; so brimming life is
gulped and gone.
Steward, refill!
“Attend now, my braves.
I have mustered ye all round this capstan;
and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and
ye harpooneers, stand there with your irons;
and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I
may in some sort revive a noble custom of
my fisherman fathers before me.
O men, you will yet see that—Ha! boy, come
back?
bad pennies come not sooner.
Hand it me.
Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again,
wer’t not thou St. Vitus’ imp—away,
thou ague!
“Advance, ye mates!
Cross your lances full before me.
Well done!
Let me touch the axis.”
So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the
three level, radiating lances at their crossed
centre; while so doing, suddenly and nervously
twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently
from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask.
It seemed as though, by some nameless, interior
volition, he would fain have shocked into
them the same fiery emotion accumulated within
the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life.
The three mates quailed before his strong,
sustained, and mystic aspect.
Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him;
the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.
“In vain!” cried Ahab; “but, maybe,
’tis well.
For did ye three but once take the full-forced
shock, then mine own electric thing, that
had perhaps expired from out me.
Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye dead.
Perchance ye need it not.
Down lances!
And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye three cupbearers
to my three pagan kinsmen there—yon three
most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my
valiant harpooneers.
Disdain the task?
What, when the great Pope washes the feet
of beggars, using his tiara for ewer?
Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension,
that shall bend ye to it.
I do not order ye; ye will it.
Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!”
Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers
now stood with the detached iron part of their
harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs
up, before him.
“Stab me not with that keen steel!
Cant them; cant them over! know ye not the
goblet end?
Turn up the socket!
So, so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance.
The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!”
Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to
the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets
with the fiery waters from the pewter.
“Now, three to three, ye stand.
Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to
this indissoluble league.
Ha!
Starbuck! but the deed is done!
Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it.
Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye
men that man the deathful whaleboat’s bow—Death
to Moby Dick!
God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick
to his death!”
The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted;
and to cries and maledictions against the
white whale, the spirits were simultaneously
quaffed down with a hiss.
Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered.
Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter
went the rounds among the frantic crew; when,
waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed;
and Ahab retired within his cabin.
CHAPTER 37.
Sunset.
The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting
alone, and gazing out.
I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters,
paler cheeks, where’er I sail.
The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm
my track; let them; but first I pass.
Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the
warm waves blush like wine.
The gold brow plumbs the blue.
The diver sun—slow dived from noon—goes
down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with
her endless hill.
Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear?
this Iron Crown of Lombardy.
Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer,
see not its far flashings; but darkly feel
that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds.
’Tis iron—that I know—not gold.
’Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged
edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against
the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the
sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering
fight!
Dry heat upon my brow?
Oh!
time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred
me, so the sunset soothed.
No more.
This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness
is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy.
Gifted with the high perception, I lack the
low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and
most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise!
Good night—good night! (waving his hand,
he moves from the window.)
’Twas not so hard a task.
I thought to find one stubborn, at the least;
but my one cogged circle fits into all their
various wheels, and they revolve.
Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of
powder, they all stand before me; and I their
match.
Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself
must needs be wasting!
What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what
I’ve willed, I’ll do!
They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m
demoniac, I am madness maddened!
That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend
itself!
The prophecy was that I should be dismembered;
and—Aye!
I lost this leg.
I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer.
Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller
one.
That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever
were.
I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players,
ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!
I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies—Take
some one of your own size; don’t pommel
me!
No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again;
but ye have run and hidden.
Come forth from behind your cotton bags!
I have no long gun to reach ye.
Come, Ahab’s compliments to ye; come and
see if ye can swerve me.
Swerve me?
ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves!
man has ye there.
Swerve me?
The path to my fixed purpose is laid with
iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to
run.
Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled
hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds,
unerringly I rush!
Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle
to the iron way!
CHAPTER 38.
Dusk.
By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against
it.
My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned;
and by a madman!
Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground
arms on such a field!
But he drilled deep down, and blasted all
my reason out of me!
I think I see his impious end; but feel that
I must help him to it.
Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied
me to him; tows me with a cable I have no
knife to cut.
Horrible old man!
Who’s over him, he cries;—aye, he would
be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords
it over all below!
Oh!
I plainly see my miserable office,—to obey,
rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch
of pity!
For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would
shrivel me up, had I it.
Yet is there hope.
Time and tide flow wide.
The hated whale has the round watery world
to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its
glassy globe.
His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge
aside.
I would up heart, were it not like lead.
But my whole clock’s run down; my heart
the all-controlling weight, I have no key
to lift again.
[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]
Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew
that have small touch of human mothers in
them!
Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea.
The white whale is their demigorgon.
Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is
forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft!
Methinks it pictures life.
Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots
on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but
only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he
broods within his sternward cabin, builded
over the dead water of the wake, and further
on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings.
The long howl thrills me through!
Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch!
