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Title:  Moby Dick; or The Whale

Author:  Herman Melville

June, 2001  [Etext #2701]

**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Moby Dick, by Herman Melville**
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Notes on this etext of Moby Dick:

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In chapters 24, 89, and 90, we substituted a capital L for the symbol
for the British pound, a unit of currency.





MOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE

by Herman Melville




ETYMOLOGY.

(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)

The pale Usher--threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him
now.  He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer
handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the
known nations of the world.  He loved to dust his old grammars; it
somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

"While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what
name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, through
ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification
of the word, you deliver that which is not true." --HACKLUYT

"WHALE. ... Sw. and Dan. HVAL.  This animal is named from roundness
or rolling; for in Dan. HVALT is arched or vaulted." --WEBSTER'S
DICTIONARY

"WHALE. ... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. WALLEN;
A.S. WALW-IAN, to roll, to wallow." --RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY

KETOS,               GREEK.
CETUS,               LATIN.
WHOEL,               ANGLO-SAXON.
HVALT,               DANISH.
WAL,                 DUTCH.
HWAL,                SWEDISH.
WHALE,               ICELANDIC.
WHALE,               ENGLISH.
BALEINE,             FRENCH.
BALLENA,             SPANISH.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE,     FEGEE.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE,     ERROMANGOAN.




EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).

It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of
a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long
Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random
allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,
sacred or profane.  Therefore you must not, in every case at least,
take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in
these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology.  Far from it.  As
touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here
appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as
affording a glancing bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously
said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and
generations, including our own.

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am.
Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this
world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too
rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel
poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them
bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether
unpleasant sadness--Give it up, Sub-Subs!  For by how much the more
pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for
ever go thankless!  Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and
the Tuileries for ye!  But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the
royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before
are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of
long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming.
Here ye strike but splintered hearts together--there, ye shall strike
unsplinterable glasses!


EXTRACTS.

"And God created great whales." --GENESIS.

"Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep
to be hoary." --JOB.

"Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah."
--JONAH.

"There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to
play therein." --PSALMS.

"In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that
crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea."
--ISAIAH

"And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this
monster's mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all
incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the
bottomless gulf of his paunch." --HOLLAND'S PLUTARCH'S MORALS.

"The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:
among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as
much in length as four acres or arpens of land." --HOLLAND'S PLINY.

"Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a
great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared.  Among the
former, one was of a most monstrous size. ...  This came towards us,
open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea
before him into a foam." --TOOKE'S LUCIAN.  "THE TRUE HISTORY."

"He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,
which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he
brought some to the king. ...  The best whales were catched in his
own country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long.
He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days."
--OTHER OR OCTHER'S VERBAL NARRATIVE TAKEN DOWN FROM HIS MOUTH BY
KING ALFRED, A.D. 890.

"And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that
enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's) mouth, are
immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in
great security, and there sleeps." --MONTAIGNE.  --APOLOGY FOR
RAIMOND SEBOND.

"Let us fly, let us fly!  Old Nick take me if is not Leviathan
described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job."
--RABELAIS.

"This whale's liver was two cartloads." --STOWE'S ANNALS.

"The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling
pan." --LORD BACON'S VERSION OF THE PSALMS.

"Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
nothing certain.  They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an
incredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale."
--IBID.  "HISTORY OF LIFE AND DEATH."

"The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise."
--KING HENRY.

"Very like a whale." --HAMLET.

"Which to secure, no skill of leach's art
Mote him availle, but to returne againe
To his wound's worker, that with lowly dart,
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro' the maine."
--THE FAERIE QUEEN.

"Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful
calm trouble the ocean til it boil." --SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.  PREFACE
TO GONDIBERT.

"What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid
sit." --SIR T. BROWNE.  OF SPERMA CETI AND THE SPERMA CETI WHALE.
VIDE HIS V. E.

"Like Spencer's Talus with his modern flail
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
...
Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears,
And on his back a grove of pikes appears." --WALLER'S BATTLE OF THE
SUMMER ISLANDS.

"By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or
State--(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man." --OPENING
SENTENCE OF HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN.

"Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a
sprat in the mouth of a whale." --PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

"That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream." --PARADISE LOST.

---"There Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea." --IBID.

"The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of
oil swimming in them." --FULLLER'S PROFANE AND HOLY STATE.

"So close behind some promontory lie
The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way."
--DRYDEN'S ANNUS MIRABILIS.

"While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off
his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come;
but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water." --THOMAS
EDGE'S TEN VOYAGES TO SPITZBERGEN, IN PURCHAS.

"In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which
nature has placed on their shoulders." --SIR T. HERBERT'S VOYAGES
INTO ASIA AND AFRICA.  HARRIS COLL.

"Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to
proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their
ship upon them." --SCHOUTEN'S SIXTH CIRCUMNAVIGATION.

"We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale. ...  Some say the whale can't open his mouth, but
that is a fable. ...  They frequently climb up the masts to see
whether they can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat
for his pains. ...  I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that
had above a barrel of herrings in his belly. ...  One of our
harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that
was white all over." --A VOYAGE TO GREENLAND, A.D. 1671 HARRIS COLL.

"Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one
eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was
informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of
baleen.  The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren."
--SIBBALD'S FIFE AND KINROSS.

"Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that
was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness."
--RICHARD STRAFFORD'S LETTER FROM THE BERMUDAS.  PHIL. TRANS.  A.D.
1668.

"Whales in the sea God's voice obey." --N. E. PRIMER.

"We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those
southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the
northward of us." --CAPTAIN COWLEY'S VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, A.D.
1729.

"... and the breath of the whale is frequendy attended with such an
insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain."
--ULLOA'S SOUTH AMERICA.

"To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale." --RAPE
OF THE LOCK.

"If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that
take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear
contemptible in the comparison.  The whale is doubtless the largest
animal in creation." --GOLDSMITH, NAT. HIST.

"If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
speak like great wales." --GOLDSMITH TO JOHNSON.

"In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was
found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were
then towing ashore.  They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves
behind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us." --COOK'S
VOYAGES.

"The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack.  They stand in so
great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to
mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,
and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order
to terrify and prevent their too near approach." --UNO VON TROIL'S
LETTERS ON BANKS'S AND SOLANDER'S VOYAGE TO ICELAND IN 1772.

"The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce
animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen."
--THOMAS JEFFERSON'S WHALE MEMORIAL TO THE FRENCH MINISTER IN 1778.

"And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?" --EDMUND BURKE'S
REFERENCE IN PARLIAMENT TO THE NANTUCKET WHALE-FISHERY.

"Spain--a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe." --EDMUND
BURKE. (SOMEWHERE.)

"A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to be grounded
on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from
pirates and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are whale and
sturgeon.  And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the
coast, are the property of the king." --BLACKSTONE.

"Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
Rodmond unerring o'er his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends."
--FALCONER'S SHIPWRECK.

"Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,
And rockets blew self driven,
To hang their momentary fire
Around the vault of heaven.

"So fire with water to compare,
The ocean serves on high,
Up-spouted by a whale in air,
To express unwieldy joy." --COWPER, ON THE QUEEN'S
VISIT TO LONDON.

"Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a
stroke, with immense velocity." --JOHN HUNTER'S ACCOUNT OF THE
DISSECTION OF A WHALE.  (A SMALL SIZED ONE.)

"The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage
through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood
gushing from the whale's heart." --PALEY'S THEOLOGY.

"The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet." --BARON
CUVIER.

"In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any
till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them."
--COLNETT'S VOYAGE FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXTENDING THE SPERMACETI WHALE
FISHERY.

"In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every colour, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs."
--MONTGOMERY'S WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.

"Io!  Paean!  Io! sing.
To the finny people's king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea." --CHARLES LAMB'S TRIUMPH OF THE
WHALE.

"In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the
whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:
there--pointing to the sea--is a green pasture where our children's
grand-children will go for bread." --OBED MACY'S HISTORY OF
NANTUCKET.

"I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the
form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw bones."
--HAWTHORNE'S TWICE TOLD TALES.

"She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been
killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years
ago." --IBID.

"No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom; "I saw his sprout; he
threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to
look at.  He's a raal oil-butt, that fellow!" --COOPER'S PILOT.

"The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that
whales had been introduced on the stage there." --ECKERMANN'S
CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE.

"My God!  Mr. Chace, what is the matter?"  I answered, "we have been
stove by a whale." --"NARRATIVE OF THE SHIPWRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP
ESSEX OF NANTUCKET, WHICH WAS ATTACKED AND FINALLY DESTROYED BY A
LARGE SPERM WHALE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN."  BY OWEN CHACE OF NANTUCKET,
FIRST MATE OF SAID VESSEL.  NEW YORK, 1821.

"A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
As it floundered in the sea." --ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.

"The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture
of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six
English miles. ...

"Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,
cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four
miles." --SCORESBY.

"Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the
infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous
head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he
rushes at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him with
vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed. ...  It is a matter
of great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so
interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an
animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected,
or should have excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and
many of them competent observers, that of late years, must have
possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities of
witnessing their habitudes." --THOMAS BEALE'S HISTORY OF THE SPERM
WHALE, 1839.

"The Cachalot" (Sperm Whale) "is not only better armed than the True
Whale" (Greenland or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weapon
at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a
disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once
so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as
the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale
tribe." --FREDERICK DEBELL BENNETT'S WHALING VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE,
1840.

October 13.  "There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head.
"Where away?" demanded the captain.
"Three points off the lee bow, sir."
"Raise up your wheel.  Steady!"  "Steady, sir."
"Mast-head ahoy!  Do you see that whale now?"
"Ay ay, sir!  A shoal of Sperm Whales!  There she blows!  There she
breaches!"
"Sing out! sing out every time!"
"Ay Ay, sir!  There she blows! there--there--THAR she
blows--bowes--bo-o-os!"
"How far off?"
"Two miles and a half."
"Thunder and lightning! so near!  Call all hands." --J. ROSS BROWNE'S
ETCHINGS OF A WHALING CRUIZE.  1846.

"The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid
transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of
Nantucket." --"NARRATIVE OF THE GLOBE," BY LAY AND HUSSEY SURVIVORS.
A.D. 1828.

Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the
assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length
rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by
leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable."
--MISSIONARY JOURNAL OF TYERMAN AND BENNETT.

"Nantucket itself," said Mr. Webster, "is a very striking and
peculiar portion of the National interest.  There is a population of
eight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding largely
every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering
industry." --REPORT OF DANIEL WEBSTER'S SPEECH IN THE U.  S.  SENATE,
ON THE APPLICATION FOR THE ERECTION OF A BREAKWATER AT NANTUCKET.
1828.

"The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a
moment." --"THE WHALE AND HIS CAPTORS, OR THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES
AND THE WHALE'S BIOGRAPHY, GATHERED ON THE HOMEWARD CRUISE OF THE
COMMODORE PREBLE."  BY REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER.

"If you make the least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel, "I will
send you to hell." --LIFE OF SAMUEL COMSTOCK (THE MUTINEER), BY HIS
BROTHER, WILLIAM COMSTOCK.  ANOTHER VERSION OF THE WHALE-SHIP GLOBE
NARRATIVE.

"The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in
order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though
they failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the whale."
--MCCULLOCH'S COMMERCIAL DICTIONARY.

"These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound
forward again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the
whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same
mystic North-West Passage." --FROM "SOMETHING" UNPUBLISHED.

"It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being
struck by her near appearance.  The vessel under short sail, with
look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around
them, has a totally different air from those engaged in regular
voyage." --CURRENTS AND WHALING.  U.S. EX. EX.

"Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect
having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to
form arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may
perhaps have been told that these were the ribs of whales." --TALES
OF A WHALE VOYAGER TO THE ARCTIC OCEAN.

"It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,
that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages
enrolled among the crew." --NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT OF THE TAKING AND
RETAKING OF THE WHALE-SHIP HOBOMACK.

"It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels
(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they
departed." --CRUISE IN A WHALE BOAT.

"Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up
perpendicularly into the air.  It was the while." --MIRIAM COFFIN OR
THE WHALE FISHERMAN.

"The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would
manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope
tied to the root of his tail." --A CHAPTER ON WHALING IN RIBS AND
TRUCKS.

"On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male
and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a
stone's throw of the shore" (Terra Del Fuego), "over which the beech
tree extended its branches." --DARWIN'S VOYAGE OF A NATURALIST.

"'Stern all!' exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw
the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the
boat, threatening it with instant destruction;--'Stern all, for your
lives!'" --WHARTON THE WHALE KILLER.

"So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!" --NANTUCKET SONG.

"Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea." --WHALE SONG.



CHAPTER 1

Loomings.


Call me Ishmael.  Some years ago--never mind how long
precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing
particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a
little and see the watery part of the world.  It is a way I have of
driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.  Whenever I
find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp,
drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily
pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every
funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper
hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me
from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon
as I can.  This is my substitute for pistol and ball.  With a
philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly
take to the ship.  There is nothing surprising in this.  If they but
knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish
very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by
wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with
her surf.  Right and left, the streets take you waterward.  Its
extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by
waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of
sight of land.  Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.  Go from
Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall,
northward.  What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around
the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean
reveries.  Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the
pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some
high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better
seaward peep.  But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in
lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to
desks.  How then is this?  Are the green fields gone?  What do they
here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and
seemingly bound for a dive.  Strange!  Nothing will content them but
the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of
yonder warehouses will not suffice.  No.  They must get just as nigh
the water as they possibly can without falling in.  And there they
stand--miles of them--leagues.  Inlanders all, they come from lanes
and alleys, streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west.  Yet
here they all unite.  Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the
needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

Once more.  Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes.
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down
in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream.  There is
magic in it.  Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his
deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going,
and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all
that region.  Should you ever be athirst in the great American
desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied
with a metaphysical professor.  Yes, as every one knows, meditation
and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist.  He desires to paint you the dreamiest,
shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all
the valley of the Saco.  What is the chief element he employs?  There
stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a
crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his
cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke.  Deep into
distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of
mountains bathed in their hill-side blue.  But though the picture
lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs
like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the
shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him.  Go visit
the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade
knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one charm
wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there!  Were Niagara
but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see
it?  Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two
handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he
sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway
Beach?  Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy
soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?  Why upon your
first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical
vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of
sight of land?  Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy?  Why did
the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove?  Surely
all this is not without meaning.  And still deeper the meaning of
that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the
tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and
was drowned.  But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and
oceans.  It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this
is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I
begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of
my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as
a passenger.  For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse,
and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.  Besides,
passengers get sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of nights--do
not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I never go as a
passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea
as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook.  I abandon the glory and
distinction of such offices to those who like them.  For my part, I
abominate all honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations
of every kind whatsoever.  It is quite as much as I can do to take
care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs,
schooners, and what not.  And as for going as cook,--though I confess
there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer
on ship-board--yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;--though
once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and
peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to
say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will.  It is out of the
idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted
river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their
huge bake-houses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,
plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to
spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow.  And at first, this sort of
thing is unpleasant enough.  It touches one's sense of honour,
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land,
the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes.  And more than
all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have
been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys
stand in awe of you.  The transition is a keen one, I assure you,
from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of
Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.  But even
this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
broom and sweep down the decks?  What does that indignity amount to,
weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament?  Do you think
the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I
promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular
instance?  Who ain't a slave?  Tell me that.  Well, then, however the
old sea-captains may order me about--however they may thump and punch
me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right;
that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same
way--either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and
so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each
other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of
paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single
penny that I ever heard of.  On the contrary, passengers themselves
must pay.  And there is all the difference in the world between
paying and being paid.  The act of paying is perhaps the most
uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon
us.  But BEING PAID,--what will compare with it?  The urbane activity
with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering
that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly
ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.  Ah! how
cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck.  For as in this world,
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if
you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
the sailors on the forecastle.  He thinks he breathes it first; but
not so.  In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in
many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect
it.  But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea
as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a
whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who
has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and
influences me in some unaccountable way--he can better answer than
any one else.  And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage,
formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a
long time ago.  It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo
between more extensive performances.  I take it that this part of the
bill must have run something like this:


"GRAND CONTESTED ELECTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."


Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers,
the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when
others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and
short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in
farces--though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I
recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the
springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under
various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did,
besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting
from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
whale himself.  Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all
my curiosity.  Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his
island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these,
with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and
sounds, helped to sway me to my wish.  With other men, perhaps, such
things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented
with an everlasting itch for things remote.  I love to sail forbidden
seas, and land on barbarous coasts.  Not ignoring what is good, I am
quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it--would
they let me--since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all
the inmates of the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into
my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of
them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.



CHAPTER 2

The Carpet-Bag.


I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my
arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific.  Quitting the good
city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford.  It was a
Saturday night in December.  Much was I disappointed upon learning
that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no
way of reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday.

As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop
at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as
well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing.  For my
mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because
there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected
with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me.  Besides
though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising the
business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is
now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original--the Tyre
of this Carthage;--the place where the first dead American whale was
stranded.  Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal
whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the
Leviathan?  And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first
adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
cobblestones--so goes the story--to throw at the whales, in order to
discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the
bowsprit?

Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before
me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it
became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep
meanwhile.  It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and
dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless.  I knew no one in the
place.  With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only
brought up a few pieces of silver,--So, wherever you go, Ishmael,
said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street
shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with
the darkness towards the south--wherever in your wisdom you may
conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire
the price, and don't be too particular.

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of "The
Crossed Harpoons"--but it looked too expensive and jolly there.
Further on, from the bright red windows of the "Sword-Fish Inn,"
there came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the
packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the
congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic
pavement,--rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the
flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles
of my boots were in a most miserable plight.  Too expensive and
jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare
in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within.
But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear? get away from
before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way.  So on I
went.  I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward,
for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either
hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a
tomb.  At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that
quarter of the town proved all but deserted.  But presently I came to
a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which
stood invitingly open.  It had a careless look, as if it were meant
for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was
to stumble over an ash-box in the porch.  Ha! thought I, ha, as the
flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that
destroyed city, Gomorrah?  But "The Crossed Harpoons," and "The
Sword-Fish?"--this, then must needs be the sign of "The Trap."
However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed
on and opened a second, interior door.

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet.  A hundred
black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black
Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit.  It was a negro church;
and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the
weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there.  Ha, Ishmael, muttered
I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the
docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a
swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly
representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words
underneath--"The Spouter Inn:--Peter Coffin."

Coffin?--Spouter?--Rather ominous in that particular connexion,
thought I.  But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I
suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there.  As the light
looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and
the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have
been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the
swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought
that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea
coffee.

It was a queer sort of place--a gable-ended old house, one side
palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly.  It stood on a sharp
bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse
howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft.  Euroclydon,
nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with
his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed.  "In judging of that
tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer--of whose
works I possess the only copy extant--"it maketh a marvellous
difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where
the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from
that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which
the wight Death is the only glazier."  True enough, thought I, as
this passage occurred to my mind--old black-letter, thou reasonest
well.  Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the
house.  What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies
though, and thrust in a little lint here and there.  But it's too
late to make any improvements now.  The universe is finished; the
copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago.
Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for
his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might
plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and
yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon.  Euroclydon!
says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper--(he had a redder one
afterwards) pooh, pooh!  What a fine frosty night; how Orion
glitters; what northern lights!  Let them talk of their oriental
summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of
making my own summer with my own coals.

But what thinks Lazarus?  Can he warm his blue hands by holding them
up to the grand northern lights?  Would not Lazarus rather be in
Sumatra than here?  Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise
along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit
itself, in order to keep out this frost?

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before
the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should
be moored to one of the Moluccas.  Yet Dives himself, he too lives
like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a
president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of
orphans.

But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there
is plenty of that yet to come.  Let us scrape the ice from our
frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.



CHAPTER 3

The Spouter-Inn.


Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,
low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.  On one side hung a very
large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced,
that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only
by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and
careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an
understanding of its purpose.  Such unaccountable masses of shades
and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young
artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to
delineate chaos bewitched.  But by dint of much and earnest
contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by
throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at
last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might
not be altogether unwarranted.

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber,
portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the
picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a
nameless yeast.  A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to
drive a nervous man distracted.  Yet was there a sort of indefinite,
half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you
to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out
what that marvellous painting meant.  Ever and anon a bright, but,
alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.--It's the Black Sea in a
midnight gale.--It's the unnatural combat of the four primal
elements.--It's a blasted heath.--It's a Hyperborean winter
scene.--It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time.  But at
last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in
the picture's midst.  THAT once found out, and all the rest were
plain.  But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic
fish? even the great leviathan himself?

In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with
whom I conversed upon the subject.  The picture represents a
Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering
there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an
exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in
the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.

The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish
array of monstrous clubs and spears.  Some were thickly set with
glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots
of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping
round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed
mower.  You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous
cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such
a hacking, horrifying implement.  Mixed with these were rusty old
whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed.  Some were
storied weapons.  With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed,
fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a
sunrise and a sunset.  And that harpoon--so like a corkscrew now--was
flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterwards
slain off the Cape of Blanco.  The original iron entered nigh the
tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man,
travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the
hump.

Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way--cut
through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with
fireplaces all round--you enter the public room.  A still duskier
place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old
wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some
old craft's cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this
corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously.  On one side stood a
long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled
with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks.
Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking
den--the bar--a rude attempt at a right whale's head.  Be that how it
may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a
coach might almost drive beneath it.  Within are shabby shelves,
ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws
of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed
they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their
money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death.

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison.  Though
true cylinders without--within, the villanous green goggling glasses
deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom.  Parallel
meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads'
goblets.  Fill to THIS mark, and your charge is but a penny; to THIS
a penny more; and so on to the full glass--the Cape Horn measure,
which you may gulp down for a shilling.

Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered
about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of
SKRIMSHANDER.  I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be
accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was
full--not a bed unoccupied.  "But avast," he added, tapping his
forehead, "you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket,
have ye?  I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better get used
to that sort of thing."

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should
ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and
that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the
harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander
further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up
with the half of any decent man's blanket.

"I thought so.  All right; take a seat.  Supper?--you want supper?
Supper'll be ready directly."

I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on
the Battery.  At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning
it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at
the space between his legs.  He was trying his hand at a ship under
full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought.

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an
adjoining room.  It was cold as Iceland--no fire at all--the landlord
said he couldn't afford it.  Nothing but two dismal tallow candles,
each in a winding sheet.  We were fain to button up our monkey
jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half
frozen fingers.  But the fare was of the most substantial kind--not
only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for
supper!  One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to
these dumplings in a most direful manner.

"My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare to a dead
sartainty."

"Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?"

"Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the
harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap.  He never eats dumplings, he
don't--he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare."

"The devil he does," says I.  "Where is that harpooneer?  Is he
here?"

"He'll be here afore long," was the answer.

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this "dark
complexioned" harpooneer.  At any rate, I made up my mind that if it
so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get
into bed before I did.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not
what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the
evening as a looker on.

Presently a rioting noise was heard without.  Starting up, the
landlord cried, "That's the Grampus's crew.  I seed her reported in
the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship.
Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees."

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung
open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough.  Enveloped in
their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen
comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with
icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador.  They had
just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they
entered.  No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the
whale's mouth--the bar--when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there
officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round.  One complained
of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like
potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for
all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing,
or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side
of an ice-island.

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even
with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began
capering about most obstreperously.

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though
he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his
own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much
noise as the rest.  This man interested me at once; and since the
sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though
but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned),
I will here venture upon a little description of him.  He stood full
six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a
coffer-dam.  I have seldom seen such brawn in a man.  His face was
deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the
contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some
reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy.  His voice at
once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I
thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the
Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia.  When the revelry of his companions
had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I
saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea.  In a few
minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it
seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry
of "Bulkington!  Bulkington! where's Bulkington?" and darted out of
the house in pursuit of him.

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost
supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate
myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to
the entrance of the seamen.

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed.  In fact, you would a good deal
rather not sleep with your own brother.  I don't know how it is, but
people like to be private when they are sleeping.  And when it comes
to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange
town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections
indefinitely multiply.  Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a
sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors
no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore.  To
be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your
own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in
your own skin.

The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the
thought of sleeping with him.  It was fair to presume that being a
harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be
of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest.  I began to twitch all
over.  Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought
to be home and going bedwards.  Suppose now, he should tumble in upon
me at midnight--how could I tell from what vile hole he had been
coming?

"Landlord!  I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.--I shan't
sleep with him.  I'll try the bench here."

"Just as you please; I'm sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a
mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"--feeling of the knots
and notches.  "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's
plane there in the bar--wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough."
So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief
first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed,
the while grinning like an ape.  The shavings flew right and left;
till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot.
The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for
heaven's sake to quit--the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did
not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a
pine plank.  So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and
throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went
about his business, and left me in a brown study.

I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too
short; but that could be mended with a chair.  But it was a foot too
narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher
than the planed one--so there was no yoking them.  I then placed the
first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall,
leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in.
But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me
from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at
all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one
from the window, and both together formed a series of small
whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought
to spend the night.

The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I
steal a march on him--bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed,
not to be wakened by the most violent knockings?  It seemed no bad
idea; but upon second thoughts I dismissed it.  For who could tell
but what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the
harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me
down!

Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of
spending a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I
began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable
prejudices against this unknown harpooneer.  Thinks I, I'll wait
awhile; he must be dropping in before long.  I'll have a good look at
him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after
all--there's no telling.

But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and
threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.

"Landlord! said I, "what sort of a chap is he--does he always keep
such late hours?"  It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be
mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension.  "No," he
answered, "generally he's an early bird--airley to bed and airley to
rise--yes, he's the bird what catches the worm.  But to-night he
went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him
so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head."

"Can't sell his head?--What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you
are telling me?" getting into a towering rage.  "Do you pretend to
say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed
Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around
this town?"

"That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't
sell it here, the market's overstocked."

"With what?" shouted I.

"With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?"

"I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better
stop spinning that yarn to me--I'm not green."

"May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, "but I
rayther guess you'll be done BROWN if that ere harpooneer hears you a
slanderin' his head."

"I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at
this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.

"It's broke a'ready," said he.

"Broke," said I--"BROKE, do you mean?"

"Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess."

"Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a
snow-storm--"landlord, stop whittling.  You and I must understand one
another, and that too without delay.  I come to your house and want a
bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half
belongs to a certain harpooneer.  And about this harpooneer, whom I
have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and
exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling
towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow--a sort of
connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the
highest degree.  I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and
what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe
to spend the night with him.  And in the first place, you will be so
good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I
take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've
no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean,
landlord, YOU, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would
thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution."

"Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty
long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then.  But be easy,
be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just
arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New
Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but
one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's
Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the
streets when folks is goin' to churches.  He wanted to, last Sunday,
but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four
heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions."

This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and
showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling
me--but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who
stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged
in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolators?

"Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man."

"He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder.  "But come, it's getting
dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes--it's a nice bed;
Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced.  There's
plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty
big bed that.  Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and
little Johnny in the foot of it.  But I got a dreaming and sprawling
about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came
near breaking his arm.  Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do.  Come
along here, I'll give ye a glim in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighted
a candle and held it towards me, offering to lead the way.  But I
stood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed
"I vum it's Sunday--you won't see that harpooneer to-night; he's come
to anchor somewhere--come along then; DO come; WON'T ye come?"

I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I
was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure
enough, with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four
harpooneers to sleep abreast.

"There," said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea
chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; "there,
make yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye."  I turned
round from eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.

Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed.  Though none of
the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well.  I then
glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table,
could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude
shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man
striking a whale.  Of things not properly belonging to the room,
there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one
corner; also a large seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's
wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk.  Likewise, there was a
parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the
fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.

But what is this on the chest?  I took it up, and held it close to
the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to
arrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it.  I can compare
it to nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with
little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills
round an Indian moccasin.  There was a hole or slit in the middle of
this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos.  But could
it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat,
and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise?
I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being
uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though
this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day.  I
went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never
saw such a sight in my life.  I tore myself out of it in such a hurry
that I gave myself a kink in the neck.

I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat.  After thinking some time
on the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then
stood in the middle of the room thinking.  I then took off my coat,
and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves.  But beginning to feel
very cold now, half undressed as I was, and remembering what the
landlord said about the harpooneer's not coming home at all that
night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of
my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into
bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven.

Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,
there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not
sleep for a long time.  At last I slid off into a light doze, and had
pretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I
heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light
come into the room from under the door.

Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal
head-peddler.  But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a
word till spoken to.  Holding a light in one hand, and that identical
New Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and
without looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off
from me on the floor in one corner, and then began working away at
the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the
room.  I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted
for some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth.  This
accomplished, however, he turned round--when, good heavens! what a
sight!  Such a face!  It was of a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here
and there stuck over with large blackish looking squares.  Yes, it's
just as I thought, he's a terrible bedfellow; he's been in a fight,
got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon.  But at
that moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I
plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black
squares on his cheeks.  They were stains of some sort or other.  At
first I knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the
truth occurred to me.  I remembered a story of a white man--a
whaleman too--who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by
them.  I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant
voyages, must have met with a similar adventure.  And what is it,
thought I, after all!  It's only his outside; a man can be honest in
any sort of skin.  But then, what to make of his unearthly
complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and
completely independent of the squares of tattooing.  To be sure, it
might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never
heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one.
However, I had never been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun
there produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin.  Now, while
all these ideas were passing through me like lightning, this
harpooneer never noticed me at all.  But, after some difficulty
having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently
pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair
on.  Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he
then took the New Zealand head--a ghastly thing enough--and crammed
it down into the bag.  He now took off his hat--a new beaver
hat--when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise.  There was no
hair on his head--none to speak of at least--nothing but a small
scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead.  His bald purplish head now
looked for all the world like a mildewed skull.  Had not the stranger
stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker
than ever I bolted a dinner.

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window,
but it was the second floor back.  I am no coward, but what to make
of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my
comprehension.  Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely
nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as
much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken
into my room at the dead of night.  In fact, I was so afraid of him
that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a
satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last
showed his chest and arms.  As I live, these covered parts of him
were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was
all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty
Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt.
Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green
frogs were running up the trunks of young palms.  It was now quite
plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard
of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian
country.  I quaked to think of it.  A peddler of heads too--perhaps
the heads of his own brothers.  He might take a fancy to
mine--heavens! look at that tomahawk!

But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about
something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me
that he must indeed be a heathen.  Going to his heavy grego, or
wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he
fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little
deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a
three days' old Congo baby.  Remembering the embalmed head, at first
I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved
in some similar manner.  But seeing that it was not at all limber,
and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded
that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to
be.  For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing
the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like
a tenpin, between the andirons.  The chimney jambs and all the bricks
inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very
appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.

I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but
ill at ease meantime--to see what was next to follow.  First he takes
about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and
places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship
biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the
shavings into a sacrificial blaze.  Presently, after many hasty
snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers
(whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded
in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a
little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro.  But the
little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he
never moved his lips.  All these strange antics were accompanied by
still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be
praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other,
during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner.
At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very
unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as
carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and
seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business
operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time,
now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in
which I had so long been bound.

But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal
one.  Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of
it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth
at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke.  The next
moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk
between his teeth, sprang into bed with me.  I sang out, I could not
help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began
feeling me.

Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him
against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might
be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again.  But
his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill
comprehended my meaning.

"Who-e debel you?"--he at last said--"you no speak-e, dam-me, I
kill-e."  And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about
me in the dark.

"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I.  "Landlord!
Watch!  Coffin!  Angels! save me!"

"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled
the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered
the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on
fire.  But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the
room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here
wouldn't harm a hair of your head."

"Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that
that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"

"I thought ye know'd it;--didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads
around town?--but turn flukes again and go to sleep.  Queequeg, look
here--you sabbee me, I sabbee--you this man sleepe you--you sabbee?"

"Me sabbee plenty"--grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and
sitting up in bed.

"You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and
throwing the clothes to one side.  He really did this in not only a
civil but a really kind and charitable way.  I stood looking at him a
moment.  For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely
looking cannibal.  What's all this fuss I have been making about,
thought I to myself--the man's a human being just as I am: he has
just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him.
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

"Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe,
or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I
will turn in with him.  But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed
with me.  It's dangerous.  Besides, I ain't insured."

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely
motioned me to get into bed--rolling over to one side as much as to
say--I won't touch a leg of ye."

"Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."

I turned in, and never slept better in my life.



CHAPTER 4

The Counterpane.


Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm
thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner.  You had
almost thought I had been his wife.  The counterpane was of
patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles;
and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan
labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise
shade--owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically
in sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various
times--this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a
strip of that same patchwork quilt.  Indeed, partly lying on it as
the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it from the
quilt, they so blended their hues together; and it was only by the
sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was
hugging me.

My sensations were strange.  Let me try to explain them.  When I was
a child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell
me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely
settle.  The circumstance was this.  I had been cutting up some caper
or other--I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had
seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who,
somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed
supperless,--my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and
packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon
of the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere.  I
felt dreadfully.  But there was no help for it, so up stairs I went
to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as
possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the
sheets.

I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must
elapse before I could hope for a resurrection.  Sixteen hours in bed!
the small of my back ached to think of it.  And it was so light too;
the sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in
the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house.  I felt
worse and worse--at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in
my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw
myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a
good slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning
me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time.  But she was the
best and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to
my room.  For several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great
deal worse than I have ever done since, even from the greatest
subsequent misfortunes.  At last I must have fallen into a troubled
nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it--half steeped in
dreams--I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped
in outer darkness.  Instantly I felt a shock running through all my
frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a
supernatural hand seemed placed in mine.  My arm hung over the
counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom,
to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side.
For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most
awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that
if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be
broken.  I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from
me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and
for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding
attempts to explain the mystery.  Nay, to this very hour, I often
puzzle myself with it.

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the
supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness,
to those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan
arm thrown round me.  But at length all the past night's events
soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only
alive to the comical predicament.  For though I tried to move his
arm--unlock his bridegroom clasp--yet, sleeping as he was, he still
hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain.
I now strove to rouse him--"Queequeg!"--but his only answer was a
snore.  I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a
horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch.  Throwing aside the
counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as
if it were a hatchet-faced baby.  A pretty pickle, truly, thought I;
abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a
tomahawk!  "Queequeg!--in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!"  At
length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant
expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male
in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt;
and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like a
Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a
pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not
altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim
consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning
over him.  Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious
misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a
creature.  When, at last, his mind seemed made up touching the
character of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were, reconciled to
the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain signs and
sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he would dress
first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole
apartment to myself.  Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances,
this is a very civilized overture; but, the truth is, these savages
have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous
how essentially polite they are.  I pay this particular compliment to
Queequeg, because he treated me with so much civility and
consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness; staring at him
from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for the time my
curiosity getting the better of my breeding.  Nevertheless, a man
like Queequeg you don't see every day, he and his ways were well
worth unusual regarding.

He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall
one, by the by, and then--still minus his trowsers--he hunted up his
boots.  What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his
next movement was to crush himself--boots in hand, and hat on--under
the bed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I
inferred he was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of
propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private
when putting on his boots.  But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature
in the transition stage--neither caterpillar nor butterfly.  He was
just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest
possible manners.  His education was not yet completed.  He was an
undergraduate.  If he had not been a small degree civilized, he very
probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then,
if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of
getting under the bed to put them on.  At last, he emerged with his
hat very much dented and crushed down over his eyes, and began
creaking and limping about the room, as if, not being much accustomed
to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones--probably not made
to order either--rather pinched and tormented him at the first go off
of a bitter cold morning.

Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the
street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view
into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that
Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots
on; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet
somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as
possible.  He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself.  At that
time in the morning any Christian would have washed his face; but
Queequeg, to my amazement, contented himself with restricting his
ablutions to his chest, arms, and hands.  He then donned his
waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand
centre table, dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face.
I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he
takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden
stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and
striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous
scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.  Thinks I, Queequeg,
this is using Rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance.  Afterwards I
wondered the less at this operation when I came to know of what fine
steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the
long straight edges are always kept.

The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out
of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and
sporting his harpoon like a marshal's baton.



CHAPTER 5

Breakfast.


I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted
the grinning landlord very pleasantly.  I cherished no malice towards
him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter
of my bedfellow.

However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a
good thing; the more's the pity.  So, if any one man, in his own
proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not
be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be
spent in that way.  And the man that has anything bountifully
laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you
perhaps think for.

The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in
the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at.
They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and
third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea
blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny
company, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing
monkey jackets for morning gowns.

You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore.
This young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue,
and would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three
days landed from his Indian voyage.  That man next him looks a few
shades lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him.  In
the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly
bleached withal; HE doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore.  But
who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various
tints, seemed like the Andes' western slope, to show forth in one
array, contrasting climates, zone by zone.

"Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we
went to breakfast.

They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at
ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company.  Not always, though:
Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch
one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor.
But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as
Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach,
in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's
performances--this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best
mode of attaining a high social polish.  Still, for the most part,
that sort of thing is to be had anywhere.

These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that
after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear
some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly
every man maintained a profound silence.  And not only that, but they
looked embarrassed.  Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom
without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the
high seas--entire strangers to them--and duelled them dead without
winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table--all of
the same calling, all of kindred tastes--looking round as sheepishly
at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some
sheepfold among the Green Mountains.  A curious sight; these bashful
bears, these timid warrior whalemen!

But as for Queequeg--why, Queequeg sat there among them--at the head
of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle.  To be sure I
cannot say much for his breeding.  His greatest admirer could not
have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with
him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table
with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the
beefsteaks towards him.  But THAT was certainly very coolly done by
him, and every one knows that in most people's estimation, to do
anything coolly is to do it genteelly.

We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he
eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to
beefsteaks, done rare.  Enough, that when breakfast was over he
withdrew like the rest into the public room, lighted his
tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting and smoking
with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll.



CHAPTER 6

The Street.


If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish
an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a
civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first
daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.

In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will
frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from
foreign parts.  Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean
mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies.  Regent Street
is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo
Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives.  But New Bedford
beats all Water Street and Wapping.  In these last-mentioned haunts
you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand
chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry
on their bones unholy flesh.  It makes a stranger stare.

But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans,
Pannangians, and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the
whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see
other sights still more curious, certainly more comical.  There
weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New
Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery.  They
are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled
forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance.
Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they came.  In some
things you would think them but a few hours old.  Look there! that
chap strutting round the corner.  He wears a beaver hat and
swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife.
Here comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak.

No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one--I mean a
downright bumpkin dandy--a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his
two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.  Now when
a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a
distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you
should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport.  In
bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats;
straps to his canvas trowsers.  Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will
burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven,
straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.

But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals,
and bumpkins to show her visitors.  Not at all.  Still New Bedford is
a queer place.  Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land
would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast
of Labrador.  As it is, parts of her back country are enough to
frighten one, they look so bony.  The town itself is perhaps the
dearest place to live in, in all New England.  It is a land of oil,
true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine.
The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave
them with fresh eggs.  Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America
will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more
opulent, than in New Bedford.  Whence came they? how planted upon
this once scraggy scoria of a country?

Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty
mansion, and your question will be answered.  Yes; all these brave
houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and
Indian oceans.  One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up
hither from the bottom of the sea.  Can Herr Alexander perform a feat
like that?

In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their
daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece.
You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they
say, they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night
recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.

In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples--long
avenues of green and gold.  And in August, high in air, the beautiful
and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by
their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms.  So omnipotent
is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced
bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside
at creation's final day.

And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses.
But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their
cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens.  Elsewhere
match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell
me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell
them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous
Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.



CHAPTER 7

The Chapel.


In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few
are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or
Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot.  I am sure that
I did not.

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
special errand.  The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to
driving sleet and mist.  Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the
cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm.
Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and
sailors' wives and widows.  A muffled silence reigned, only broken at
times by the shrieks of the storm.  Each silent worshipper seemed
purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were
insular and incommunicable.  The chaplain had not yet arrived; and
there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing
several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on
either side the pulpit.  Three of them ran something like the
following, but I do not pretend to quote:--

SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
JOHN TALBOT,
Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard,
Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,
November 1st, 1836.
THIS TABLET
Is erected to his Memory
BY HIS
SISTER.
_____________

SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,
NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,
AND SAMUEL GLEIG,
Forming one of the boats' crews
OF
THE SHIP ELIZA
Who were towed out of sight by a Whale,
On the Off-shore Ground in the
PACIFIC,
December 31st, 1839.
THIS MARBLE
Is here placed by their surviving
SHIPMATES.
_____________

SACRED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
The late
CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY,
Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a
Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan,
AUGUST 3d, 1833.
THIS TABLET
Is erected to his Memory
BY
HIS WIDOW.

Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated
myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see
Queequeg near me.  Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was
a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance.  This
savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance;
because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was
not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall.  Whether any of
the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among
the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded
accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present
wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief,
that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose
unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically
caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing
among flowers can say--here, HERE lies my beloved; ye know not the
desolation that broods in bosoms like these.  What bitter blanks in
those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes!  What despair in
those immovable inscriptions!  What deadly voids and unbidden
infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and
refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished
without a grave.  As well might those tablets stand in the cave of
Elephanta as here.

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;
why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no
tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it
is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we
prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle
him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth;
why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon
immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly,
hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries
ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we
nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the
living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a
knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city.  All these things are
not without their meanings.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these
dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky
light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who
had gone before me.  Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine.  But
somehow I grew merry again.  Delightful inducements to embark, fine
chance for promotion, it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an
immortal by brevet.  Yes, there is death in this business of
whaling--a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into
Eternity.  But what then?  Methinks we have hugely mistaken this
matter of Life and Death.  Methinks that what they call my shadow
here on earth is my true substance.  Methinks that in looking at
things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun
through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being.  In fact take
my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.  And therefore three
cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they
will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.



CHAPTER 8

The Pulpit.


I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable
robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back
upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the
congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the
chaplain.  Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the
whalemen, among whom he was a very great favourite.  He had been a
sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had
dedicated his life to the ministry.  At the time I now write of,
Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort
of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for
among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild
gleams of a newly developing bloom--the spring verdure peeping forth
even beneath February's snow.  No one having previously heard his
history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the
utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical
peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life
he had led.  When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella,
and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran
down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed
almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had
absorbed.  However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one
removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner; when,
arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.

Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a
regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the
floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the
architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and
finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular
side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea.
The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome
pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself
nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany colour, the whole
contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no
means in bad taste.  Halting for an instant at the foot of the
ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the
man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly
sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted
the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel.

The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case
with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were
of wood, so that at every step there was a joint.  At my first
glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient
for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary.
For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height,
slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up
the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving
him impregnable in his little Quebec.

I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.
Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and
sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any
mere tricks of the stage.  No, thought I, there must be some sober
reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something
unseen.  Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he
signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward
worldly ties and connexions?  Yes, for replenished with the meat and
wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is
a self-containing stronghold--a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a
perennial well of water within the walls.

But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,
borrowed from the chaplain's former sea-farings.  Between the marble
cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its
back was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship
beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and
snowy breakers.  But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling
clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed
forth an angel's face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of
radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver
plate now inserted into the Victory's plank where Nelson fell.  "Ah,
noble ship," the angel seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble
ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the
clouds are rolling off--serenest azure is at hand."

Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that
had achieved the ladder and the picture.  Its panelled front was in
the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a
projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's
fiddle-headed beak.

What could be more full of meaning?--for the pulpit is ever this
earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit
leads the world.  From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is
first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt.  From
thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for
favourable winds.  Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not
a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.



CHAPTER 9

The Sermon.


Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority
ordered the scattered people to condense.  "Starboard gangway,
there! side away to larboard--larboard gangway to starboard!
Midships! midships!"

There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a
still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again,
and every eye on the preacher.

He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his
large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and
offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying
at the bottom of the sea.

This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of
a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog--in such tones he
commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards
the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and
joy--

"The ribs and terrors in the whale,
Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by,
And lift me deepening down to doom.

"I saw the opening maw of hell,
With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell--
Oh, I was plunging to despair.

"In black distress, I called my God,
When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints--
No more the whale did me confine.

"With speed he flew to my relief,
As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone
The face of my Deliverer God.

"My song for ever shall record
That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God,
His all the mercy and the power.


Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the
howling of the storm.  A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly
turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand
down upon the proper page, said: "Beloved shipmates, clinch the last
verse of the first chapter of Jonah--'And God had prepared a great
fish to swallow up Jonah.'"

"Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters--four yarns--is
one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures.
Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a
pregnant lesson to us is this prophet!  What a noble thing is that
canticle in the fish's belly!  How billow-like and boisterously
grand!  We feel the floods surging over us; we sound with him to the
kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is
about us!  But WHAT is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches?
Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful
men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God.  As sinful men,
it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin,
hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment,
repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah.
As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in
his wilful disobedience of the command of God--never mind now what
that command was, or how conveyed--which he found a hard command.
But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to
do--remember that--and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors
to persuade.  And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it
is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God
consists.