Oh, life! ’tis in an hour like this, with
soul beat down and held to knowledge,—as
wild, untutored things are forced to feed—Oh,
life! ’tis now that I do feel the latent
horror in thee! but ’tis not me! that horror’s
out of me! and with the soft feeling of the
human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye
grim, phantom futures!
Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed
influences!
CHAPTER 39.
First Night-Watch.
Fore-Top.
(Stubb solus, and mending a brace.)
Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!—I’ve
been thinking over it ever since, and that
ha, ha’s the final consequence.
Why so?
Because a laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer
to all that’s queer; and come what will,
one comfort’s always left—that unfailing
comfort is, it’s all predestinated.
I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but
to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something
as I the other evening felt.
Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too.
I twigged it, knew it; had had the gift, might
readily have prophesied it—for when I clapped
my eye upon his skull I saw it.
Well, Stubb, wise Stubb—that’s my title—well,
Stubb, what of it, Stubb?
Here’s a carcase.
I know not all that may be coming, but be
it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.
Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your
horribles!
I feel funny.
Fa, la! lirra, skirra!
What’s my juicy little pear at home doing
now?
Crying its eyes out?—Giving a party to the
last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay
as a frigate’s pennant, and so am I—fa,
la! lirra, skirra!
Oh—
We’ll drink to-night with hearts as light,
To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker’s brim,
And break on the lips while meeting.
A brave stave that—who calls?
Mr. Starbuck?
Aye, aye, sir—(Aside) he’s my superior,
he has his too, if I’m not mistaken.—Aye,
aye, sir, just through with this job—coming.
CHAPTER 40.
Midnight, Forecastle.
HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.
(Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing,
lounging, leaning, and lying in various attitudes,
all singing in chorus.)
Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
Our captain’s commanded.—
1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental; it’s bad
for the digestion!
Take a tonic, follow me!
(Sings, and all follow.)
Our captain stood upon the deck,
A spy-glass in his hand,
A viewing of those gallant whales
That blew at every strand.
Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,
And by your braces stand,
And we’ll have one of those fine whales,
Hand, boys, over hand!
So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never
fail!
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!
MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.
Eight bells there, forward!
2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Avast the chorus!
Eight bells there!
d’ye hear, bell-boy?
Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling!
and let me call the watch.
I’ve the sort of mouth for that—the hogshead
mouth.
So, so, (thrusts his head down the scuttle,)
Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y!
Eight bells there below!
Tumble up!
DUTCH SAILOR.
Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for
that.
I mark this in our old Mogul’s wine; it’s
quite as deadening to some as filliping to
others.
We sing; they sleep—aye, lie down there,
like ground-tier butts.
At ’em again!
There, take this copper-pump, and hail ’em
through it.
Tell ’em to avast dreaming of their lasses.
Tell ’em it’s the resurrection; they must
kiss their last, and come to judgment.
That’s the way—that’s it; thy throat
ain’t spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter.
FRENCH SAILOR.
Hist, boys! let’s have a jig or two before
we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay.
What say ye?
There comes the other watch.
Stand by all legs!
Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!
PIP.
(Sulky and sleepy.)
Don’t know where it is.
FRENCH SAILOR.
Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears.
Jig it, men, I say; merry’s the word; hurrah!
Damn me, won’t you dance?
Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop into the
double-shuffle?
Throw yourselves!
Legs! legs!
ICELAND SAILOR.
I don’t like your floor, maty; it’s too
springy to my taste.
I’m used to ice-floors.
I’m sorry to throw cold water on the subject;
but excuse me.
MALTESE SAILOR.
Me too; where’s your girls?
Who but a fool would take his left hand by
his right, and say to himself, how d’ye
do?
Partners!
I must have partners!
SICILIAN SAILOR.
Aye; girls and a green!—then I’ll hop
with ye; yea, turn grasshopper!
LONG-ISLAND SAILOR.
Well, well, ye sulkies, there’s plenty more
of us.
Hoe corn when you may, say I.
All legs go to harvest soon.
Ah! here comes the music; now for it!
AZORE SAILOR.
(Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up
the scuttle.)
Here you are, Pip; and there’s the windlass-bitts;
up you mount!
Now, boys!
(The half of them dance to the tambourine;
some go below; some sleep or lie among the
coils of rigging.
Oaths a-plenty.)
AZORE SAILOR.
(Dancing) Go it, Pip!
Bang it, bell-boy!
Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy!
Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!
PIP.
Jinglers, you say?—there goes another, dropped
off; I pound it so.
CHINA SAILOR.
Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make
a pagoda of thyself.
FRENCH SAILOR.
Merry-mad!
Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through
it!
Split jibs! tear yourselves!
TASHTEGO.
(Quietly smoking.)
That’s a white man; he calls that fun: humph!
I save my sweat.
OLD MANX SAILOR.
I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink
them of what they are dancing over.
I’ll dance over your grave, I will—that’s
the bitterest threat of your night-women,
that beat head-winds round corners.
O Christ! to think of the green navies and
the green-skulled crews!
Well, well; belike the whole world’s a ball,
as you scholars have it; and so ’tis right
to make one ballroom of it.
Dance on, lads, you’re young; I was once.
3D NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Spell oh!—whew! this is worse than pulling
after whales in a calm—give us a whiff,
Tash.
(They cease dancing, and gather in clusters.
Meantime the sky darkens—the wind rises.)
LASCAR SAILOR.
By Brahma! boys, it’ll be douse sail soon.
The sky-born, high-tide Ganges turned to wind!
Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!
MALTESE SAILOR.
(Reclining and shaking his cap.)
It’s the waves—the snow’s caps turn
to jig it now.
They’ll shake their tassels soon.
Now would all the waves were women, then I’d
go drown, and chassee with them evermore!
There’s naught so sweet on earth—heaven
may not match it!—as those swift glances
of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the
over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting
grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR.
(Reclining.)
Tell me not of it!
Hark ye, lad—fleet interlacings of the limbs—lithe
swayings—coyings—flutterings! lip! heart!
hip! all graze: unceasing touch and go! not
taste, observe ye, else come satiety.
Eh, Pagan?
(Nudging.)
TAHITAN SAILOR.
(Reclining on a mat.)
Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls!—the
Heeva-Heeva!
Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti!
I still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil
has slid!
I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! green
the first day I brought ye thence; now worn
and wilted quite.
Ah me!—not thou nor I can bear the change!
How then, if so be transplanted to yon sky?
Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee’s
peak of spears, when they leap down the crags
and drown the villages?—The blast! the blast!
Up, spine, and meet it!
(Leaps to his feet.)
PORTUGUESE SAILOR.
How the sea rolls swashing ’gainst the side!
Stand by for reefing, hearties! the winds
are just crossing swords, pell-mell they’ll
go lunging presently.
DANISH SAILOR.
Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest,
thou holdest!
Well done!
The mate there holds ye to it stiffly.
He’s no more afraid than the isle fort at
Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with
storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!
4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
He has his orders, mind ye that.
I heard old Ahab tell him he must always kill
a squall, something as they burst a waterspout
with a pistol—fire your ship right into
it!
ENGLISH SAILOR.
Blood! but that old man’s a grand old cove!
We are the lads to hunt him up his whale!
ALL.
Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR.
How the three pines shake!
Pines are the hardest sort of tree to live
when shifted to any other soil, and here there’s
none but the crew’s cursed clay.
Steady, helmsman! steady.
This is the sort of weather when brave hearts
snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea.
Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder,
boys, there’s another in the sky—lurid-like,
ye see, all else pitch black.
DAGGOO.
What of that?
Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me!
I’m quarried out of it!
SPANISH SAILOR.
(Aside.)
He wants to bully, ah!—the old grudge makes
me touchy (Advancing.)
Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable
dark side of mankind—devilish dark at that.
No offence.
DAGGOO (grimly).
None.
ST.
JAGO’S SAILOR.
That Spaniard’s mad or drunk.
But that can’t be, or else in his one case
our old Mogul’s fire-waters are somewhat
long in working.
5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
What’s that I saw—lightning?
Yes.
SPANISH SAILOR.
No; Daggoo showing his teeth.
DAGGOO (springing).
Swallow thine, mannikin!
White skin, white liver!
SPANISH SAILOR (meeting him).
Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!
ALL.
A row! a row! a row!
TASHTEGO (with a whiff).
A row a’low, and a row aloft—Gods and
men—both brawlers!
Humph!
BELFAST SAILOR.
A row! arrah a row!
The Virgin be blessed, a row!
Plunge in with ye!
ENGLISH SAILOR.
Fair play!
Snatch the Spaniard’s knife!
A ring, a ring!
OLD MANX SAILOR.
Ready formed.
There! the ringed horizon.
In that ring Cain struck Abel.
Sweet work, right work!
No?
Why then, God, mad’st thou the ring?
MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.
Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails!
Stand by to reef topsails!
ALL.
The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies!
(They scatter.)
PIP (shrinking under the windlass).
Jollies?
Lord help such jollies!
Crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay!
Blang-whang!
God!
Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal yard!
It’s worse than being in the whirled woods,
the last day of the year!
Who’d go climbing after chestnuts now?
But there they go, all cursing, and here I
don’t.
Fine prospects to ’em; they’re on the
road to heaven.
Hold on hard!
Jimmini, what a squall!
But those chaps there are worse yet—they
are your white squalls, they.
White squalls?
white whale, shirr! shirr!
Here have I heard all their chat just now,
and the white whale—shirr! shirr!—but
spoken of once! and only this evening—it
makes me jingle all over like my tambourine—that
anaconda of an old man swore ’em in to hunt
him!
Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere
in yon darkness, have mercy on this small
black boy down here; preserve him from all
men that have no bowels to feel fear!