"With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at
God, by seeking to flee from Him.  He thinks that a ship made by men
will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the
Captains of this earth.  He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and
seeks a ship that's bound for Tarshish.  There lurks, perhaps, a
hitherto unheeded meaning here.  By all accounts Tarshish could have
been no other city than the modern Cadiz.  That's the opinion of
learned men.  And where is Cadiz, shipmates?  Cadiz is in Spain; as
far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in
those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea.
Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly
coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more
than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside the
Straits of Gibraltar.  See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought
to flee world-wide from God?  Miserable man!  Oh! most contemptible
and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking
from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar
hastening to cross the seas.  So disordered, self-condemning is his
look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere
suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a
deck.  How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box,
valise, or carpet-bag,--no friends accompany him to the wharf with
their adieux.  At last, after much dodging search, he finds the
Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps
on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the
moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil
eye.  Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and
confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile.  Strong intuitions of
the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent.  In their gamesome
but still serious way, one whispers to the other--"Jack, he's robbed
a widow;" or, "Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry
lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or
belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom."  Another runs to
read the bill that's stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which
the ship is moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the
apprehension of a parricide, and containing a description of his
person.  He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his
sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their
hands upon him.  Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his
boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward.  He will
not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong suspicion.
So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him not to be
the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into
the cabin.

"'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?'  Oh! how that harmless
question mangles Jonah!  For the instant he almost turns to flee
again.  But he rallies.  'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish;
how soon sail ye, sir?'  Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up
to Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he
hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance.  'We
sail with the next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered, still
intently eyeing him.  'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any honest
man that goes a passenger.'  Ha!  Jonah, that's another stab.  But he
swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent.  'I'll sail with
ye,'--he says,--'the passage money how much is that?--I'll pay now.'
For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not
to be overlooked in this history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere
the craft did sail.  And taken with the context, this is full of
meaning.

"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects
crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless.
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely,
and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at
all frontiers.  So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of
Jonah's purse, ere he judge him openly.  He charges him thrice the
usual sum; and it's assented to.  Then the Captain knows that Jonah
is a fugitive; but at the same time resolves to help a flight that
paves its rear with gold.  Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse,
prudent suspicions still molest the Captain.  He rings every coin to
find a counterfeit.  Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is
put down for his passage.  'Point out my state-room, Sir,' says Jonah
now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep.'  'Thou lookest like it,' says
the Captain, 'there's thy room.'  Jonah enters, and would lock the
door, but the lock contains no key.  Hearing him foolishly fumbling
there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something
about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked
within.  All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into
his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on
his forehead.  The air is close, and Jonah gasps.  Then, in that
contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah
feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the
whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.

"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the
wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and
all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity
with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight
itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it
hung.  The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his
tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful
fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance.  But that
contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him.  The floor, the
ceiling, and the side, are all awry.  'Oh! so my conscience hangs in
me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of
my soul are all in crookedness!'

"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still
reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of
the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into
him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in
giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed;
and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over
him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the
wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in
his berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning
down to sleep.

"And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables;
and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all
careening, glides to sea.  That ship, my friends, was the first of
recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah.  But the sea rebels; he
will not bear the wicked burden.  A dreadful storm comes on, the
ship is like to break.  But now when the boatswain calls all hands to
lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard;
when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank
thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this
raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep.  He sees no black sky
and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or
heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open
mouth is cleaving the seas after him.  Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone
down into the sides of the ship--a berth in the cabin as I have taken
it, and was fast asleep.  But the frightened master comes to him, and
shrieks in his dead ear, 'What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!'
Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his
feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon
the sea.  But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow
leaping over the bulwarks.  Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship,
and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the
mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat.  And ever, as the
white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the
blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing
high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep.

"Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul.  In all his
cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known.  The
sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him,
and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter
to high Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose
cause this great tempest was upon them.  The lot is Jonah's; that
discovered, then how furiously they mob him with their questions.
'What is thine occupation?  Whence comest thou?  Thy country?  What
people?  But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah.  The
eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they
not only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another
answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is
forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.

"'I am a Hebrew,' he cries--and then--'I fear the Lord the God of
Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!'  Fear him, O Jonah?
Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God THEN!  Straightway, he now
goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more
and more appalled, but still are pitiful.  For when Jonah, not yet
supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness
of his deserts,--when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him
and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for HIS sake this
great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek
by other means to save the ship.  But all in vain; the indignant gale
howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the
other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.

"And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea;
when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea
is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth
water behind.  He goes down in the whirling heart of such a
masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops
seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to
all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison.  Then
Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly.  But observe his
prayer, and learn a weighty lesson.  For sinful as he is, Jonah does
not weep and wail for direct deliverance.  He feels that his dreadful
punishment is just.  He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting
himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will
still look towards His holy temple.  And here, shipmates, is true and
faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for
punishment.  And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is
shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale.
Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin
but I do place him before you as a model for repentance.  Sin not;
but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah."

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,
slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who,
when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.
His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed
the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from
off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all
his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to
them.

There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the
leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with
closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.

But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head
lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake
these words:

"Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press
upon me.  I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson
that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still
more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye.  And now how gladly
would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there
where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads
ME that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to ME, as a
pilot of the living God.  How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or
speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those
unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at
the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to
escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa.  But God is
everywhere; Tarshish he never reached.  As we have seen, God came
upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of
doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 'into the midst of the
seas,' where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down,
and 'the weeds were wrapped about his head,' and all the watery world
of woe bowled over him.  Yet even then beyond the reach of any
plummet--'out of the belly of hell'--when the whale grounded upon the
ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting
prophet when he cried.  Then God spake unto the fish; and from the
shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up
towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and
earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;' when the word of
the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten--his ears,
like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the
ocean--Jonah did the Almighty's bidding.  And what was that,
shipmates?  To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood!  That was
it!

"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
the living God who slights it.  Woe to him whom this world charms
from Gospel duty!  Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters
when God has brewed them into a gale!  Woe to him who seeks to please
rather than to appal!  Woe to him whose good name is more to him than
goodness!  Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonour!  Woe
to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!
Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching
to others is himself a castaway!"

He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his
face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out
with a heavenly enthusiasm,--"But oh! shipmates! on the starboard
hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of
that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.  Is not the
main-truck higher than the kelson is low?  Delight is to him--a far,
far upward, and inward delight--who against the proud gods and
commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of
this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him.  Delight is to
him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and
destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of
Senators and Judges.  Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who
acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a
patriot to heaven.  Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the
billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this
sure Keel of the Ages.  And eternal delight and deliciousness will be
his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath--O
Father!--chiefly known to me by Thy rod--mortal or immortal, here I
die.  I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or
mine own.  Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what
is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"

He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face
with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had
departed, and he was left alone in the place.



CHAPTER 10

A Bosom Friend.


Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there
quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some
time.  He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on
the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face
that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a
jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to
himself in his heathenish way.

But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon,
going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his
lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every
fiftieth page--as I fancied--stopping a moment, looking vacantly
around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of
astonishment.  He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming
to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count
more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties
being found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages
was excited.

With much interest I sat watching him.  Savage though he was, and
hideously marred about the face--at least to my taste--his
countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means
disagreeable.  You cannot hide the soul.  Through all his unearthly
tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and
in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of
a spirit that would dare a thousand devils.  And besides all this,
there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his
uncouthness could not altogether maim.  He looked like a man who had
never cringed and never had had a creditor.  Whether it was, too,
that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and
brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would,
this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was
phrenologically an excellent one.  It may seem ridiculous, but it
reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular
busts of him.  It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope
from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two
long promontories thickly wooded on top.  Queequeg was George
Washington cannibalistically developed.

Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to
be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my
presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but
appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous
book.  Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the
night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had
found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this
indifference of his very strange.  But savages are strange beings; at
times you do not know exactly how to take them.  At first they are
overawing; their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a
Socratic wisdom.  I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at
all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn.  He made
no advances whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the
circle of his acquaintances.  All this struck me as mighty singular;
yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it.
Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of
Cape Horn, that is--which was the only way he could get there--thrown
among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet
Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the
utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to
himself.  Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt
he had never heard there was such a thing as that.  But, perhaps, to
be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living
or so striving.  So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives
himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic
old woman, he must have "broken his digester."

As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that
mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it
then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms
gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent,
solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began
to be sensible of strange feelings.  I felt a melting in me.  No more
my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish
world.  This soothing savage had redeemed it.  There he sat, his very
indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized
hypocrisies and bland deceits.  Wild he was; a very sight of sights
to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him.
And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were
the very magnets that thus drew me.  I'll try a pagan friend, thought
I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.  I drew
my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my
best to talk with him meanwhile.  At first he little noticed these
advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night's
hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be
bedfellows.  I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased,
perhaps a little complimented.

We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to
him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures
that were in it.  Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we
went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to
be seen in this famous town.  Soon I proposed a social smoke; and,
producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff.  And
then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping
it regularly passing between us.

If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's
breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and
left us cronies.  He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and
unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his
forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that
henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we
were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be.
In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed
far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple
savage those old rules would not apply.

After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room
together.  He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his
enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some
thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and
mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of
them towards me, and said it was mine.  I was going to remonstrate;
but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers' pockets.  I let
them stay.  He then went about his evening prayers, took out his
idol, and removed the paper fireboard.  By certain signs and
symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to join him; but well
knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in case
he invited me, I would comply or otherwise.

I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church.  How then could I unite with this wild idolator
in worshipping his piece of wood?  But what is worship? thought I.
Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and
earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an
insignificant bit of black wood?  Impossible!  But what is
worship?--to do the will of God--THAT is worship.  And what is the
will of God?--to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man
to do to me--THAT is the will of God.  Now, Queequeg is my fellow
man.  And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me?  Why,
unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship.
Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn
idolator.  So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent
little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before
him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and
went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world.
But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for
confidential disclosures between friends.  Man and wife, they say,
there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old
couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning.  Thus,
then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg--a cosy, loving
pair.



CHAPTER 11

Nightgown.


We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and
Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs
over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free
and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations,
what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we
felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down
the future.

Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position
began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves
sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the
head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two
noses bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans.  We
felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of
doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire
in the room.  The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily
warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality
in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.  Nothing
exists in itself.  If you flatter yourself that you are all over
comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to
be comfortable any more.  But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed,
the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled,
why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most
delightfully and unmistakably warm.  For this reason a sleeping
apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the
luxurious discomforts of the rich.  For the height of this sort of
deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and
your snugness and the cold of the outer air.  Then there you lie like
the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.

We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all
at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets,
whether by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way
of always keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the
snugness of being in bed.  Because no man can ever feel his own
identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were
indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more
congenial to our clayey part.  Upon opening my eyes then, and coming
out of my own pleasant and self-created darkness into the imposed and
coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated twelve-o'clock-at-night, I
experienced a disagreeable revulsion.  Nor did I at all object to the
hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light,
seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong
desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk.  Be it said, that
though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed
the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when
love once comes to bend them.  For now I liked nothing better than
to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be
full of such serene household joy then.  I no more felt unduly
concerned for the landlord's policy of insurance.  I was only alive
to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a
blanket with a real friend.  With our shaggy jackets drawn about our
shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawk from one to the other, till
slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated
by the flame of the new-lit lamp.

Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to
far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native
island; and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and
tell it.  He gladly complied.  Though at the time I but ill
comprehended not a few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when
I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me
to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton
I give.



CHAPTER 12

Biographical.


Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West
and South.  It is not down in any map; true places never are.

When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in
a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green
sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong
desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or
two.  His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest;
and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of
unconquerable warriors.  There was excellent blood in his
veins--royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal
propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.

A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg sought a
passage to Christian lands.  But the ship, having her full complement
of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's
influence could prevail.  But Queequeg vowed a vow.  Alone in his
canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship
must pass through when she quitted the island.  On one side was a
coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove
thickets that grew out into the water.  Hiding his canoe, still
afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in
the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like
a flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his
foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing
himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and
swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.

In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a
cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and
Queequeg budged not.  Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his
wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and
told him he might make himself at home.  But this fine young
savage--this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin.
They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him.  But
like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities,
Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily
gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen.  For at
bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a profound desire to learn
among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still
happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they
were.  But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that
even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more
so, than all his father's heathens.  Arrived at last in old Sag
Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to
Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also,
poor Queequeg gave it up for lost.  Thought he, it's a wicked world
in all meridians; I'll die a pagan.

And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these
Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish.
Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home.

By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and
having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and
gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts.  He answered
no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather
Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled
throne of thirty pagan Kings before him.  But by and by, he said, he
would return,--as soon as he felt himself baptized again.  For the
nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in
all four oceans.  They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed
iron was in lieu of a sceptre now.

I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future
movements.  He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation.
Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed
him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most
promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from.  He at
once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same
vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with
me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly
dip into the Potluck of both worlds.  To all this I joyously
assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was
an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great
usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries
of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant
seamen.

His story being ended with his pipe's last dying puff, Queequeg
embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the
light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very
soon were sleeping.


CHAPTER 13

Wheelbarrow.


Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a
barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade's bill; using,
however, my comrade's money.  The grinning landlord, as well as the
boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had
sprung up between me and Queequeg--especially as Peter Coffin's cock
and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me
concerning the very person whom I now companied with.

We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own
poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and hammock, away we went
down to "the Moss," the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at
the wharf.  As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg
so much--for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their
streets,--but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms.  But
we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and
Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon
barbs.  I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him
ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find their own
harpoons.  To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I
hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own
harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal
combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales.  In short,
like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers' meadows
armed with their own scythes--though in no wise obliged to furnish
them--even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his
own harpoon.

Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story
about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen.  It was in Sag Harbor.
The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry
his heavy chest to his boarding house.  Not to seem ignorant about
the thing--though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise
way in which to manage the barrow--Queequeg puts his chest upon it;
lashes it fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the
wharf.  "Why," said I, "Queequeg, you might have known better than
that, one would think.  Didn't the people laugh?"

Upon this, he told me another story.  The people of his island of
Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant
water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a
punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament
on the braided mat where the feast is held.  Now a certain grand
merchant ship once touched at Rokovoko, and its commander--from all
accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea
captain--this commander was invited to the wedding feast of
Queequeg's sister, a pretty young princess just turned of ten.  Well;
when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo
cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of
honour, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the
High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg's father.  Grace being
said,--for those people have their grace as well as we--though
Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to
our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance
upwards to the great Giver of all feasts--Grace, I say, being said,
the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the
island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers
into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates.  Seeing himself
placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking
himself--being Captain of a ship--as having plain precedence over a
mere island King, especially in the King's own house--the Captain
coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl;--taking it I
suppose for a huge finger-glass.  "Now," said Queequeg, "what you
tink now?--Didn't our people laugh?"

At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the
schooner.  Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river.  On one
side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered
trees all glittering in the clear, cold air.  Huge hills and
mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by
side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at
last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with
blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening
that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long
voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a
third, and so on, for ever and for aye.  Such is the endlessness,
yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.

Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the
little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his
snortings.  How I snuffed that Tartar air!--how I spurned that
turnpike earth!--that common highway all over dented with the marks
of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity
of the sea which will permit no records.

At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me.
His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed
teeth.  On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to
the blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan.
Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a
wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land
tornadoes.  So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the
plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering
glances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that
two fellow beings should be so companionable; as though a white man
were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro.  But there
were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their intense
greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of all verdure.
Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind his
back.  I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was come.  Dropping his
harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost
miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the
air; then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow
landed with bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his
back upon him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a
puff.

"Capting!  Capting! yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer;
"Capting, Capting, here's the devil."

"Hallo, YOU sir," cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking
up to Queequeg, "what in thunder do you mean by that?  Don't you know
you might have killed that chap?"

"What him say?" said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me.

"He say," said I, "that you came near kill-e that man there,"
pointing to the still shivering greenhorn.

"Kill-e," cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an
unearthly expression of disdain, "ah! him bevy small-e fish-e;
Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!"

"Look you," roared the Captain, "I'll kill-e YOU, you cannibal, if
you try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye."

But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain
to mind his own eye.  The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had
parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from
side to side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck.
The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept
overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the
boom to stay it, seemed madness.  It flew from right to left, and
back again, almost in one ticking of a watch, and every instant
seemed on the point of snapping into splinters.  Nothing was done,
and nothing seemed capable of being done; those on deck rushed
towards the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower
jaw of an exasperated whale.  In the midst of this consternation,
Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling under the path of
the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks,
and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as
it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way
trapped, and all was safe.  The schooner was run into the wind, and
while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped
to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap.
For three minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog, throwing
his long arms straight out before him, and by turns revealing his
brawny shoulders through the freezing foam.  I looked at the grand
and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved.  The greenhorn had
gone down.  Shooting himself perpendicularly from the water,
Queequeg, now took an instant's glance around him, and seeming to see
just how matters were, dived down and disappeared.  A few minutes
more, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with the
other dragging a lifeless form.  The boat soon picked them up.  The
poor bumpkin was restored.  All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump;
the captain begged his pardon.  From that hour I clove to Queequeg
like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive.

Was there ever such unconsciousness?  He did not seem to think that
he at all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies.
He only asked for water--fresh water--something to wipe the brine
off; that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning
against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to
be saying to himself--"It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all
meridians.  We cannibals must help these Christians."



CHAPTER 14

Nantucket.


Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after
a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.

Nantucket!  Take out your map and look at it.  See what a real corner
of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more
lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse.  Look at it--a mere hillock,
and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background.  There is more
sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for
blotting paper.  Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to
plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally; that they import Canada
thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a
leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried
about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant
toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer
time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's
walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like
Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every
way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean,
that to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be
found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles.  But these
extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was
settled by the red-men.  Thus goes the legend.  In olden times an
eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an
infant Indian in his talons.  With loud lament the parents saw their
child borne out of sight over the wide waters.  They resolved to
follow in the same direction.  Setting out in their canoes, after a
perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an
empty ivory casket,--the poor little Indian's skeleton.

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should
take to the sea for a livelihood!  They first caught crabs and
quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for
mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured
cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea,
explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of
circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring's Straits; and in
all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the
mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous
and most mountainous!  That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed
with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics
are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing
from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery
world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the
Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did
Poland.  Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada;
let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing
banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the
Nantucketer's.  For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own
empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it.  Merchant
ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even
pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the
road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like
themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless
deep itself.  The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea;
he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro
ploughing it as his own special plantation.  THERE is his home; THERE
lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though
it overwhelmed all the millions in China.  He lives on the sea, as
prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs
them as chamois hunters climb the Alps.  For years he knows not the
land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another
world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman.  With the
landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep
between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of
land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very
pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.



CHAPTER 15

Chowder.


It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to
anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no
business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed.  The
landlord of the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea
Hussey of the Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one
of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured
us that Cousin Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders.
In short, he plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than
try pot-luck at the Try Pots.  But the directions he had given us
about keeping a yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened
a white church to the larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard
hand till we made a corner three points to the starboard, and that
done, then ask the first man we met where the place was: these
crooked directions of his very much puzzled us at first, especially
as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted that the yellow warehouse--our
first point of departure--must be left on the larboard hand, whereas
I had understood Peter Coffin to say it was on the starboard.
However, by dint of beating about a little in the dark, and now and
then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire the way, we at
last came to something which there was no mistaking.

Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses' ears,
swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an
old doorway.  The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the
other side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a
gallows.  Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the
time, but I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague
misgiving.  A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two
remaining horns; yes, TWO of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me.
It's ominous, thinks I.  A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my
first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's
chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too!
Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet?

I was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman
with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn,
under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an
injured eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple
woollen shirt.

"Get along with ye," said she to the man, "or I'll be combing ye!"

"Come on, Queequeg," said I, "all right.  There's Mrs. Hussey."

And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving
Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs.  Upon
making known our desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey,
postponing further scolding for the present, ushered us into a little
room, and seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently
concluded repast, turned round to us and said--"Clam or Cod?"

"What's that about Cods, ma'am?" said I, with much politeness.

"Clam or Cod?" she repeated.

"A clam for supper? a cold clam; is THAT what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?"
says I, "but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter
time, ain't it, Mrs. Hussey?"

But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple
Shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear
nothing but the word "clam," Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door
leading to the kitchen, and bawling out "clam for two," disappeared.

"Queequeg," said I, "do you think that we can make out a supper for
us both on one clam?"

However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the
apparently cheerless prospect before us.  But when that smoking
chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained.  Oh, sweet
friends! hearken to me.  It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely
bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted
pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and
plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.  Our appetites being
sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing
his favourite fishing food before him, and the chowder being
surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition: when
leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey's clam and cod
announcement, I thought I would try a little experiment.  Stepping to
the kitchen door, I uttered the word "cod" with great emphasis, and
resumed my seat.  In a few moments the savoury steam came forth
again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine
cod-chowder was placed before us.

We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks
I to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head?
What's that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people?  "But
look, Queequeg, ain't that a live eel in your bowl?  Where's your
harpoon?"

Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved
its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders.  Chowder
for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till
you began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes.  The
area before the house was paved with clam-shells.  Mrs. Hussey wore a
polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his
account books bound in superior old shark-skin.  There was a fishy
flavor to the milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till
one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some
fishermen's boats, I saw Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish
remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod's
decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.

Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey
concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to
precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and
demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers.  "Why
not? said I; "every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon--but why
not?"  "Because it's dangerous," says she.  "Ever since young Stiggs
coming from that unfort'nt v'y'ge of his, when he was gone four years
and a half, with only three barrels of ILE, was found dead in my
first floor back, with his harpoon in his side; ever since then I
allow no boarders to take sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at
night.  So, Mr. Queequeg" (for she had learned his name), "I will
just take this here iron, and keep it for you till morning.  But the
chowder; clam or cod to-morrow for breakfast, men?"

"Both," says I; "and let's have a couple of smoked herring by way of
variety."



CHAPTER 16

The Ship.


In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow.  But to my surprise and
no small concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, that he had
been diligently consulting Yojo--the name of his black little
god--and Yojo had told him two or three times over, and strongly
insisted upon it everyway, that instead of our going together among
the whaling-fleet in harbor, and in concert selecting our craft;
instead of this, I say, Yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of
the ship should rest wholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposed
befriending us; and, in order to do so, had already pitched upon a
vessel, which, if left to myself, I, Ishmael, should infallibly light
upon, for all the world as though it had turned out by chance; and in
that vessel I must immediately ship myself, for the present
irrespective of Queequeg.

I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed
great confidence in the excellence of Yojo's judgment and surprising
forecast of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a
rather good sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the
whole, but in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.

Now, this plan of Queequeg's, or rather Yojo's, touching the
selection of our craft; I did not like that plan at all.  I had not a
little relied upon Queequeg's sagacity to point out the whaler best
fitted to carry us and our fortunes securely.  But as all my
remonstrances produced no effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged to
acquiesce; and accordingly prepared to set about this business with a
determined rushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quickly
settle that trifling little affair.  Next morning early, leaving
Queequeg shut up with Yojo in our little bedroom--for it seemed that
it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation,
and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that day; HOW it was I never could
find out, for, though I applied myself to it several times, I never
could master his liturgies and XXXIX Articles--leaving Queequeg,
then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself at his
sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among the shipping.
After much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt
that there were three ships up for three-years' voyages--The
Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and the Pequod.  DEVIL-DAM, I do not know
the origin of; TIT-BIT is obvious; PEQUOD, you will no doubt
remember, was the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts
Indians; now extinct as the ancient Medes.  I peered and pryed about
the Devil-dam; from her, hopped over to the Tit-bit; and finally,
going on board the Pequod, looked around her for a moment, and then
decided that this was the very ship for us.

You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I
know;--square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-box
galliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a
rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod.  She was a ship of the
old school, rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned
claw-footed look about her.  Long seasoned and weather-stained in the
typhoons and calms of all four oceans, her old hull's complexion was
darkened like a French grenadier's, who has alike fought in Egypt and
Siberia.  Her venerable bows looked bearded.  Her masts--cut
somewhere on the coast of Japan, where her original ones were lost
overboard in a gale--her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of
the three old kings of Cologne.  Her ancient decks were worn and
wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury
Cathedral where Becket bled.  But to all these her old antiquities,
were added new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild
business that for more than half a century she had followed.  Old
Captain Peleg, many years her chief-mate, before he commanded another
vessel of his own, and now a retired seaman, and one of the principal
owners of the Pequod,--this old Peleg, during the term of his
chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and inlaid
it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and device,
unmatched by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake's carved buckler or
bedstead.  She was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor,
his neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory.  She was a thing of
trophies.  A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the
chased bones of her enemies.  All round, her unpanelled, open
bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp
teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old
hempen thews and tendons to.  Those thews ran not through base blocks
of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory.
Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a
tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the
long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe.  The helmsman who
steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he
holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw.  A noble craft, but
somehow a most melancholy!  All noble things are touched with that.

Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having
authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage,
at first I saw nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort
of tent, or rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast.  It
seemed only a temporary erection used in port.  It was of a conical
shape, some ten feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of
limber black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws
of the right-whale.  Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a
circle of these slabs laced together, mutually sloped towards each
other, and at the apex united in a tufted point, where the loose
hairy fibres waved to and fro like the top-knot on some old
Pottowottamie Sachem's head.  A triangular opening faced towards the
bows of the ship, so that the insider commanded a complete view
forward.

And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who
by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and
the ship's work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden
of command.  He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling
all over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of
a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was
constructed.

There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance
of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old
seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker
style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the
minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen
from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to
windward;--for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become
pursed together.  Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.

"Is this the Captain of the Pequod?" said I, advancing to the door of
the tent.

"Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of
him?" he demanded.

"I was thinking of shipping."

"Thou wast, wast thou?  I see thou art no Nantucketer--ever been in
a stove boat?"

"No, Sir, I never have."

"Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say--eh?

"Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn.  I've been
several voyages in the merchant service, and I think that--"

"Merchant service be damned.  Talk not that lingo to me.  Dost see
that leg?--I'll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou
talkest of the marchant service to me again.  Marchant service
indeed!  I suppose now ye feel considerable proud of having served in
those marchant ships.  But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a
whaling, eh?--it looks a little suspicious, don't it, eh?--Hast not
been a pirate, hast thou?--Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst
thou?--Dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest to
sea?"

I protested my innocence of these things.  I saw that under the mask
of these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated
Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather
distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the
Vineyard.

"But what takes thee a-whaling?  I want to know that before I think
of shipping ye."

"Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is.  I want to see the world."

"Want to see what whaling is, eh?  Have ye clapped eye on Captain
Ahab?"

"Who is Captain Ahab, sir?"

"Aye, aye, I thought so.  Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship."

"I am mistaken then.  I thought I was speaking to the Captain
himself."

"Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg--that's who ye are speaking to,
young man.  It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod
fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including
crew.  We are part owners and agents.  But as I was going to say, if
thou wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can
put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past
backing out.  Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find
that he has only one leg."

"What do you mean, sir?  Was the other one lost by a whale?"

"Lost by a whale!  Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured,
chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped
a boat!--ah, ah!"

I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched
at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly
as I could, "What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could
I know there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale,
though indeed I might have inferred as much from the simple fact of
the accident."

"Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see; thou
dost not talk shark a bit.  SURE, ye've been to sea before now; sure
of that?"

"Sir," said I, "I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in
the merchant--"

"Hard down out of that!  Mind what I said about the marchant
service--don't aggravate me--I won't have it.  But let us understand
each other.  I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye
yet feel inclined for it?"

"I do, sir."

"Very good.  Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live
whale's throat, and then jump after it?  Answer, quick!"

"I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to
be got rid of, that is; which I don't take to be the fact."

"Good again.  Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to
find out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in
order to see the world?  Was not that what ye said?  I thought so.
Well then, just step forward there, and take a peep over the
weather-bow, and then back to me and tell me what ye see there."

For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not
knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest.
But concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg
started me on the errand.

Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived that the
ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely
pointing towards the open ocean.  The prospect was unlimited, but
exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that
I could see.

"Well, what's the report?" said Peleg when I came back; "what did ye
see?"

"Not much," I replied--"nothing but water; considerable horizon
though, and there's a squall coming up, I think."

"Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world?  Do ye wish to
go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh?  Can't ye see the world
where you stand?"

I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would; and
the Pequod was as good a ship as any--I thought the best--and all
this I now repeated to Peleg.  Seeing me so determined, he expressed
his willingness to ship me.

"And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off," he added--"come
along with ye."  And so saying, he led the way below deck into the
cabin.

Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and
surprising figure.  It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who along
with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the
other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by
a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery
wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of
plank, or a nail or two in the ship.  People in Nantucket invest
their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in
approved state stocks bringing in good interest.

Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a
Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and
to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure
the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously
modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous.  For some of
these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and
whale-hunters.  They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a
vengeance.

So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with
Scripture names--a singularly common fashion on the island--and in
childhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of
the Quaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless
adventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these
unoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not
unworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman.  And
when these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force,
with a globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the
stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest
waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been
led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all
nature's sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin
voluntary and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some
help from accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty
language--that man makes one in a whole nation's census--a mighty
pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies.  Nor will it at all
detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other
circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness
at the bottom of his nature.  For all men tragically great are made
so through a certain morbidness.  Be sure of this, O young ambition,
all mortal greatness is but disease.  But, as yet we have not to do
with such an one, but with quite another; and still a man, who, if
indeed peculiar, it only results again from another phase of the
Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.

Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired
whaleman.  But unlike Captain Peleg--who cared not a rush for what
are called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious
things the veriest of all trifles--Captain Bildad had not only been
originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket
Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many
unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn--all that had not
moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as
altered one angle of his vest.  Still, for all this immutableness,
was there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain
Peleg.  Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms
against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the
Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet
had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of
leviathan gore.  How now in the contemplative evening of his days,
the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do
not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably
he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a
man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.
This world pays dividends.  Rising from a little cabin-boy in short
clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied
waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain,
and finally a ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded
his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the
goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet
receiving of his well-earned income.

Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an
incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard
task-master.  They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a
curious story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his
crew, upon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the
hospital, sore exhausted and worn out.  For a pious man, especially
for a Quaker, he was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the
least.  He never used to swear, though, at his men, they said; but
somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work
out of them.  When Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured
eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till
you could clutch something--a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to
work like mad, at something or other, never mind what.  Indolence and
idleness perished before him.  His own person was the exact
embodiment of his utilitarian character.  On his long, gaunt body, he
carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft,
economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat.

Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I
followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin.  The space between the
decks was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always
sat so, and never leaned, and this to save his coat tails.  His
broad-brim was placed beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his
drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he
seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume.

"Bildad," cried Captain Peleg, "at it again, Bildad, eh?  Ye have
been studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my
certain knowledge.  How far ye got, Bildad?"

As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate,
Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up,
and seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg.

"He says he's our man, Bildad," said Peleg, "he wants to ship."

"Dost thee?" said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me.

"I dost," said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.

"What do ye think of him, Bildad?" said Peleg.

"He'll do," said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at
his book in a mumbling tone quite audible.

I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as
Peleg, his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer.  But I
said nothing, only looking round me sharply.  Peleg now threw open a
chest, and drawing forth the ship's articles, placed pen and ink
before him, and seated himself at a little table.  I began to think
it was high time to settle with myself at what terms I would be
willing to engage for the voyage.  I was already aware that in the
whaling business they paid no wages; but all hands, including the
captain, received certain shares of the profits called lays, and that
these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining
to the respective duties of the ship's company.  I was also aware
that being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be very
large; but considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a
ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from all I
had heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay--that is, the
275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever that
might eventually amount to.  And though the 275th lay was what they
call a rather LONG LAY, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had
a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear
out on it, not to speak of my three years' beef and board, for which
I would not have to pay one stiver.

It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely
fortune--and so it was, a very poor way indeed.  But I am one of
those that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite
content if the world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am
putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud.  Upon the whole, I
thought that the 275th lay would be about the fair thing, but would not
have been surprised had I been offered the 200th, considering I was
of a broad-shouldered make.

But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about
receiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had
heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony
Bildad; how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod,
therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners,
left nearly the whole management of the ship's affairs to these two.
And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty
deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on
board the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his
Bible as if at his own fireside.  Now while Peleg was vainly trying
to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small
surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these
proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself
out of his book, "LAY not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth--"

"Well, Captain Bildad," interrupted Peleg, "what d'ye say, what lay
shall we give this young man?"

"Thou knowest best," was the sepulchral reply, "the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much, would it?--'where moth and rust
do corrupt, but LAY--'"

LAY, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh!  Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for
one, shall not LAY up many LAYS here below, where moth and rust do
corrupt.  It was an exceedingly LONG LAY that, indeed; and though
from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a
landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven
hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you
come to make a TEENTH of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven
hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less
than seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought
at the time.

"Why, blast your eyes, Bildad," cried Peleg, "thou dost not want to
swindle this young man! he must have more than that."

"Seven hundred and seventy-seventh," again said Bildad, without
lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling--"for where your treasure
is, there will your heart be also."

"I am going to put him down for the three hundredth," said Peleg, "do
ye hear that, Bildad!  The three hundredth lay, I say."

Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said,
"Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider
the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship--widows and
orphans, many of them--and that if we too abundantly reward the
labors of this young man, we may be taking the bread from those
widows and those orphans.  The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay,
Captain Peleg."

"Thou Bildad!" roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the
cabin.  "Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in
these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that
would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed
round Cape Horn."

"Captain Peleg," said Bildad steadily, "thy conscience may be drawing
ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can't tell; but as thou art
still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy
conscience be but a leaky one; and will in the end sink thee
foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg."

"Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing,
ye insult me.  It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature
that he's bound to hell.  Flukes and flames!  Bildad, say that again
to me, and start my soul-bolts, but I'll--I'll--yes, I'll swallow a
live goat with all his hair and horns on.  Out of the cabin, ye
canting, drab-coloured son of a wooden gun--a straight wake with ye!"

As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a
marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded
him.

Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and
responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up
all idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily
commanded, I stepped aside from the door to give egress to Bildad,
who, I made no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish from before the
awakened wrath of Peleg.  But to my astonishment, he sat down again
on the transom very quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest
intention of withdrawing.  He seemed quite used to impenitent Peleg
and his ways.  As for Peleg, after letting off his rage as he had,
there seemed no more left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb,
though he twitched a little as if still nervously agitated.  "Whew!"
he whistled at last--"the squall's gone off to leeward, I think.
Bildad, thou used to be good at sharpening a lance, mend that pen,
will ye.  My jack-knife here needs the grindstone.  That's he; thank
ye, Bildad.  Now then, my young man, Ishmael's thy name, didn't ye
say?  Well then, down ye go here, Ishmael, for the three hundredth
lay."

"Captain Peleg," said I, "I have a friend with me who wants to ship
too--shall I bring him down to-morrow?"

"To be sure," said Peleg.  "Fetch him along, and we'll look at him."

"What lay does he want?" groaned Bildad, glancing up from the book
in which he had again been burying himself.

"Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad," said Peleg.  "Has he ever
whaled it any?" turning to me.

"Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg."

"Well, bring him along then."

And, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that
I had done a good morning's work, and that the Pequod was the
identical ship that Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me round
the Cape.

But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the
Captain with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though,
indeed, in many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out,
and receive all her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself
visible by arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are
so prolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief,
that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of
that sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port,
but leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea.  However, it
is always as well to have a look at him before irrevocably committing
yourself into his hands.  Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg,
inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found.

"And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab?  It's all right enough;
thou art shipped."

"Yes, but I should like to see him."

"But I don't think thou wilt be able to at present.  I don't know
exactly what's the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the
house; a sort of sick, and yet he don't look so.  In fact, he ain't
sick; but no, he isn't well either.  Any how, young man, he won't
always see me, so I don't suppose he will thee.  He's a queer man,
Captain Ahab--so some think--but a good one.  Oh, thou'lt like him
well enough; no fear, no fear.  He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man,
Captain Ahab; doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you
may well listen.  Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab's above the common;
Ahab's been in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals; been used to
deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier,
stranger foes than whales.  His lance! aye, the keenest and the surest
that out of all our isle!  Oh! he ain't Captain Bildad; no, and he
ain't Captain Peleg; HE'S AHAB, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest,
was a crowned king!"

"And a very vile one.  When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did
they not lick his blood?"

"Come hither to me--hither, hither," said Peleg, with a significance
in his eye that almost startled me.  "Look ye, lad; never say that on
board the Pequod.  Never say it anywhere.  Captain Ahab did not name
himself.  'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed
mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old.  And yet the old
squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove
prophetic.  And, perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the
same.  I wish to warn thee.  It's a lie.  I know Captain Ahab well;
I've sailed with him as mate years ago; I know what he is--a good
man--not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good
man--something like me--only there's a good deal more of him.  Aye,
aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the
passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was
the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that
about, as any one might see.  I know, too, that ever since he lost
his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's been a kind of
moody--desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass
off.  And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man,
it's better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad
one.  So good-bye to thee--and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he
happens to have a wicked name.  Besides, my boy, he has a wife--not
three voyages wedded--a sweet, resigned girl.  Think of that; by that
sweet girl that old man has a child: hold ye then there can be any
utter, hopeless harm in Ahab?  No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if
he be, Ahab has his humanities!"

As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been
incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain
wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him.  And somehow, at the
time, I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don't know
what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg.  And yet I also felt a
strange awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all
describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was.  But I felt
it; and it did not disincline me towards him; though I felt
impatience at what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he
was known to me then.  However, my thoughts were at length carried in
other directions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind.



CHAPTER 17

The Ramadan.


As Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue
all day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for
I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious
obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my
heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a
toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth,
who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets,
bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on
account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his
name.

I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these
things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals,
pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these
subjects.  There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most
absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;--but what of that?
Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to
be content; and there let him rest.  All our arguing with him would
not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us
all--Presbyterians and Pagans alike--for we are all somehow
dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and
rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door;
but no answer.  I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside.
"Queequeg," said I softly through the key-hole:--all silent.  "I say,
Queequeg! why don't you speak?  It's I--Ishmael."  But all remained
still as before.  I began to grow alarmed.  I had allowed him such
abundant time; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit.  I
looked through the key-hole; but the door opening into an odd corner
of the room, the key-hole prospect was but a crooked and sinister
one.  I could only see part of the foot-board of the bed and a line
of the wall, but nothing more.  I was surprised to behold resting
against the wall the wooden shaft of Queequeg's harpoon, which the
landlady the evening previous had taken from him, before our mounting
to the chamber.  That's strange, thought I; but at any rate, since
the harpoon stands yonder, and he seldom or never goes abroad without
it, therefore he must be inside here, and no possible mistake.

"Queequeg!--Queequeg!"--all still.  Something must have happened.
Apoplexy!  I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly
resisted.  Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the
first person I met--the chamber-maid.  "La! la!" she cried, "I
thought something must be the matter.  I went to make the bed after
breakfast, and the door was locked; and not a mouse to be heard; and
it's been just so silent ever since.  But I thought, may be, you had
both gone off and locked your baggage in for safe keeping.  La! la,
ma'am!--Mistress! murder!  Mrs. Hussey! apoplexy!"--and with these
cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I following.

Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a
vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the
occupation of attending to the castors, and scolding her little black
boy meantime.

"Wood-house!" cried I, "which way to it?  Run for God's sake, and
fetch something to pry open the door--the axe!--the axe! he's had a
stroke; depend upon it!"--and so saying I was unmethodically rushing
up stairs again empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the
mustard-pot and vinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her
countenance.

"What's the matter with you, young man?"

"Get the axe!  For God's sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I
pry it open!"

"Look here," said the landlady, quickly putting down the
vinegar-cruet, so as to have one hand free; "look here; are you
talking about prying open any of my doors?"--and with that she seized
my arm.  "What's the matter with you?  What's the matter with you,
shipmate?"

In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand
the whole case.  Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to one side
of her nose, she ruminated for an instant; then exclaimed--"No!  I
haven't seen it since I put it there."  Running to a little closet
under the landing of the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told
me that Queequeg's harpoon was missing.  "He's killed himself," she
cried.  "It's unfort'nate Stiggs done over again there goes another
counterpane--God pity his poor mother!--it will be the ruin of my
house.  Has the poor lad a sister?  Where's that girl?--there, Betty,
go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with--"no
suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;"--might as
well kill both birds at once.  Kill?  The Lord be merciful to his
ghost!  What's that noise there?  You, young man, avast there!"

And running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force
open the door.

"I don't allow it; I won't have my premises spoiled.  Go for the
locksmith, there's one about a mile from here.  But avast!" putting
her hand in her side-pocket, "here's a key that'll fit, I guess;
let's see."  And with that, she turned it in the lock; but, alas!
Queequeg's supplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within.

"Have to burst it open," said I, and was running down the entry a
little, for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again
vowing I should not break down her premises; but I tore from her, and
with a sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark.

With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming
against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good
heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected;
right in the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding
Yojo on top of his head.  He looked neither one way nor the other
way, but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of active life.

"Queequeg," said I, going up to him, "Queequeg, what's the matter
with you?"

"He hain't been a sittin' so all day, has he?" said the landlady.

But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him; I almost felt
like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was
almost intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally
constrained; especially, as in all probability he had been sitting so
for upwards of eight or ten hours, going too without his regular
meals.

"Mrs. Hussey," said I, "he's ALIVE at all events; so leave us, if you
please, and I will see to this strange affair myself."

Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon
Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain.  There he sat; and all he
could do--for all my polite arts and blandishments--he would not move
a peg, nor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my
presence in the slightest way.

I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan;
do they fast on their hams that way in his native island.  It must be
so; yes, it's part of his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him
rest; he'll get up sooner or later, no doubt.  It can't last for
ever, thank God, and his Ramadan only comes once a year; and I don't
believe it's very punctual then.

I went down to supper.  After sitting a long time listening to the
long stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding
voyage, as they called it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a
schooner or brig, confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic
Ocean only); after listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly
eleven o'clock, I went up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by
this time Queequeg must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a
termination.  But no; there he was just where I had left him; he had
not stirred an inch.  I began to grow vexed with him; it seemed so
downright senseless and insane to be sitting there all day and half
the night on his hams in a cold room, holding a piece of wood on his
head.

"For heaven's sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up and
have some supper.  You'll starve; you'll kill yourself, Queequeg."
But not a word did he reply.

Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed and to sleep;
and no doubt, before a great while, he would follow me.  But previous
to turning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over
him, as it promised to be a very cold night; and he had nothing but
his ordinary round jacket on.  For some time, do all I would, I could
not get into the faintest doze.  I had blown out the candle; and the
mere thought of Queequeg--not four feet off--sitting there in that
uneasy position, stark alone in the cold and dark; this made me
really wretched.  Think of it; sleeping all night in the same room
with a wide awake pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable
Ramadan!

But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break
of day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as
if he had been screwed down to the floor.  But as soon as the first
glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating
joints, but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay;
pressed his forehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan was
over.

Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's
religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or
insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it
also.  But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a
positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an
uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that
individual aside and argue the point with him.

And just so I now did with Queequeg.  "Queequeg," said I, "get into
bed now, and lie and listen to me."  I then went on, beginning with
the rise and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to
the various religions of the present time, during which time I
labored to show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and
prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark
nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in
short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense.  I told him,
too, that he being in other things such an extremely sensible and
sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now
so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his.  Besides,
argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in;
and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved.
This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such
melancholy notions about their hereafters.  In one word, Queequeg,
said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an
undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the
hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.

I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with
dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it
in.  He said no; only upon one memorable occasion.  It was after a
great feast given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great
battle wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two
o'clock in the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening.

"No more, Queequeg," said I, shuddering; "that will do;" for I knew
the inferences without his further hinting them.  I had seen a sailor
who had visited that very island, and he told me that it was the
custom, when a great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all
the slain in the yard or garden of the victor; and then, one by one,
they were placed in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round like
a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts; and with some parsley in
their mouths, were sent round with the victor's compliments to all
his friends, just as though these presents were so many Christmas
turkeys.

After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much
impression upon Queequeg.  Because, in the first place, he somehow
seemed dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered
from his own point of view; and, in the second place, he did not more
than one third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would; and,
finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true
religion than I did.  He looked at me with a sort of condescending
concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that
such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical
pagan piety.

At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously
hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady
should not make much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out
to board the Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with
halibut bones.



CHAPTER 18

His Mark.


As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship,
Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice
loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my
friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no
cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their
papers.

"What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?" said I, now jumping on the
bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.

"I mean," he replied, "he must show his papers."

"Yes," said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head
from behind Peleg's, out of the wigwam.  "He must show that he's
converted.  Son of darkness," he added, turning to Queequeg, "art
thou at present in communion with any Christian church?"

"Why," said I, "he's a member of the first Congregational Church."
Here be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket
ships at last come to be converted into the churches.

"First Congregational Church," cried Bildad, "what! that worships in
Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman's meeting-house?" and so saying, taking
out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana
handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the
wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look
at Queequeg.

"How long hath he been a member?" he then said, turning to me; "not
very long, I rather guess, young man."

"No," said Peleg, "and he hasn't been baptized right either, or it
would have washed some of that devil's blue off his face."

"Do tell, now," cried Bildad, "is this Philistine a regular member of
Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting?  I never saw him going there, and I
pass it every Lord's day."

"I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting," said
I; "all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First
Congregational Church.  He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is."

"Young man," said Bildad sternly, "thou art skylarking with
me--explain thyself, thou young Hittite.  What church dost thee mean?
answer me."

Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied.  "I mean, sir, the same
ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there,
and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of
us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole
worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish
some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in THAT we
all join hands."

"Splice, thou mean'st SPLICE hands," cried Peleg, drawing nearer.
"Young man, you'd better ship for a missionary, instead of a
fore-mast hand; I never heard a better sermon.  Deacon
Deuteronomy--why Father Mapple himself couldn't beat it, and he's
reckoned something.  Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about the
papers.  I say, tell Quohog there--what's that you call him? tell
Quohog to step along.  By the great anchor, what a harpoon he's got
there! looks like good stuff that; and he handles it about right.  I
say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you ever stand in the head
of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?"

Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon
the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats
hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his
harpoon, cried out in some such way as this:--

"Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere?  You see him?
well, spose him one whale eye, well, den!" and taking sharp aim at
it, he darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean
across the ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of
sight.

"Now," said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, "spos-ee him
whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead."

"Quick, Bildad," said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close
vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin
gangway.  "Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship's papers.  We
must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats.  Look
ye, Quohog, we'll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that's more than
ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket."

So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon
enrolled among the same ship's company to which I myself belonged.

When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready
for signing, he turned to me and said, "I guess, Quohog there don't
know how to write, does he?  I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign
thy name or make thy mark?

But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken
part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the
offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact
counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm;
so that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his
appellative, it stood something like this:--

Quohog.
his X mark.

Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing
Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge
pockets of his broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts,
and selecting one entitled "The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to
Lose," placed it in Queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the
book with both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, "Son of
darkness, I must do my duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship,
and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew; if thou still
clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech thee,
remain not for aye a Belial bondsman.  Spurn the idol Bell, and the
hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say;
oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!"

Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's language,
heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.

"Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our
harpooneer," Peleg.  "Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers--it
takes the shark out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint
pretty sharkish.  There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest
boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the
meeting, and never came to good.  He got so frightened about his
plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear
of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones."

"Peleg!  Peleg!" said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, "thou
thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest,
Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death; how, then, can'st thou
prate in this ungodly guise.  Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg.
Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in
that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with
Captain Ahab, did'st thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?"

"Hear him, hear him now," cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and
thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,--"hear him, all of ye.
Think of that!  When every moment we thought the ship would sink!
Death and the Judgment then?  What?  With all three masts making such
an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking
over us, fore and aft.  Think of Death and the Judgment then?  No!
no time to think about Death then.  Life was what Captain Ahab and I
was thinking of; and how to save all hands--how to rig
jury-masts--how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was
thinking of."

Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck,
where we followed him.  There he stood, very quietly overlooking some
sailmakers who were mending a top-sail in the waist.  Now and then he
stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which
otherwise might have been wasted.



CHAPTER 19

The Prophet.


"Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?"

Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from
the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when
the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us,
levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question.  He was
but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag
of a black handkerchief investing his neck.  A confluent small-pox
had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the
complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have
been dried up.

"Have ye shipped in her?" he repeated.

"You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose," said I, trying to gain a
little more time for an uninterrupted look at him.

"Aye, the Pequod--that ship there," he said, drawing back his whole
arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the
fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.

"Yes," said I, "we have just signed the articles."

"Anything down there about your souls?"

"About what?"

"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly.  "No matter
though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any,--good luck to 'em;
and they are all the better off for it.  A soul's a sort of a fifth
wheel to a wagon."

"What are you jabbering about, shipmate?" said I.

"HE'S got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that
sort in other chaps," abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous
emphasis upon the word HE.

"Queequeg," said I, "let's go; this fellow has broken loose from
somewhere; he's talking about something and somebody we don't know."

"Stop!" cried the stranger.  "Ye said true--ye hav'n't seen Old
Thunder yet, have ye?"

"Who's Old Thunder?" said I, again riveted with the insane
earnestness of his manner.

"Captain Ahab."

"What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?"

"Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name.  Ye
hav'n't seen him yet, have ye?"

"No, we hav'n't.  He's sick they say, but is getting better, and will
be all right again before long."

"All right again before long!" laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
derisive sort of laugh.  "Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right,
then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before."

"What do you know about him?"

"What did they TELL you about him?  Say that!"

"They didn't tell much of anything about him; only I've heard that
he's a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew."

"That's true, that's true--yes, both true enough.  But you must jump
when he gives an order.  Step and growl; growl and go--that's the
word with Captain Ahab.  But nothing about that thing that happened
to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days
and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard
afore the altar in Santa?--heard nothing about that, eh?  Nothing
about the silver calabash he spat into?  And nothing about his losing
his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy.  Didn't ye hear a
word about them matters and something more, eh?  No, I don't think ye
did; how could ye?  Who knows it?  Not all Nantucket, I guess.  But
hows'ever, mayhap, ye've heard tell about the leg, and how he lost
it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say.  Oh yes, THAT every one
knows a'most--I mean they know he's only one leg; and that a
parmacetti took the other off."

"My friend," said I, "what all this gibberish of yours is about, I
don't know, and I don't much care; for it seems to me that you must
be a little damaged in the head.  But if you are speaking of Captain
Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I
know all about the loss of his leg."

"ALL about it, eh--sure you do?--all?"

"Pretty sure."

With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like
stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a
little, turned and said:--"Ye've shipped, have ye?  Names down on the
papers?  Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will
be; and then again, perhaps it won't be, after all.  Anyhow, it's
all fixed and arranged a'ready; and some sailors or other must go
with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em!
Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye;
I'm sorry I stopped ye."

"Look here, friend," said I, "if you have anything important to tell
us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are
mistaken in your game; that's all I have to say."

"And it's said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way;
you are just the man for him--the likes of ye.  Morning to ye,
shipmates, morning!  Oh! when ye get there, tell 'em I've concluded
not to make one of 'em."

"Ah, my dear fellow, you can't fool us that way--you can't fool us.
It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a
great secret in him."

"Morning to ye, shipmates, morning."

"Morning it is," said I.  "Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this
crazy man.  But stop, tell me your name, will you?"

"Elijah."

Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each
other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was
nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear.  But we had not gone
perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and
looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us,
though at a distance.  Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I
said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my
comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same
corner that we did.  He did; and then it seemed to me that he was
dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me
imagine.  This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous,
half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me
all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all
connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost;
and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain
Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous; and the
prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves
to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things.

I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was
really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with
Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps.  But Elijah
passed on, without seeming to notice us.  This relieved me; and once
more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a
humbug.



CHAPTER 20

All Astir.


A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod.
Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming
on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short,
everything betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a
close.  Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his
wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the
purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the
hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall.

On the day following Queequeg's signing the articles, word was given
at all the inns where the ship's company were stopping, that their
chests must be on board before night, for there was no telling how
soon the vessel might be sailing.  So Queequeg and I got down our
traps, resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last.  But it
seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship
did not sail for several days.  But no wonder; there was a good deal
to be done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of,
before the Pequod was fully equipped.

Every one knows what a multitude of things--beds, sauce-pans, knives
and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not,
are indispensable to the business of housekeeping.  Just so with
whaling, which necessitates a three-years' housekeeping upon the wide
ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and
bankers.  And though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet
not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen.  For besides
the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous articles
peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of
replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be
remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed
to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss
of the very things upon which the success of the voyage most depends.
Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons,
and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain and duplicate
ship.

At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of
the Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread,
water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves.  But, as before hinted, for
some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of
divers odds and ends of things, both large and small.

Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain
Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and
indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed
resolved that, if SHE could help it, nothing should be found wanting
in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea.  At one time she
would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward's pantry;
another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate's desk, where
he kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of
some one's rheumatic back.  Never did any woman better deserve her
name, which was Charity--Aunt Charity, as everybody called her.  And
like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle
about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to
anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to
all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was
concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of
well-saved dollars.

But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming
on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand,
and a still longer whaling lance in the other.  Nor was Bildad himself
nor Captain Peleg at all backward.  As for Bildad, he carried about
with him a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh
arrival, down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper.
Every once in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den,
roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at
the mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam.

During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the
craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and
when he was going to come on board his ship.  To these questions they
would answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected
aboard every day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could
attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage.  If
I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very
plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this
way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who
was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out
upon the open sea.  But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes
happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly
strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself.  And much this
way it was with me.  I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.

At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would
certainly sail.  So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early
start.



CHAPTER 21

Going Aboard.


It was nearly six o'clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when
we drew nigh the wharf.

"There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right," said I
to Queequeg, "it can't be shadows; she's off by sunrise, I guess;
come on!"

"Avast!" cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close
behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating
himself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain
twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me.  It was Elijah.

"Going aboard?"

"Hands off, will you," said I.

"Lookee here," said Queequeg, shaking himself, "go 'way!"

"Ain't going aboard, then?"

"Yes, we are," said I, "but what business is that of yours?  Do you
know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?"

"No, no, no; I wasn't aware of that," said Elijah, slowly and
wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable
glances.

"Elijah," said I, "you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing.
We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not
to be detained."

"Ye be, be ye?  Coming back afore breakfast?"

"He's cracked, Queequeg," said I, "come on."

"Holloa!" cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a
few paces.

"Never mind him," said I, "Queequeg, come on."

But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my
shoulder, said--"Did ye see anything looking like men going towards
that ship a while ago?"

Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying,
"Yes, I thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be
sure."

"Very dim, very dim," said Elijah.  "Morning to ye."

Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us; and
touching my shoulder again, said, "See if you can find 'em now, will
ye?

"Find who?"

"Morning to ye! morning to ye!" he rejoined, again moving off.  "Oh!
I was going to warn ye against--but never mind, never mind--it's all
one, all in the family too;--sharp frost this morning, ain't it?
Good-bye to ye.  Shan't see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it's
before the Grand Jury."  And with these cracked words he finally
departed, leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his
frantic impudence.

At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in
profound quiet, not a soul moving.  The cabin entrance was locked
within; the hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging.
Going forward to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle
open.  Seeing a light, we went down, and found only an old rigger
there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket.  He was thrown at whole
length upon two chests, his face downwards and inclosed in his folded
arms.  The profoundest slumber slept upon him.

"Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?" said
I, looking dubiously at the sleeper.  But it seemed that, when on the
wharf, Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I
would have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that
matter, were it not for Elijah's otherwise inexplicable question.
But I beat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly
hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body;
telling him to establish himself accordingly.  He put his hand upon
the sleeper's rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough; and
then, without more ado, sat quietly down there.

"Gracious!  Queequeg, don't sit there," said I.

"Oh! perry dood seat," said Queequeg, "my country way; won't hurt
him face."

"Face!" said I, "call that his face? very benevolent countenance
then; but how hard he breathes, he's heaving himself; get off,
Queequeg, you are heavy, it's grinding the face of the poor.  Get
off, Queequeg!  Look, he'll twitch you off soon.  I wonder he don't
wake."

Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and
lighted his tomahawk pipe.  I sat at the feet.  We kept the pipe
passing over the sleeper, from one to the other.  Meanwhile, upon
questioning him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand
that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all
sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the
custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to
furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up
eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and
alcoves.  Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion; much
better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into
walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and
desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree,
perhaps in some damp marshy place.

While narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the
tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the
sleeper's head.

"What's that for, Queequeg?"

"Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!

He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe,
which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and
soothed his soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping
rigger.  The strong vapour now completely filling the contracted hole,
it began to tell upon him.  He breathed with a sort of muffledness;
then seemed troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice;
then sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"Holloa!" he breathed at last, "who be ye smokers?"

"Shipped men," answered I, "when does she sail?"

"Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye?  She sails to-day.  The
Captain came aboard last night."

"What Captain?--Ahab?"

"Who but him indeed?"

I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when
we heard a noise on deck.

"Holloa!  Starbuck's astir," said the rigger.  "He's a lively chief
mate, that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn
to."  And so saying he went on deck, and we followed.

It was now clear sunrise.  Soon the crew came on board in twos and
threes; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively
engaged; and several of the shore people were busy in bringing
various last things on board.  Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained
invisibly enshrined within his cabin.



CHAPTER 22

Merry Christmas.


At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship's
riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and
after the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with
her last gift--a night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her
brother-in-law, and a spare Bible for the steward--after all this,
the two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and
turning to the chief mate, Peleg said:

"Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right?  Captain Ahab
is all ready--just spoke to him--nothing more to be got from shore,
eh?  Well, call all hands, then.  Muster 'em aft here--blast 'em!"

"No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg," said
Bildad, "but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding."

How now!  Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage,
Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on
the quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea,
as well as to all appearances in port.  And, as for Captain Ahab, no
sign of him was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin.
But then, the idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary
in getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea.
Indeed, as that was not at all his proper business, but the pilot's;
and as he was not yet completely recovered--so they said--therefore,
Captain Ahab stayed below.  And all this seemed natural enough;
especially as in the merchant service many captains never show
themselves on deck for a considerable time after heaving up the
anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell
merry-making with their shore friends, before they quit the ship for
good with the pilot.

But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain
Peleg was now all alive.  He seemed to do most of the talking and
commanding, and not Bildad.

"Aft here, ye sons of bachelors," he cried, as the sailors lingered
at the main-mast.  "Mr. Starbuck, drive'em aft."

"Strike the tent there!"--was the next order.  As I hinted before,
this whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board
the Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well
known to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor.

"Man the capstan!  Blood and thunder!--jump!"--was the next command,
and the crew sprang for the handspikes.

Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the
pilot is the forward part of the ship.  And here Bildad, who, with
Peleg, be it known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the
licensed pilots of the port--he being suspected to have got himself
made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the
ships he was concerned in, for he never piloted any other
craft--Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively engaged in looking
over the bows for the approaching anchor, and at intervals singing
what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer the hands at the
windlass, who roared forth some sort of a chorus about the girls in
Booble Alley, with hearty good will.  Nevertheless, not three days
previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed
on board the Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and
Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each
seaman's berth.

Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped
and swore astern in the most frightful manner.  I almost thought he
would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily
I paused on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking
of the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a
devil for a pilot.  I was comforting myself, however, with the
thought that in pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of
his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp
poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition
of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate
vicinity.  That was my first kick.

"Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?" he roared.
"Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone!  Why don't
ye spring, I say, all of ye--spring!  Quohog! spring, thou chap with
the red whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green
pants.  Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!"  And so
saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg
very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his
psalmody.  Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something
to-day.

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided.  It
was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged
into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean,
whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor.  The long
rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like
the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles
depended from the bows.

Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as
the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering
frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his
steady notes were heard,--

"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between."


Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then.  They
were full of hope and fruition.  Spite of this frigid winter night in
the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket,
there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store;
and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by
the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.

At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no
longer.  The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging
alongside.

It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected
at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad.  For loath to depart,
yet; very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and
perilous a voyage--beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some
thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which
an old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once
more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath
to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to
him,--poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious
strides; ran down into the cabin to speak another farewell word
there; again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked towards the
wide and endless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern
Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft; looked right and
left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically
coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the
hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically
in his face, as much as to say, "Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can
stand it; yes, I can."

As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all
his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the
lantern came too near.  And he, too, did not a little run from cabin
to deck--now a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief
mate.

But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look
about him,--"Captain Bildad--come, old shipmate, we must go.  Back
the main-yard there!  Boat ahoy!  Stand by to come close alongside,
now!  Careful, careful!--come, Bildad, boy--say your last.  Luck to
ye, Starbuck--luck to ye, Mr. Stubb--luck to ye, Mr. Flask--good-bye
and good luck to ye all--and this day three years I'll have a hot
supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket.  Hurrah and away!"

"God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men," murmured old
Bildad, almost incoherently.  "I hope ye'll have fine weather now, so
that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye--a pleasant sun is all
he needs, and ye'll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go.
Be careful in the hunt, ye mates.  Don't stave the boats needlessly,
ye harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent.
within the year.  Don't forget your prayers, either.  Mr. Starbuck,
mind that cooper don't waste the spare staves.  Oh! the sail-needles
are in the green locker!  Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days,
men; but don't miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's
good gifts.  Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a
little leaky, I thought.  If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask,
beware of fornication.  Good-bye, good-bye!  Don't keep that cheese
too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it'll spoil.  Be careful
with the butter--twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye, if--"

"Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,--away!" and with that,
Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.

Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a
screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave
three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the
lone Atlantic.



CHAPTER 23

The Lee Shore.


Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded
mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her
vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see
standing at her helm but Bulkington!  I looked with sympathetic awe
and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a
four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for
still another tempestuous term.  The land seemed scorching to his
feet.  Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories
yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of
Bulkington.  Let me only say that it fared with him as with the
storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land.  The
port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is
safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all
that's kind to our mortalities.  But in that gale, the port, the
land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality;
one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her
shudder through and through.  With all her might she crowds all sail
off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would
blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for
refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her
bitterest foe!

Know ye now, Bulkington?  Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally
intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the
intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea;
while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on
the treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God--so, better is it to perish in that howling
infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were
safety!  For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain?  Take heart, take
heart, O Bulkington!  Bear thee grimly, demigod!  Up from the spray
of thy ocean-perishing--straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!



CHAPTER 24

The Advocate.


As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of
whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be
regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable
pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of
the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.

In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish
the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not
accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions.
If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan
society, it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his
merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if
in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials
S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure
would be deemed pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.

Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us
whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to
a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged
therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements.  Butchers we
are, that is true.  But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest
badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably
delights to honour.  And as for the matter of the alleged
uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into
certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the
whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among
the cleanliest things of this tidy earth.  But even granting the
charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a
whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those
battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all
ladies' plaudits?  And if the idea of peril so much enhances the
popular conceit of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that
many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly
recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into
eddies the air over his head.  For what are the comprehensible
terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of
God!

But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it
unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding
adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn
round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!

But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of
scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.

Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling
fleets?  Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense,
fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town
some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket?  Why
did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in
bounties upwards of L1,000,000?  And lastly, how comes it that we
whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen
in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned
by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the
ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year
importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000.  How
comes all this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?

But this is not the half; look again.

I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his
life, point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last
sixty years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world,
taken in one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling.
One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in
themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential issues,
that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore
offspring themselves pregnant from her womb.  It would be a hopeless,
endless task to catalogue all these things.  Let a handful suffice.
For many years past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting
out the remotest and least known parts of the earth.  She has
explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or
Vancouver had ever sailed.  If American and European men-of-war
now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them fire salutes to
the honour and glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed them
the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages.  They
may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your
Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous
Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and
greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern.  For in their
succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters,
and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with
virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and
muskets would not willingly have dared.  All that is made such a
flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the
life-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers.  Often,
adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men
accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship's common log.  Ah,
the world!  Oh, the world!

Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial,
scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe
and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific
coast.  It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous
policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space
permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at
last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the
yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in
those parts.

That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was
given to the enlightened world by the whaleman.  After its first
blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned
those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched
there.  The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony.
Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the
emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent
biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters.
The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do
commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the
missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive
missionaries to their first destinations.  If that double-bolted
land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone
to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.

But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has
no aesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I
ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a
split helmet every time.

The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you
will say.

THE WHALE NO FAMOUS AUTHOR, AND WHALING NO FAMOUS CHRONICLER?  Who
wrote the first account of our Leviathan?  Who but mighty Job!  And
who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage?  Who, but no
less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen,
took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those
times!  And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament?  Who,
but Edmund Burke!

True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have
no good blood in their veins.

NO GOOD BLOOD IN THEIR VEINS?  They have something better than royal
blood there.  The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;
afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of
Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and
harpooneers--all kith and kin to noble Benjamin--this day darting the
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.

Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not
respectable.

WHALING NOT RESPECTABLE?  Whaling is imperial!  By old English
statutory law, the whale is declared "a royal fish."*

Oh, that's only nominal!  The whale himself has never figured in any
grand imposing way.

THE WHALE NEVER FIGURED IN ANY GRAND IMPOSING WAY?  In one of the
mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the
world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the
Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed
procession.*


*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.


Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real
dignity in whaling.

NO DIGNITY IN WHALING?  The dignity of our calling the very heavens
attest.  Cetus is a constellation in the South!  No more!  Drive
down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg!
No more!  I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred
and fifty whales.  I account that man more honourable than that great
captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.

And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet
undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real
repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be
unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon
the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if,
at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any
precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the
honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College
and my Harvard.



CHAPTER 25

Postscript.


In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but
substantiated facts.  But after embattling his facts, an advocate who
should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell
eloquently upon his cause--such an advocate, would he not be
blameworthy?

It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even
modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their
functions is gone through.  There is a saltcellar of state, so
called, and there may be a castor of state.  How they use the salt,
precisely--who knows?  Certain I am, however, that a king's head is
solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad.  Can it
be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior
run well, as they anoint machinery?  Much might be ruminated here,
concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in
common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who
anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing.  In truth, a
mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has
probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.  As a general rule, he
can't amount to much in his totality.

But the only thing to be considered here, is this--what kind of oil
is used at coronations?  Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor
macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor
cod-liver oil.  What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in
its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and
queens with coronation stuff!



CHAPTER 26

Knights and Squires.


The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and
a Quaker by descent.  He was a long, earnest man, and though born on
an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh
being hard as twice-baked biscuit.  Transported to the Indies, his
live blood would not spoil like bottled ale.  He must have been born
in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast
days for which his state is famous.  Only some thirty arid summers
had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical
superfluousness.  But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more
the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the
indication of any bodily blight.  It was merely the condensation of
the man.  He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary.  His
pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it,
and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified
Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to
come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid
sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted
to do well in all climates.  Looking into his eyes, you seemed to
see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he
had calmly confronted through life.  A staid, steadfast man, whose
life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a
tame chapter of sounds.  Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and
fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times
affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the
rest.  Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep
natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did
therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of
superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring,
somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance.  Outward portents and
inward presentiments were his.  And if at times these things bent the
welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories
of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from
the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to
those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain
the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more
perilous vicissitudes of the fishery.  "I will have no man in my
boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."  By this, he
seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage
was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered
peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous
comrade than a coward.

"Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there, is as
careful a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery."  But we shall
ere long see what that word "careful" precisely means when used by a
man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.

Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a
sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon
all mortally practical occasions.  Besides, he thought, perhaps, that
in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple
outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be
foolishly wasted.  Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales
after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much
persisted in fighting him.  For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this
critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by
them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck
well knew.  What doom was his own father's?  Where, in the bottomless
deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?

With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck
which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been
extreme.  But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so
organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he
had; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently
engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances,
would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up.
And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly,
visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in
the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary
irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more
terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you
from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.

But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete
abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart
to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to
expose the fall of valour in the soul.  Men may seem detestable as
joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there
may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal,
is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that
over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to
throw their costliest robes.  That immaculate manliness we feel
within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all
the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the
undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man.  Nor can piety itself, at
such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the
permitting stars.  But this august dignity I treat of, is not the
dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no
robed investiture.  Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields
a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all
hands, radiates without end from God; Himself!  The great God
absolute!  The centre and circumference of all democracy!  His
omnipresence, our divine equality!

If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall
hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them
tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased,
among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if
I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall
spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all
mortal critics bear me out in it, thou Just Spirit of Equality,
which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind!
Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to
the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst
clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and
paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson
from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst
thunder him higher than a throne!  Thou who, in all Thy mighty,
earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the
kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!



CHAPTER 27

Knights and Squires.


Stubb was the second mate.  He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence,
according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man.  A
happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they
came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent
crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman
joiner engaged for the year.  Good-humored, easy, and careless, he
presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but
a dinner, and his crew all invited guests.  He was as particular
about the comfortable arrangement of his part of the boat, as an
old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box.  When close to the
whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying
lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer.  He
would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the
most exasperated monster.  Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted
the jaws of death into an easy chair.  What he thought of death
itself, there is no telling.  Whether he ever thought of it at all,
might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that
way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took
it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir
themselves there, about something which he would find out when he
obeyed the order, and not sooner.

What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going,
unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a
world full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their
packs; what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of
his; that thing must have been his pipe.  For, like his nose, his
short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face.
You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk
without his nose as without his pipe.  He kept a whole row of pipes
there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand;
and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all out in succession,
lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter; then loading
them again to be in readiness anew.  For, when Stubb dressed, instead
of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his
mouth.

I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of
his peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air,
whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless
miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as
in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated
handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal
tribulations, Stubb's tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of
disinfecting agent.

The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard.
A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning
whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had
personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a
sort of point of honour with him, to destroy them whenever
encountered.  So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for
the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so dead
to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger from
encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was
but a species of magnified mouse, or at least 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 vapour 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 vapours 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 honour; I consider it
an honour.  Listen, wise Stubb.  In old England the greatest lords
think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made
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 honours; 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; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green;
Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; 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, Linnaeus 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
Linnaeus's express edict, were still found dividing the possession of
the same seas with the Leviathan.

The grounds upon which Linnaeus 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 naturae 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, Linnaeus 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 Baliene 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 Specksynder.


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 Specksynder.  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 Specksynder or
Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme.  In the British Greenland Fishery,
under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is
still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged.  At present
he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the
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 honours that this air can give, to those men who become famous
more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful
of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over
the dead level of the mass.  Such large virtue lurks in these small
things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some
royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency.
But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of
geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian
herds crouch abased before the tremendous 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 Caesar.  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 archaeologists, 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
honour of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and
free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call
our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original
inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after
ourselves any other apparatus we may beget.  In shape, the 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 Phaedon 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 honourable ambition, as that in their secret
souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise.  But all in
vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is
imperfect; they are 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 Crammer'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 razeed 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, were'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 honourable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant
harpooneers.  Disdain the task?  What, when the great Pope washes the
feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer?  Oh, my sweet cardinals!
your own condescension, THAT shall bend ye to it.  I do not order ye;
ye will it.  Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!"

Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the
detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held,
barbs up, before him.

"Stab me not with that keen steel!  Cant them; cant them over! know
ye not the goblet end?  Turn up the socket!  So, so; now, ye
cup-bearers, advance.  The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!"
Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed
the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.

"Now, three to three, ye stand.  Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league.
Ha!  Starbuck! but the deed is done!  Yon ratifying sun now waits to
sit upon it.  Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man
the deathful whaleboat's bow--Death to Moby Dick!  God hunt us all,
if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!"  The long, barbed steel
goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white
whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss.
Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered.  Once more, and finally,
the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when,
waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired
within his cabin.



CHAPTER 37

Sunset.


THE CABIN; BY THE STERN WINDOWS; AHAB SITTING ALONE, AND GAZING OUT.


I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er
I sail.  The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let
them; but first I pass.

Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like
wine.  The gold brow plumbs the blue.  The diver sun--slow dived from
noon--goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless
hill.  Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of
Lombardy.  Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not
its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly
confounds.  'Tis iron--that I know--not gold.  'Tis split, too--that
I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against
the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no
helmet in the most brain-battering fight!

Dry heat upon my brow?  Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly
spurred me, so the sunset soothed.  No more.  This lovely light, it
lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er
enjoy.  Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying
power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst
of Paradise!  Good night--good night! (WAVING HIS HAND, HE MOVES FROM
THE WINDOW.)

'Twas not so hard a task.  I thought to find one stubborn, at the
least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels,
and they revolve.  Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder,
they all stand before me; and I their match.  Oh, hard! that to fire
others, the match itself must needs be wasting!  What I've dared,
I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do!  They think me
mad--Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened!  That
wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!  The prophecy was
that I should be dismembered; and--Aye!  I lost this leg.  I now
prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer.  Now, then, be the
prophet and the fulfiller one.  That's more than ye, ye great gods,
ever were.  I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists,
ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!  I will not say as schoolboys
do to bullies--Take some one of your own size; don't pommel ME!  No,
ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but YE have run and hidden.
Come forth from behind your cotton bags!  I have no long gun to
reach ye.  Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can
swerve me.  Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve
yourselves! man has ye there.  Swerve me?  The path to my fixed
purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.
Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under
torrents' beds, unerringly I rush!  Naught's an obstacle, naught's an
angle to the iron way!



CHAPTER 38

Dusk.


BY THE MAINMAST; STARBUCK LEANING AGAINST IT.


My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman!
Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field!
But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me!  I
think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it.
Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with
a cable I have no knife to cut.  Horrible old man!  Who's over him,
he cries;--aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he
lords it over all below!  Oh!  I plainly see my miserable office,--to
obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity!  For in
his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it.  Yet is
there hope.  Time and tide flow wide.  The hated whale has the round
watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe.
His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside.  I would up
heart, were it not like lead.  But my whole clock's run down; my
heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to lift again.


[A BURST OF REVELRY FROM THE FORECASTLE.]


Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of
human mothers in them!  Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea.  The
white whale is their demigorgon.  Hark! the infernal orgies! that
revelry is forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft!  Methinks it
pictures life.  Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay,
embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where
he broods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of
the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings.  The long
howl thrills me through!  Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch!
Oh, life!  'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to
knowledge,--as wild, untutored things are forced to feed--Oh, life!
'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me!
that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in
me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures!  Stand by
me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!



CHAPTER 39

First Night Watch.

Fore-Top.

(STUBB SOLUS, AND MENDING A BRACE.)


Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!--I've been thinking over it
ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence.  Why so?
Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer; and
come what will, one comfort's always left--that unfailing comfort is,
it's all predestinated.  I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but
to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening
felt.  Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too.  I twigged it, knew
it; had had the gift, might readily have prophesied it--for when I
clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it.  Well, Stubb, WISE
Stubb--that's my title--well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb?  Here's a
carcase.  I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will,
I'll go to it laughing.  Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your
horribles!  I feel funny.  Fa, la! lirra, skirra!  What's my juicy
little pear at home doing now?  Crying its eyes out?--Giving a party
to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a frigate's
pennant, and so am I--fa, la! lirra, skirra!  Oh--

We'll drink to-night with hearts as light,
To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim,
And break on the lips while meeting.


A brave stave that--who calls?  Mr. Starbuck?  Aye, aye, sir--(ASIDE)
he's my superior, he has his too, if I'm not mistaken.--Aye, aye,
sir, just through with this job--coming.



CHAPTER 40

Midnight, Forecastle.

HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.

(FORESAIL RISES AND DISCOVERS THE WATCH STANDING, LOUNGING, LEANING,
AND LYING IN VARIOUS ATTITUDES, ALL SINGING IN CHORUS.)

Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
Our captain's commanded.--

1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad for the digestion!  Take a
tonic, follow me!
(SINGS, AND ALL FOLLOW)

Our captain stood upon the deck,
A spy-glass in his hand,
A viewing of those gallant whales
That blew at every strand.
Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,
And by your braces stand,
And we'll have one of those fine whales,
Hand, boys, over hand!
So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.
Eight bells there, forward!

2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Avast the chorus!  Eight bells there! d'ye hear, bell-boy?  Strike
the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch.
I've the sort of mouth for that--the hogshead mouth.  So, so,
(THRUSTS HIS HEAD DOWN THE SCUTTLE,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y!
Eight bells there below!  Tumble up!

DUTCH SAILOR.
Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that.  I mark this in
our old Mogul's wine; it's quite as deadening to some as filliping to
others.  We sing; they sleep--aye, lie down there, like ground-tier
butts.  At 'em again!  There, take this copper-pump, and hail 'em
through it.  Tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses.  Tell 'em
it's the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to
judgment.  That's the way--THAT'S it; thy throat ain't spoiled with
eating Amsterdam butter.

FRENCH SAILOR.
Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in
Blanket Bay.  What say ye?  There comes the other watch.  Stand by
all legs!  Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!

PIP.
(SULKY AND SLEEPY)
Don't know where it is.

FRENCH SAILOR.
Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears.  Jig it, men, I say; merry's
the word; hurrah!  Damn me, won't you dance?  Form, now, Indian-file,
and gallop into the double-shuffle?  Throw yourselves!  Legs! legs!

ICELAND SAILOR.
I don't like your floor, maty; it's too springy to my taste.  I'm
used to ice-floors.  I'm sorry to throw cold water on the subject;
but excuse me.

MALTESE SAILOR.
Me too; where's your girls?  Who but a fool would take his left hand
by his right, and say to himself, how d'ye do?  Partners!  I must
have partners!

SICILIAN SAILOR.
Aye; girls and a green!--then I'll hop with ye; yea, turn
grasshopper!

LONG-ISLAND SAILOR.
Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more of us.  Hoe corn when you
may, say I.  All legs go to harvest soon.  Ah! here comes the music;
now for it!

AZORE SAILOR.
(ASCENDING, AND PITCHING THE TAMBOURINE UP THE SCUTTLE.)
Here you are, Pip; and there's the windlass-bitts; up you mount!
Now, boys!
(THE HALF OF THEM DANCE TO THE TAMBOURINE; SOME GO BELOW; SOME SLEEP
OR LIE AMONG THE COILS OF RIGGING.  OATHS A-PLENTY.)

AZORE SAILOR.
(DANCING)
Go it, Pip!  Bang it, bell-boy!  Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it,
bell-boy!  Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!

PIP.
Jinglers, you say?--there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.

CHINA SAILOR.
Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of thyself.


FRENCH SAILOR.
Merry-mad!  Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it!  Split
jibs! tear yourselves!

TASHTEGO.
(QUIETLY SMOKING)
That's a white man; he calls that fun: humph!  I save my sweat.

OLD MANX SAILOR.
I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are
dancing over.  I'll dance over your grave, I will--that's the
bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round
corners.  O Christ! to think of the green navies and the
green-skulled crews!  Well, well; belike the whole world's a ball, as
you scholars have it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it.
Dance on, lads, you're young; I was once.

3D NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Spell oh!--whew! this is worse than pulling after whales in a
calm--give us a whiff, Tash.

(THEY CEASE DANCING, AND GATHER IN CLUSTERS.  MEANTIME THE SKY
DARKENS--THE WIND RISES.)

LASCAR SAILOR.
By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon.  The sky-born, high-tide
Ganges turned to wind!  Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!

MALTESE SAILOR.
(RECLINING AND SHAKING HIS CAP.)
It's the waves--the snow's caps turn to jig it now.  They'll shake
their tassels soon.  Now would all the waves were women, then I'd go
drown, and chassee with them evermore!  There's naught so sweet on
earth--heaven may not match it!--as those swift glances of warm, wild
bosoms in the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe,
bursting grapes.

SICILIAN SAILOR.
(RECLINING.)
Tell me not of it!  Hark ye, lad--fleet interlacings of the
limbs--lithe swayings--coyings--flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all
graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come
satiety.  Eh, Pagan? (NUDGING.)

TAHITAN SAILOR.
(RECLINING ON A MAT.)
Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls!--the Heeva-Heeva!  Ah! low
veiled, high palmed Tahiti!  I still rest me on thy mat, but the soft
soil has slid!  I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! green the first
day I brought ye thence; now worn and wilted quite.  Ah me!--not thou
nor I can bear the change!  How then, if so be transplanted to yon
sky?  Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee's peak of spears,
when they leap down the crags and drown the villages?--The blast! the
blast!  Up, spine, and meet it! (LEAPS TO HIS FEET.)

PORTUGUESE SAILOR.
How the sea rolls swashing 'gainst the side!  Stand by for reefing,
hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell they'll go
lunging presently.

DANISH SAILOR.
Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest!  Well
done!  The mate there holds ye to it stiffly.  He's no more afraid
than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with
storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!

4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
He has his orders, mind ye that.  I heard old Ahab tell him he must
always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a
pistol--fire your ship right into it!

ENGLISH SAILOR.
Blood! but that old man's a grand old cove!  We are the lads to hunt
him up his whale!

ALL.
Aye! aye!

OLD MANX SAILOR.
How the three pines shake!  Pines are the hardest sort of tree to
live when shifted to any other soil, and here there's none but the
crew's cursed clay.  Steady, helmsman! steady.  This is the sort of
weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea.
Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there's another in
the sky--lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.

DAGGOO.
What of that?  Who's afraid of black's afraid of me!  I'm quarried
out of it!

SPANISH SAILOR.
(ASIDE.) He wants to bully, ah!--the old grudge makes me touchy
(ADVANCING.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side of
mankind--devilish dark at that.  No offence.

DAGGOO (GRIMLY).
None.

ST. JAGO'S SAILOR.
That Spaniard's mad or drunk.  But that can't be, or else in his one
case our old Mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in working.

5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
What's that I saw--lightning?  Yes.

SPANISH SAILOR.
No; Daggoo showing his teeth.

DAGGOO (SPRINGING).
Swallow thine, mannikin!  White skin, white liver!

SPANISH SAILOR (MEETING HIM).
Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!

ALL.
A row! a row! a row!

TASHTEGO (WITH A WHIFF).
A row a'low, and a row aloft--Gods and men--both brawlers!  Humph!

BELFAST SAILOR.
A row! arrah a row!  The Virgin be blessed, a row!  Plunge in with
ye!

ENGLISH SAILOR.
Fair play!  Snatch the Spaniard's knife!  A ring, a ring!

OLD MANX SAILOR.
Ready formed.  There! the ringed horizon.  In that ring Cain struck
Abel.  Sweet work, right work!  No?  Why then, God, mad'st thou the
ring?

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.
Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails!  Stand by to reef
topsails!

ALL.
The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (THEY SCATTER.)


PIP (SHRINKING UNDER THE WINDLASS).
Jollies?  Lord help such jollies!  Crish, crash! there goes the
jib-stay!  Blang-whang!  God!  Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal
yard!  It's worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of
the year!  Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now?  But there they
go, all cursing, and here I don't.  Fine prospects to 'em; they're on
the road to heaven.  Hold on hard!  Jimmini, what a squall!  But
those chaps there are worse yet--they are your white squalls, they.
White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr!  Here have I heard all
their chat just now, and the white whale--shirr! shirr!--but spoken
of once! and only this evening--it makes me jingle all over like my
tambourine--that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in to hunt him!
Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have
mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men
that have no bowels to feel fear!



CHAPTER 41

Moby Dick.


I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the
rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted,
and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my
soul.  A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's
quenchless feud seemed mine.  With greedy ears I learned the history
of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken
our oaths of violence and revenge.

For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied,
secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly
frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen.  But not all of them knew of
his existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen
him; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given
battle to him, was small indeed.  For, owing to the large number of
whale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the
entire watery circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their
quest along solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole
twelvemonth or more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling
sail of any sort; the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the
irregularity of the times of sailing from home; all these, with other
circumstances, direct and indirect, long obstructed the spread
through the whole world-wide whaling-fleet of the special
individualizing tidings concerning Moby Dick.  It was hardly to be
doubted, that several vessels reported to have encountered, at such
or such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of
uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great
mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped them; to some
minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in
question must have been no other than Moby Dick.  Yet as of late the
Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent
instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the monster
attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident ignorantly
gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part,
were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it
were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the
individual cause.  In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter
between Ahab and the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded.

And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by
chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had
every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him,
as for any other whale of that species.  But at length, such
calamities did ensue in these assaults--not restricted to sprained
wrists and ankles, broken limbs, or devouring amputations--but fatal
to the last degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses,
all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick; those
things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to
whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come.

Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the
more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters.  For not
only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all
surprising terrible events,--as the smitten tree gives birth to its
fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma,
wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them
to cling to.  And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so
the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the
wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate
there.  For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that
ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all
sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact
with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face
they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle
to them.  Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a
thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to
any chiseled hearth-stone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of
the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a
calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending
to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.

No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit
over the widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale
did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid
hints, and half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies,
which eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from
anything that visibly appears.  So that in many cases such a panic
did he finally strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had
heard of the White Whale, few of those hunters were willing to
encounter the perils of his jaw.

But there were still other and more vital practical influences at
work.  Not even at the present day has the original prestige of the
Sperm Whale, as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the
leviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body.  There
are those this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous
enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would
perhaps--either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or
timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there
are plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not
sailing under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered
the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is
restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the North;
seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a childish
fireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern
whaling.  Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm
Whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those
prows which stem him.

And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary
times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book
naturalists--Olassen and Povelson--declaring the Sperm Whale not only
to be a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to
be so incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human
blood.  Nor even down to so late a time as Cuvier's, were these or
almost similar impressions effaced.  For in his Natural History, the
Baron himself affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish
(sharks included) are "struck with the most lively terrors," and
"often in the precipitancy of their flight dash themselves against
the rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous death."  And
however the general experiences in the fishery may amend such reports
as these; yet in their full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty
item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in them is, in some
vicissitudes of their vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters.

So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a few
of the fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier
days of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to
induce long practised Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this
new and daring warfare; such men protesting that although other
leviathans might be hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance
at such an apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man.
That to attempt it, would be inevitably to be torn into a quick
eternity.  On this head, there are some remarkable documents that may
be consulted.

Nevertheless, some there were, who even in the face of these things
were ready to give chase to Moby Dick; and a still greater number
who, chancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely, without the
specific details of any certain calamity, and without superstitious
accompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle
if offered.

One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be
linked with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously
inclined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous;
that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one
and the same instant of time.

Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit
altogether without some faint show of superstitious probability.  For
as the secrets of the currents in the seas have never yet been
divulged, even to the most erudite research; so the hidden ways of
the Sperm Whale when beneath the surface remain, in great part,
unaccountable to his pursuers; and from time to time have originated
the most curious and contradictory speculations regarding them,
especially concerning the mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a
great depth, he transports himself with such vast swiftness to the
most widely distant points.

It is a thing well known to both American and English whale-ships,
and as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by
Scoresby, that some whales have been captured far north in the
Pacific, in whose bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted
in the Greenland seas.  Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of
these instances it has been declared that the interval of time
between the two assaults could not have exceeded very many days.
Hence, by inference, it has been believed by some whalemen, that the
Nor' West Passage, so long a problem to man, was never a problem to
the whale.  So that here, in the real living experience of living
men, the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello
mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in
which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface); and that still
more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose
waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land by an
underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost fully
equalled by the realities of the whalemen.

Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and
knowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had
escaped alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that some
whalemen should go still further in their superstitions; declaring
Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but
ubiquity in time); that though groves of spears should be planted in
his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should
ever be made to spout thick blood, such a sight would be but a
ghastly deception; for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of
leagues away, his unsullied jet would once more be seen.

But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough
in the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to
strike the imagination with unwonted power.  For, it was not so much
his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm
whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown out--a peculiar snow-white
wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump.  These were
his prominent features; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless,
uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to
those who knew him.

The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with
the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his
distinctive appellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally
justified by his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through
a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all
spangled with golden gleamings.

Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet
his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural
terror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to
specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his
assaults.  More than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of
dismay than perhaps aught else.  For, when swimming before his
exulting pursuers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had
several times been known to turn round suddenly, and, bearing down
upon them, either stave their boats to splinters, or drive them back
in consternation to their ship.

Already several fatalities had attended his chase.  But though
similar disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means
unusual in the fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White
Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or
death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been
inflicted by an unintelligent agent.

Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds
of his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of
chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out
of the white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene,
exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in
the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow,
had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly
seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the
whale.  That captain was Ahab.  And then it was, that suddenly
sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had
reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field.  No
turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with
more seeming malice.  Small reason was there to doubt, then, that
ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild
vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his
frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all
his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual
exasperations.  The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac
incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel
eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and
half a lung.  That intangible malignity which has been from the
beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe
one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east
reverenced in their statue devil;--Ahab did not fall down and worship
it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred
white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it.  All that
most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all
truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the
brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to
crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable
in Moby Dick.  He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all
the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and
then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's
shell upon it.

It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise
at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment.  Then, in darting at
the monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden,
passionate, corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that
tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but
nothing more.  Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards
home, and for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay
stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that
dreary, howling Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and
gashed soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad.
That it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter,
that the final monomania seized him, seems all but certain from the
fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was a raving lunatic;
and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in
his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium,
that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he
sailed, raving in his hammock.  In a strait-jacket, he swung to the
mad rockings of the gales.  And, when running into more sufferable
latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated across the
tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's delirium
seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth
from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he
bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm
orders once again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was
now gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on.  Human
madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing.  When you
think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still
subtler form.  Ahab's full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly
contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows
narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge.  But, as in
his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had
been left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great
natural intellect had perished.  That before living agent, now became
the living instrument.  If such a furious trope may stand, his
special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned
all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from
having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a
thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear
upon any one reasonable object.

This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains
unhinted.  But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is
profound.  Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked
Hotel de Cluny where we here stand--however grand and wonderful, now
quit it;--and take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast
Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers of
man's upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits
in bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities, and throned
on torsoes!  So with a broken throne, the great gods mock that
captive king; so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his
frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages.  Wind ye down there, ye
prouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad king!  A family
likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from
your grim sire only will the old State-secret come.

Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my
means are sane, my motive and my object mad.  Yet without power to
kill, or change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind
he did long dissemble; in some sort, did still.  But that thing of
his dissembling was only subject to his perceptibility, not to his
will determinate.  Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that
dissembling, that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no
Nantucketer thought him otherwise than but naturally grieved, and
that to the quick, with the terrible casualty which had overtaken
him.

The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly
ascribed to a kindred cause.  And so too, all the added moodiness
which always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the Pequod on
the present voyage, sat brooding on his brow.  Nor is it so very
unlikely, that far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling
voyage, on account of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of
that prudent isle were inclined to harbor the conceit, that for those
very reasons he was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a
pursuit so full of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales.
Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting
fangs of some incurable idea; such an one, could he be found, would
seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the
most appalling of all brutes.  Or, if for any reason thought to be
corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem
superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the
attack.  But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad
secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had
purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only and
all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale.  Had any one of his
old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in
him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have
wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man!  They were bent on
profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the
mint.  He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural
revenge.

Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with
curses a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too,
chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and
cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere
unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invunerable
jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading
mediocrity in Flask.  Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially
picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his
monomaniac revenge.  How it was that they so aboundingly responded to
the old man's ire--by what evil magic their souls were possessed,
that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much
their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be--what the
White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings,
also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding
great demon of the seas of life,--all this to explain, would be to
dive deeper than Ishmael can go.  The subterranean miner that works
in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever
shifting, muffled sound of his pick?  Who does not feel the
irresistible arm drag?  What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand
still?  For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and
the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see
naught in that brute but the deadliest ill.



CHAPTER 42

The Whiteness of The Whale.


What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he
was to me, as yet remains unsaid.

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick,
which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm,
there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror
concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely
overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable
was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form.
It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.
But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim,
random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be
naught.

Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty,
as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles,
japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way
recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the
barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title "Lord of the
White Elephants" above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of
dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white
quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the
one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire,
Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour
the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to
the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over
every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been
even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone
marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and
symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching,
noble things--the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though
among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum
was the deepest pledge of honour; though in many climes, whiteness
typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and
contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by
milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most
august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine
spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white
forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek
mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white
bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of
the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their
theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest
envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of
their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for
white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their
sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and
though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially
employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the
Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the
four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white
throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for
all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and
honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the
innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul
than that redness which affrights in blood.

This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness,
when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any
object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest
bounds.  Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of
the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the
transcendent horrors they are?  That ghastly whiteness it is which
imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than
terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect.  So that not the
fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as
the white-shrouded bear or shark.*


*With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him
who would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the
whiteness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable
hideousness of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened
hideousness, it might be said, only rises from the circumstance, that
the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in
the fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringing
together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear
frightens us with so unnatural a contrast.  But even assuming all
this to be true; yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not
have that intensified terror.

As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in
that creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies
with the same quality in the Polar quadruped.  This peculiarity is
most vividly hit by the French in the name they bestow upon that
fish.  The Romish mass for the dead begins with "Requiem eternam"
(eternal rest), whence REQUIEM denominating the mass itself, and any
other funeral music.  Now, in allusion to the white, silent stillness
of death in this shark, and the mild deadliness of his habits, the
French call him REQUIN.


Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual
wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all
imaginations?  Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great,
unflattering laureate, Nature.*


*I remember the first albatross I ever saw.  It was during a
prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas.  From my
forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there,
dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of
unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime.  At
intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace
some holy ark.  Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it.  Though
bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghost in
supernatural distress.  Through its inexpressible, strange eyes,
methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God.  As Abraham
before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its
wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the
miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns.  Long I gazed
at that prodigy of plumage.  I cannot tell, can only hint, the things
that darted through me then.  But at last I awoke; and turning, asked
a sailor what bird was this.  A goney, he replied.  Goney! never had
heard that name before; is it conceivable that this glorious thing is
utterly unknown to men ashore! never!  But some time after, I learned
that goney was some seaman's name for albatross.  So that by no
possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with
those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon
our deck.  For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird
to be an albatross.  Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish
a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.

I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird
chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in
this, that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey
albatrosses; and these I have frequently seen, but never with such
emotions as when I beheld the Antarctic fowl.

But how had the mystic thing been caught?  Whisper it not, and I will
tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the
sea.  At last the Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered,
leathern tally round its neck, with the ship's time and place; and
then letting it escape.  But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant
for man, was taken off in Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join
the wing-folding, the invoking, and adoring cherubim!


Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of
the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,
large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a
thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage.  He was the
elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those
days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies.  At
their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which
every evening leads on the hosts of light.  The flashing cascade of
his mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings
more resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished
him.  A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen,
western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters
revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic
as a god, bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed.  Whether
marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts
that endlessly streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether
with his circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon,
the White Steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils
reddening through his cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he presented
himself, always to the bravest Indians he was the object of trembling
reverence and awe.  Nor can it be questioned from what stands on
legendary record of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual
whiteness chiefly, which so clothed him with divineness; and that
this divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at
the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.

But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that
accessory and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and
Albatross.

What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often
shocks the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and
kin!  It is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by
the name he bears.  The Albino is as well made as other men--has no
substantive deformity--and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading
whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion.
Why should this be so?

Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but
not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces this
crowning attribute of the terrible.  From its snowy aspect, the
gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas has been denominated the White
Squall.  Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice
omitted so potent an auxiliary.  How wildly it heightens the effect
of that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of
their faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their
bailiff in the market-place!

Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all
mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue.  It
cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of
the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering
there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of
consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here.  And
from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of the
shroud in which we wrap them.  Nor even in our superstitions do we
fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms; all ghosts
rising in a milk-white fog--Yea, while these terrors seize us, let us
add, that even the king of terrors, when personified by the
evangelist, rides on his pallid horse.

Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious
thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest
idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.

But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to
account for it?  To analyse it, would seem impossible.  Can we,
then, by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing
of whiteness--though for the time either wholly or in great part
stripped of all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught
fearful, but nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same
sorcery, however modified;--can we thus hope to light upon some
chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek?

Let us try.  But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,
and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls.
And though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions
about to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few
perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore
may not be able to recall them now.

Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely
acquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare
mention of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary,
speechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded
with new-fallen snow?  Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant
of the Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a
White Friar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?

Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and
kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White
Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an
untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its
neighbors--the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody?  And those sublimer
towers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar
moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare
mention of that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is
full of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess?  Or why, irrespective of
all latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert
such a spectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea
lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on
the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets?
Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to
the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe,
does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changeless
pallor unrustlingly glides through the green of the groves--why is
this phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps of the
Blocksburg?

Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling
earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the
tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her
wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all
adroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban
avenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack
of cards;--it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the
strangest, saddest city thou can'st see.  For Lima has taken the
white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her
woe.  Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new;
admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over her
broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own
distortions.

I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness
is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of
objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there
aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind
almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when
exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or
universality.  What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be
respectively elucidated by the following examples.

First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if
by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels
just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under
precisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock
to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky
whiteness--as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white
bears were swimming round him, then he feels a silent, superstitious
dread; the shrouded phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him
as a real ghost; in vain the lead assures him he is still off
soundings; heart and helm they both go down; he never rests till blue
water is under him again.  Yet where is the mariner who will tell
thee, "Sir, it was not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as
the fear of that hideous whiteness that so stirred me?"

Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the
snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the
mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such
vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it
would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes.  Much the same is
it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative
indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no
shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness.  Not
so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at
times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain in the powers of frost
and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead of rainbows
speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seems a boundless
churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments and
splintered crosses.

But thou sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is
but a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a
hypo, Ishmael.

Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley
of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey--why is it that upon
the sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him,
so that he cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal
muskiness--why will he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the
ground in phrensies of affright?  There is no remembrance in him of
any gorings of wild creatures in his green northern home, so that the
strange muskiness he smells cannot recall to him anything associated
with the experience of former perils; for what knows he, this New
England colt, of the black bisons of distant Oregon?

No; but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the
knowledge of the demonism in the world.  Though thousands of miles
from Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending,
goring bison herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the
prairies, which this instant they may be trampling into dust.

Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings
of the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the
windrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the
shaking of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt!

Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the
mystic sign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt,
somewhere those things must exist.  Though in many of its aspects
this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were
formed in fright.

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and
learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange
and far more portentous--why, as we have seen, it is at once the most
meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the
Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent
in things the most appalling to mankind.

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids
and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with
the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the
milky way?  Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a
colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the
concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a
dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows--a
colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink?  And when we
consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all
other earthly hues--every stately or lovely emblazoning--the sweet
tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of
butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are
but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only
laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints
like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the
charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that
the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great
principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself,
and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects,
even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge--pondering all this,
the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful
travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring
glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind
at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around
him.  And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol.
Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?



CHAPTER 43

Hark!


"HIST!  Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?

It was the middle-watch; a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing
in a cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the
waist, to the scuttle-butt near the taffrail.  In this manner, they
passed the buckets to fill the scuttle-butt.  Standing, for the most
part, on the hallowed precincts of the quarter-deck, they were
careful not to speak or rustle their feet.  From hand to hand, the
buckets went in the deepest silence, only broken by the occasional
flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel.

It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon,
whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a
Cholo, the words above.

"Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?"

"Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d'ye mean?"

"There it is again--under the hatches--don't you hear it--a cough--it
sounded like a cough."

"Cough be damned!  Pass along that return bucket."

"There again--there it is!--it sounds like two or three sleepers
turning over, now!"

"Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye?  It's the three soaked
biscuits ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye--nothing else.
Look to the bucket!"

"Say what ye will, shipmate; I've sharp ears."

"Aye, you are the chap, ain't ye, that heard the hum of the old
Quakeress's knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket;
you're the chap."

"Grin away; we'll see what turns up.  Hark ye, Cabaco, there is
somebody down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck;
and I suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too.  I heard Stubb
tell Flask, one morning watch, that there was something of that sort
in the wind."

"Tish! the bucket!"



CHAPTER 44

The Chart.


Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall
that took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his
purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the
transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea
charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table.  Then
seating himself before it, you would have seen him intently study the
various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but
steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were
blank.  At intervals, he would refer to piles of old log-books beside
him, wherein were set down the seasons and places in which, on
various former voyages of various ships, sperm whales had been
captured or seen.

While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over
his head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for
ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled
brow, till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out
lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was
also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his
forehead.

But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his
cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts.  Almost every night they
were brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced,
and others were substituted.  For with the charts of all four oceans
before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a
view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of
his soul.

Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans,
it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary
creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet.  But not so did it
seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and
thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food; and,
also, calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting
him in particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises,
almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be
upon this or that ground in search of his prey.

So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the
sperm whale's resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe
that, could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world;
were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully
collated, then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to
correspond in invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the
flights of swallows.  On this hint, attempts have been made to
construct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale.*


*Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by
an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National
Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851.  By that circular, it
appears that precisely such a chart is in course of completion; and
portions of it are presented in the circular.  "This chart divides
the ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude by five degrees
of longitude; perpendicularly through each of which districts are
twelve columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each
of which districts are three lines; one to show the number of days
that have been spent in each month in every district, and the two
others to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right,
have been seen."


Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another,
the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct--say, rather,
secret intelligence from the Deity--mostly swim in VEINS, as they are
called; continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such
undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any
chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision.  Though, in these
cases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a
surveyor's parallel, and though the line of advance be strictly
confined to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary
VEIN in which at these times he is said to swim, generally embraces
some few miles in width (more or less, as the vein is presumed to
expand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweep from the
whale-ship's mast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic
zone.  The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth and
along that path, migrating whales may with great confidence be looked
for.

And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate
feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in
crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could,
by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to
be wholly without prospect of a meeting.

There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his
delirious but still methodical scheme.  But not so in the reality,
perhaps.  Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular
seasons for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude
that the herds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude
this year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with those
that were found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar
and unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved
true.  In general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit,
applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm
whales.  So that though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for
example, on what is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean,
or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet it did not follow, that
were the Pequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequent
corresponding season, she would infallibly encounter him there.  So,
too, with some other feeding grounds, where he had at times revealed
himself.  But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places and
ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged abode.  And
where Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have hitherto been
spoken of, allusion has only been made to whatever way-side,
antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a particular set time or
place were attained, when all possibilities would become
probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the
next thing to a certainty.  That particular set time and place were
conjoined in the one technical phrase--the Season-on-the-Line.  For
there and then, for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had been
periodically descried, lingering in those waters for awhile, as the
sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted interval in any one
sign of the Zodiac.  There it was, too, that most of the deadly
encounters with the white whale had taken place; there the waves were
storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where the
monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his vengeance.  But
in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with
which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he
would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning
fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes;
nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his
unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest.

Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of
the Season-on-the-Line.  No possible endeavor then could enable her
commander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and
then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial
Pacific in time to cruise there.  Therefore, he must wait for the
next ensuing season.  Yet the premature hour of the Pequod's sailing
had, perhaps, been correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to this
very complexion of things.  Because, an interval of three hundred and
sixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval which, instead
of impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous
hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far
remote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his
wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China
Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race.  So that Monsoons,
Pampas, Nor'-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter
and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag
world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake.

But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it
not but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one
solitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of
individual recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti
in the thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople?  Yes.  For the
peculiar snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could
not but be unmistakable.  And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab
would mutter to himself, as after poring over his charts till long
after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries--tallied him,
and shall he escape?  His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out
like a lost sheep's ear!  And here, his mad mind would run on in a
breathless race; till a weariness and faintness of pondering came
over him; and in the open air of the deck he would seek to recover
his strength.  Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure
who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire.  He sleeps
with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his
palms.

Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably
vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts
through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and
whirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain, till
the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and
when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved
his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from
which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends
beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself
yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and
with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though
escaping from a bed that was on fire.  Yet these, perhaps, instead of
being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright
at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity.
For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast
hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock,
was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror
again.  The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him;
and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing
mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or
agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity
of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an
integral.  But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the
soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up
all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that
purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against
gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its
own.  Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to
which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and
unfathered birth.  Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of
bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the
time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of
living light, to be sure, but without an object to colour, and
therefore a blankness in itself.  God help thee, old man, thy
thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense
thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart
for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.



CHAPTER 45

The Affidavit.


So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed,
as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious
particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in
its earlier part, is as important a one as will be found in this
volume; but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and
more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood,
and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance
of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the natural
verity of the main points of this affair.

I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall be
content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of
items, practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from
these citations, I take it--the conclusion aimed at will naturally
follow of itself.

First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after
receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an
interval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by
the same hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same
private cypher, have been taken from the body.  In the instance where
three years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons; and
I think it may have been something more than that; the man who darted
them happening, in the interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage
to Africa, went ashore there, joined a discovery party, and
penetrated far into the interior, where he travelled for a period of
nearly two years, often endangered by serpents, savages, tigers,
poisonous miasmas, with all the other common perils incident to
wandering in the heart of unknown regions.  Meanwhile, the whale he
had struck must also have been on its travels; no doubt it had thrice
circumnavigated the globe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of
Africa; but to no purpose.  This man and this whale again came
together, and the one vanquished the other.  I say I, myself, have
known three instances similar to this; that is in two of them I saw
the whales struck; and, upon the second attack, saw the two irons
with the respective marks cut in them, afterwards taken from the dead
fish.  In the three-year instance, it so fell out that I was in the
boat both times, first and last, and the last time distinctly
recognised a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale's eye, which
I had observed there three years previous.  I say three years, but I
am pretty sure it was more than that.  Here are three instances,
then, which I personally know the truth of; but I have heard of many
other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no
good ground to impeach.

Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however
ignorant the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several
memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean
has been at distant times and places popularly cognisable.  Why such
a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to
his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for
however peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be, they soon
put an end to his peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down
into a peculiarly valuable oil.  No: the reason was this: that from
the fatal experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige
of perilousness about such a whale as there did about Rinaldo
Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were content to recognise him
by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would be discovered
lounging by them on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more
intimate acquaintance.  Like some poor devils ashore that happen to
know an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive
salutations to him in the street, lest if they pursued the
acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump for their
presumption.

But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual
celebrity--Nay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he
famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death,
but he was admitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions
of a name; had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar.  Was it
not so, O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg,
who so long did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose
spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay?  Was it not so, O
New Zealand Jack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their
wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land?  Was it not so, O Morquan!
King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times assumed the
semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky?  Was it not so, O
Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old tortoise with
mystic hieroglyphics upon the back!  In plain prose, here are four
whales as well known to the students of Cetacean History as Marius or
Sylla to the classic scholar.

But this is not all.  New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at
various times creating great havoc among the boats of different
vessels, were finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out,
chased and killed by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their
anchors with that express object as much in view, as in setting out
through the Narragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had it in his
mind to capture that notorious murderous savage Annawon, the headmost
warrior of the Indian King Philip.

I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make
mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in
printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the
whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe.  For
this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires
full as much bolstering as error.  So ignorant are most landsmen of
some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that
without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and
otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a
monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and
intolerable allegory.

First: Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general
perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed,
vivid conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they
recur.  One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual
disasters and deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a
public record at home, however transient and immediately forgotten
that record.  Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, who this
moment perhaps caught by the whale-line off the coast of New Guinea,
is being carried down to the bottom of the sea by the sounding
leviathan--do you suppose that that poor fellow's name will appear in
the newspaper obituary you will read to-morrow at your breakfast?
No: because the mails are very irregular between here and New Guinea.
In fact, did you ever hear what might be called regular news direct
or indirect from New Guinea?  Yet I tell you that upon one particular
voyage which I made to the Pacific, among many others we spoke thirty
different ships, every one of which had had a death by a whale, some
of them more than one, and three that had each lost a boat's crew.
For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a
gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for
it.

Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale
is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that
when narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold
enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my
facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of
being facetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of the plagues
of Egypt.

But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon
testimony entirely independent of my own.  That point is this: The
Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and
judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in,
utterly destroy, and sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm
Whale HAS done it.

First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of
Nantucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean.  One day she saw
spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales.
Ere long, several of the whales were wounded; when, suddenly, a very
large whale escaping from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore
directly down upon the ship.  Dashing his forehead against her hull,
he so stove her in, that in less than "ten minutes" she settled down
and fell over.  Not a surviving plank of her has been seen since.
After the severest exposure, part of the crew reached the land in
their boats.  Being returned home at last, Captain Pollard once more
sailed for the Pacific in command of another ship, but the gods
shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers; for the second
time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith forswearing the sea, he
has never tempted it since.  At this day Captain Pollard is a
resident of Nantucket.  I have seen Owen Chace, who was chief mate of
the Essex at the time of the tragedy; I have read his plain and
faithful narrative; I have conversed with his son; and all this
within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe.*


*The following are extracts from Chace's narrative: "Every fact
seemed to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance
which directed his operations; he made two several attacks upon the
ship, at a short interval between them, both of which, according to
their direction, were calculated to do us the most injury, by being
made ahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for
the shock; to effect which, the exact manoeuvres which he made were
necessary.  His aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated
resentment and fury.  He came directly from the shoal which we had
just before entered, and in which we had struck three of his
companions, as if fired with revenge for their sufferings."  Again:
"At all events, the whole circumstances taken together, all happening
before my own eyes, and producing, at the time, impressions in my
mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the part of the whale (many
of which impressions I cannot now recall), induce me to be satisfied
that I am correct in my opinion."

Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a
black night an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any
hospitable shore.  "The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing;
the fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed
upon hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful
contemplation, seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's thought; the
dismal looking wreck, and THE HORRID ASPECT AND REVENGE OF THE WHALE,
wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again made its
appearance."

In another place--p. 45,--he speaks of "THE MYSTERIOUS AND MORTAL
ATTACK OF THE ANIMAL."


Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807
totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic
particulars of this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter,
though from the whale hunters I have now and then heard casual
allusions to it.

Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J---, then
commanding an American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to
be dining with a party of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship
in the harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands.  Conversation turning upon
whales, the Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the
amazing strength ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen
present.  He peremptorily denied for example, that any whale could so
smite his stout sloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so much as a
thimbleful.  Very good; but there is more coming.  Some weeks after,
the Commodore set sail in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso.  But
he was stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale, that begged a few
moments' confidential business with him.  That business consisted in
fetching the Commodore's craft such a thwack, that with all his pumps
going he made straight for the nearest port to heave down and repair.
I am not superstitious, but I consider the Commodore's interview
with that whale as providential.  Was not Saul of Tarsus converted
from unbelief by a similar fright?  I tell you, the sperm whale will
stand no nonsense.

I will now refer you to Langsdorff's Voyages for a little
circumstance in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof.
Langsdorff, you must know by the way, was attached to the Russian
Admiral Krusenstern's famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of
the present century.  Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth
chapter:

"By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next
day we were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh.  The weather
was very clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were obliged
to keep on our fur clothing.  For some days we had very little wind;
it was not till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest
sprang up.  An uncommon large whale, the body of which was larger
than the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of the water, but was
not perceived by any one on board till the moment when the ship,
which was in full sail, was almost upon him, so that it was
impossible to prevent its striking against him.  We were thus placed
in the most imminent danger, as this gigantic creature, setting up
its back, raised the ship three feet at least out of the water.  The
masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether, while we who were below
all sprang instantly upon the deck, concluding that we had struck
upon some rock; instead of this we saw the monster sailing off with
the utmost gravity and solemnity.  Captain D'Wolf applied immediately
to the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel had received any
damage from the shock, but we found that very happily it had escaped
entirely uninjured."

Now, the Captain D'Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in
question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual
adventures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of
Dorchester near Boston.  I have the honour of being a nephew of his.
I have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in
Langsdorff.  He substantiates every word.  The ship, however, was by
no means a large one: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast,
and purchased by my uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he
sailed from home.

In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full,
too, of honest wonders--the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient
Dampier's old chums--I found a little matter set down so like that
just quoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here
for a corroborative example, if such be needed.

Lionel, it seems, was on his way to "John Ferdinando," as he calls
the modern Juan Fernandes.  "In our way thither," he says, "about
four o'clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty
leagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock,
which put our men in such consternation that they could hardly tell
where they were or what to think; but every one began to prepare for
death.  And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent, that we
took it for granted the ship had struck against a rock; but when the
amazement was a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found
no ground.  ....  The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in
their carriages, and several of the men were shaken out of their
hammocks.  Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown
out of his cabin!"  Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an
earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that
a great earthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually do great
mischief along the Spanish land.  But I should not much wonder if, in
the darkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock was after
all caused by an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from
beneath.

I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known
to me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale.  In
more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the
assailing boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself,
and long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks.  The
English ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for
his strength, let me say, that there have been examples where the
lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been
transferred to the ship, and secured there; the whale towing her
great hull through the water, as a horse walks off with a cart.
Again, it is very often observed that, if the sperm whale, once
struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not so often with
blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of destruction to his
pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his
character, that upon being attacked he will frequently open his
mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutive
minutes.  But I must be content with only one more and a concluding
illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which you
will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in
this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that
these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so
that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is
nothing new under the sun.

In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian
magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor
and Belisarius general.  As many know, he wrote the history of his
own times, a work every way of uncommon value.  By the best
authorities, he has always been considered a most trustworthy and
unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two particulars, not
at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned.

Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term
of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured
in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having
destroyed vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more
than fifty years.  A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot
easily be gainsaid.  Nor is there any reason it should be.  Of what
precise species this sea-monster was, is not mentioned.  But as he
destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must have been a
whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale.  And I will
tell you why.  For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had
been always unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep waters
connecting with it.  Even now I am certain that those seas are not,
and perhaps never can be, in the present constitution of things, a
place for his habitual gregarious resort.  But further investigations
have recently proved to me, that in modern times there have been
isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the
Mediterranean.  I am told, on good authority, that on the Barbary
coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found the skeleton of a
sperm whale.  Now, as a vessel of war readily passes through the
Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass out
of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.

In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar
substance called BRIT is to be found, the aliment of the right whale.
But I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm
whale--squid or cuttle-fish--lurks at the bottom of that sea, because
large creatures, but by no means the largest of that sort, have been
found at its surface.  If, then, you properly put these statements
together, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that,
according to all human reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster, that for
half a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all
probability have been a sperm whale.



CHAPTER 46

Surmises.


Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his
thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby
Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to
that one passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature
and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways,
altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage.  Or
at least if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives
much more influential with him.  It would be refining too much,
perhaps, even considering his monomania, to hint that his
vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly extended
itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the more monsters
he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each
subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he
hunted.  But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there
were still additional considerations which, though not so strictly
according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no
means incapable of swaying him.

To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used
in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order.  He
knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some
respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the
complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority
involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the
intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation.  Starbuck's
body and Starbuck's coerced will were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept
his magnet at Starbuck's brain; still he knew that for all this the
chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his captain's quest, and could he,
would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it.
It might be that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whale was
seen.  During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to fall
into open relapses of rebellion against his captain's leadership,
unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial influences were
brought to bear upon him.  Not only that, but the subtle insanity of
Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly manifested
than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that, for
the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange
imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the full
terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure
background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted
meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long
night watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to
think of than Moby Dick.  For however eagerly and impetuously the
savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors
of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable--they live in
the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness--and when
retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however
promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all things
requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene
and hold them healthily suspended for the final dash.

Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing.  In times of strong emotion
mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are
evanescent.  The permanent constitutional condition of the
manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness.  Granting that the
White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and
playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous
knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it they give
chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common,
daily appetites.  For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of
old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to
fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries,
picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way.  Had
they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object--that
final and romantic object, too many would have turned from in
disgust.  I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of
cash--aye, cash.  They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by,
and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same
quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would
soon cashier Ahab.

Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related
to Ahab personally.  Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps
somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the
Pequod's voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing,
he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of
usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew
if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further
obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command.
From even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the
possible consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground,
Ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect himself.  That
protection could only consist in his own predominating brain and
heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to
every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew
to be subjected to.

For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be
verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a
good degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the
Pequod's voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but
force himself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the
general pursuit of his profession.

Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the
three mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and
not omit reporting even a porpoise.  This vigilance was not long
without reward.



CHAPTER 47

The Mat-Maker.


It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging
about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured
waters.  Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a
sword-mat, for an additional lashing to our boat.  So still and
subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an
incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor
seemed resolved into his own invisible self.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat.  As I
kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the
long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as
Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword
between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly
and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a
dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the
sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it
seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle
mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates.  There lay the
fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning,
unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of
the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own.  This warp
seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own
shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads.
Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting
the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the
case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow
producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the
completed fabric; this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally
shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword
must be chance--aye, chance, free will, and necessity--nowise
incompatible--all interweavingly working together.  The straight warp
of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course--its every
alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still
free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though
restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and
sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed
to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring
blow at events.


Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball
of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the
clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing.  High aloft in the
cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego.  His body was reaching
eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief
sudden intervals he continued his cries.  To be sure the same sound
was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from
hundreds of whalemen's look-outs perched as high in the air; but from
few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a
marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian's.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and
eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some
prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild
cries announcing their coming.

"There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!"

"Where-away?"

"On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!"

Instantly all was commotion.

The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and
reliable uniformity.  And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from
other tribes of his genus.

"There go flukes!" was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales
disappeared.

"Quick, steward!" cried Ahab.  "Time! time!"

Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact
minute to Ahab.

The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling
before it.  Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading
to leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in
advance of our bows.  For that singular craft at times evinced by the
Sperm Whale when, sounding with his head in one direction, he
nevertheless, while concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and
swiftly swims off in the opposite quarter--this deceitfulness of his
could not now be in action; for there was no reason to suppose that
the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew
at all of our vicinity.  One of the men selected for
shipkeepers--that is, those not appointed to the boats, by this time
relieved the Indian at the main-mast head.  The sailors at the fore
and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their places;
the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three
boats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over high
cliffs.  Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand
clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly poised on the
gunwale.  So look the long line of man-of-war's men about to throw
themselves on board an enemy's ship.

But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took
every eye from the whale.  With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who
was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of
air.



CHAPTER 48

The First Lowering.


The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other
side of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose
the tackles and bands of the boat which swung there.  This boat had
always been deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called
the captain's, on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter.
The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one
white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips.  A rumpled
Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide
black trowsers of the same dark stuff.  But strangely crowning this
ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair
braided and coiled round and round upon his head.  Less swart in
aspect, the companions of this figure were of that vivid,
tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of
the Manillas;--a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty,
and by some honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and
secret confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord,
whose counting-room they suppose to be elsewhere.

While yet the wondering ship's company were gazing upon these
strangers, Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their
head, "All ready there, Fedallah?"

"Ready," was the half-hissed reply.

"Lower away then; d'ye hear?" shouting across the deck.  "Lower away
there, I say."

Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the
men sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks;
with a wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a
dexterous, off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the
sailors, goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship's side into the
tossed boats below.

Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship's lee, when a fourth
keel, coming from the windward side, pulled round under the stern,
and showed the five strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the
stern, loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves
widely, so as to cover a large expanse of water.  But with all their
eyes again riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates
of the other boats obeyed not the command.

"Captain Ahab?--" said Starbuck.

"Spread yourselves," cried Ahab; "give way, all four boats.  Thou,
Flask, pull out more to leeward!"

"Aye, aye, sir," cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his
great steering oar.  "Lay back!" addressing his crew.
"There!--there!--there again!  There she blows right ahead,
boys!--lay back!"

"Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy."

"Oh, I don't mind'em, sir," said Archy; "I knew it all before now.
Didn't I hear 'em in the hold?  And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it?
What say ye, Cabaco?  They are stowaways, Mr. Flask."

"Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little
ones," drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of
whom still showed signs of uneasiness.  "Why don't you break your
backbones, my boys?  What is it you stare at?  Those chaps in yonder
boat?  Tut!  They are only five more hands come to help us--never
mind from where--the more the merrier.  Pull, then, do pull; never
mind the brimstone--devils are good fellows enough.  So, so; there
you are now; that's the stroke for a thousand pounds; that's the
stroke to sweep the stakes!  Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my
heroes!  Three cheers, men--all hearts alive!  Easy, easy; don't be
in a hurry--don't be in a hurry.  Why don't you snap your oars, you
rascals?  Bite something, you dogs!  So, so, so, then:--softly,
softly!  That's it--that's it! long and strong.  Give way there, give
way!  The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all
asleep.  Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull.  Pull, will ye? pull,
can't ye? pull, won't ye?  Why in the name of gudgeons and
ginger-cakes don't ye pull?--pull and break something! pull, and
start your eyes out!  Here!" whipping out the sharp knife from his
girdle; "every mother's son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the
blade between his teeth.  That's it--that's it.  Now ye do something;
that looks like it, my steel-bits.  Start her--start her, my
silver-spoons!  Start her, marling-spikes!"

Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had
rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially
in inculcating the religion of rowing.  But you must not suppose from
this specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright
passions with his congregation.  Not at all; and therein consisted
his chief peculiarity.  He would say the most terrific things to his
crew, in a tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury
seemed so calculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman
could hear such queer invocations without pulling for dear life, and
yet pulling for the mere joke of the thing.  Besides he all the time
looked so easy and indolent himself, so loungingly managed his
steering-oar, and so broadly gaped--open-mouthed at times--that the
mere sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer force of contrast,
acted like a charm upon the crew.  Then again, Stubb was one of those
odd sort of humorists, whose jollity is sometimes so curiously
ambiguous, as to put all inferiors on their guard in the matter of
obeying them.

In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely
across Stubb's bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were
pretty near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.

"Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye
please!"

"Halloa!" returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he
spoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set
like a flint from Stubb's.

"What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!

"Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,
boys!)" in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: "A
sad business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never
mind, Mr. Stubb, all for the best.  Let all your crew pull strong,
come what will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There's hogsheads of sperm
ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!)
Sperm, sperm's the play!  This at least is duty; duty and profit hand
in hand."

"Aye, aye, I thought as much," soliloquized Stubb, when the boats
diverged, "as soon as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so.  Aye, and
that's what he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy
long suspected.  They were hidden down there.  The White Whale's at
the bottom of it.  Well, well, so be it!  Can't be helped!  All
right!  Give way, men!  It ain't the White Whale to-day!  Give way!"

Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical
instant as the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not
unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of
the ship's company; but Archy's fancied discovery having some time
previous got abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this
had in some small measure prepared them for the event.  It took off
the extreme edge of their wonder; and so what with all this and
Stubb's confident way of accounting for their appearance, they were
for the time freed from superstitious surmisings; though the affair
still left abundant room for all manner of wild conjectures as to
dark Ahab's precise agency in the matter from the beginning.  For me,
I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on
board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the
enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah.

Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the
furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a
circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him.  Those
tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like
five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of
strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a
horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer.  As for
Fedallah, who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown
aside his black jacket, and displayed his naked chest with the whole
part of his body above the gunwale, clearly cut against the
alternating depressions of the watery horizon; while at the other end
of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a fencer's, thrown half backward
into the air, as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip; Ahab was
seen steadily managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat
lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him.  All at once the
outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained fixed,
while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked.  Boat and
crew sat motionless on the sea.  Instantly the three spread boats in
the rear paused on their way.  The whales had irregularly settled
bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token
of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed
it.

"Every man look out along his oars!" cried Starbuck.  "Thou,
Queequeg, stand up!"

Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the
savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off
towards the spot where the chase had last been descried.  Likewise
upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also triangularly
platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly
and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of
a craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.

Not very far distant Flask's boat was also lying breathlessly still;
its commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a
stout sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above
the level of the stern platform.  It is used for catching turns with
the whale line.  Its top is not more spacious than the palm of a
man's hand, and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed
perched at the mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her
trucks.  But little King-Post was small and short, and at the same
time little King-Post was full of a large and tall ambition, so that
this loggerhead stand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.

"I can't see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to
that."

Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his
way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his
lofty shoulders for a pedestal.

"Good a mast-head as any, sir.  Will you mount?"

"That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you
fifty feet taller."

Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the
boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm
to Flask's foot, and then putting Flask's hand on his hearse-plumed
head and bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one
dexterous fling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders.
And here was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm
furnishing him with a breastband to lean against and steady himself
by.

At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what
wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an
erect posture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most
riotously perverse and cross-running seas.  Still more strange to see
him giddily perched upon the loggerhead itself, under such
circumstances.  But the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic
Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool,
indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to
every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form.  On his
broad back, flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake.  The bearer
looked nobler than the rider.  Though truly vivacious, tumultuous,
ostentatious little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience;
but not one added heave did he thereby give to the negro's lordly
chest.  So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living
magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her
seasons for that.

Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing
solicitudes.  The whales might have made one of their regular
soundings, not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were
the case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to
solace the languishing interval with his pipe.  He withdrew it from
his hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather.  He
loaded it, and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly
had he ignited his match across the rough sandpaper of his hand,
when Tashtego, his harpooneer, whose eyes had been setting to
windward like two fixed stars, suddenly dropped like light from his
erect attitude to his seat, crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry,
"Down, down all, and give way!--there they are!"

To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been
visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white
water, and thin scattered puffs of vapour hovering over it, and
suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white
rolling billows.  The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it
were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron.  Beneath
this atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin
layer of water, also, the whales were swimming.  Seen in advance of
all the other indications, the puffs of vapour they spouted, seemed
their forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders.

All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled
water and air.  But it bade fair to outstrip them; it flew on and on,
as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the
hills.

"Pull, pull, my good boys," said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but
intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp fixed
glance from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed
as two visible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses.  He did
not say much to his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to
him.  Only the silence of the boat was at intervals startlingly
pierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh with command, now
soft with entreaty.

How different the loud little King-Post.  "Sing out and say
something, my hearties.  Roar and pull, my thunderbolts!  Beach me,
beach me on their black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I'll
sign over to you my Martha's Vineyard plantation, boys; including
wife and children, boys.  Lay me on--lay me on!  O Lord, Lord! but I
shall go stark, staring mad!  See! see that white water!"  And so
shouting, he pulled his hat from his head, and stamped up and down on
it; then picking it up, flirted it far off upon the sea; and finally
fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's stern like a crazed colt
from the prairie.

"Look at that chap now," philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his
unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his teeth, at a
short distance, followed after--"He's got fits, that Flask has.
Fits? yes, give him fits--that's the very word--pitch fits into 'em.
Merrily, merrily, hearts-alive.  Pudding for supper, you
know;--merry's the word.  Pull, babes--pull, sucklings--pull, all.
But what the devil are you hurrying about?  Softly, softly, and
steadily, my men.  Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing more.  Crack
all your backbones, and bite your knives in two--that's all.  Take it
easy--why don't ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your livers and
lungs!"

But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew
of his--these were words best omitted here; for you live under the
blessed light of the evangelical land.  Only the infidel sharks in
the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado
brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after
his prey.

Meanwhile, all the boats tore on.  The repeated specific allusions of
Flask to "that whale," as he called the fictitious monster which he
declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its
tail--these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like,
that they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful
look over the shoulder.  But this was against all rule; for the
oarsmen must put out their eyes, and ram a skewer through their
necks; usage pronouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and
no limbs but arms, in these critical moments.

It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe!  The vast swells of the
omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled
along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless
bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip
for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that
almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip
into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to
gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down
its other side;--all these, with the cries of the headsmen and
harpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the
wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with
outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood;--all
this was thrilling.

Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the
fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man's ghost encountering
the first unknown phantom in the other world;--neither of these can
feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the
first time finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of
the hunted sperm whale.

The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and
more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun
cloud-shadows flung upon the sea.  The jets of vapour no longer
blended, but tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed
separating their wakes.  The boats were pulled more apart; Starbuck
giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward.  Our sail was
now set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along; the boat
going with such madness through the water, that the lee oars could
scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from the
row-locks.

Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither
ship nor boat to be seen.

"Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the
sheet of his sail; "there is time to kill a fish yet before the
squall comes.  There's white water again!--close to!  Spring!"

Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted
that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard,
when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: "Stand
up!" and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.

Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death
peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense
countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the
imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing
sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter.  Meanwhile the
boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and
hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents.

"That's his hump.  THERE, THERE, give it to him!" whispered Starbuck.

A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron
of Queequeg.  Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push
from astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the
sail collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapour shot up near
by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us.  The
whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter
into the white curdling cream of the squall.  Squall, whale, and
harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the
iron, escaped.

Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed.  Swimming
round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the
gunwale, tumbled back to our places.  There we sat up to our knees in
the sea, the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our
downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up
to us from the bottom of the ocean.

The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers
together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us
like a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were
burning; immortal in these jaws of death!  In vain we hailed the
other boats; as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a
flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm.  Meanwhile the
driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night;
no sign of the ship could be seen.  The rising sea forbade all
attempts to bale out the boat.  The oars were useless as propellers,
performing now the office of life-preservers.  So, cutting the
lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck
contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a
waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this
forlorn hope.  There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle
in the heart of that almighty forlornness.  There, then, he sat, the
sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in
the midst of despair.

Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or
boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on.  The mist still
spread over the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of
the boat.  Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand
to his ear.  We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards
hitherto muffled by the storm.  The sound came nearer and nearer; the
thick mists were dimly parted by a huge, vague form.  Affrighted, we
all sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearing
right down upon us within a distance of not much more than its
length.

Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant
it tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at the base
of a cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen
no more till it came up weltering astern.  Again we swam for it, were
dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely
landed on board.  Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had
cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time.  The
ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light
upon some token of our perishing,--an oar or a lance pole.



CHAPTER 49

The Hyena.


There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed
affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast
practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and
more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing.
He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions,
all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an
ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints.  And
as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden
disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem
to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side
bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.  That odd sort of
wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of
extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness,
so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most
momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.  There is
nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort
of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this
whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.

"Queequeg," said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the
deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the
water; "Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often
happen?"  Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me,
he gave me to understand that such things did often happen.

"Mr. Stubb," said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his
oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; "Mr. Stubb,
I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our
chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent.  I
suppose then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set
in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman's discretion?"

"Certain.  I've lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off
Cape Horn."

"Mr. Flask," said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing
close by; "you are experienced in these things, and I am not.  Will
you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr.
Flask, for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself
back-foremost into death's jaws?"

"Can't you twist that smaller?" said Flask.  "Yes, that's the law.  I
should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a whale face
foremost.  Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind
that!"

Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate
statement of the entire case.  Considering, therefore, that squalls
and capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep,
were matters of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering
that at the superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I
must resign my life into the hands of him who steered the
boat--oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his
impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own
frantic stampings; considering that the particular disaster to our
own particular boat was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck's driving
on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall, and considering that
Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great heedfulness in
the fishery; considering that I belonged to this uncommonly prudent
Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a devil's chase I
was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all things together,
I say, I thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of
my will.  "Queequeg," said I, "come along, you shall be my lawyer,
executor, and legatee."

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at
their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world
more fond of that diversion.  This was the fourth time in my nautical
life that I had done the same thing.  After the ceremony was
concluded upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone
was rolled away from my heart.  Besides, all the days I should now
live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his
resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks
as the case might be.  I survived myself; my death and burial were
locked up in my chest.  I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly,
like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of
a snug family vault.

Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my
frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction,
and the devil fetch the hindmost.



CHAPTER 50

Ahab's Boat and Crew.  Fedallah.


"Who would have thought it, Flask!" cried Stubb; "if I had but one
leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the
plug-hole with my timber toe.  Oh! he's a wonderful old man!"

"I don't think it so strange, after all, on that account," said
Flask.  "If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different
thing.  That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of
the other left, you know."

"I don't know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel."


Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering
the paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it
is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active
perils of the chase.  So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears
in their eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be
carried into the thickest of the fight.

But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect.  Considering
that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of
danger; considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great
and extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed,
then comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any
maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt?  As a general thing,
the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.

Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little
of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes
of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and
giving his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat
actually apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt--above
all for Captain Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same
boat's crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the
heads of the owners of the Pequod.  Therefore he had not solicited a
boat's crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on
that head.  Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own
touching all that matter.  Until Cabaco's published discovery, the
sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a
little while out of port, all hands had concluded the customary
business of fitting the whaleboats for service; when some time after
this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of
making thole-pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one
of the spare boats, and even solicitously cutting the small wooden
skewers, which when the line is running out are pinned over the
groove in the bow: when all this was observed in him, and
particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of sheathing in
the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the pointed
pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety he evinced in
exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes
called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the knee
against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how
often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the
semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter's
chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there;
all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at
the time.  But almost everybody supposed that this particular
preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the
ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his
intention to hunt that mortal monster in person.  But such a
supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any
boat's crew being assigned to that boat.

Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned
away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane.  Besides, now and then such
unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the
unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating
outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer
castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits
of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and
what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step
down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create
any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.

But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate
phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it
were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah
remained a muffled mystery to the last.  Whence he came in a mannerly
world like this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced
himself to be linked with Ahab's peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to
have some sort of a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might
have been even authority over him; all this none knew.  But one
cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah.  He was such a
creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see
in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and
then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the
Oriental isles to the east of the continent--those insulated,
immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days
still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal
generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct
recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came,
eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon
why they were created and to what end; when though, according to
Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the
devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours.



CHAPTER 51

The Spirit-Spout.


Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off
the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of
the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery
locality, southerly from St. Helena.

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;
and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery
silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was
seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow.  Lit up by the
moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god
uprising from the sea.  Fedallah first descried this jet.  For of
these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast
head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it
had been day.  And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night,
not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them.  You
may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old
Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the
moon, companions in one sky.  But when, after spending his uniform
interval there for several successive nights without uttering a
single sound; when, after all this silence, his unearthly voice was
heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner
started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the
rigging, and hailed the mortal crew.  "There she blows!"  Had the
trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still
they felt no terror; rather pleasure.  For though it was a most
unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously
exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a
lowering.

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread.  The
best man in the ship must take the helm.  Then, with every mast-head
manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind.  The strange,
upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the
hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel
like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two
antagonistic influences were struggling in her--one to mount direct
to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal.  And
had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that
in him also two different things were warring.  While his one live
leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb
sounded like a coffin-tap.  On life and death this old man walked.
But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like
arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen
that night.  Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second
time.

This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some
days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced:
again it was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it,
once more it disappeared as if it had never been.  And so it served
us night after night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it.
Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the
case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or
three; and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be
advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary jet
seemed for ever alluring us on.

Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance
with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things
invested the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore
that whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in
however far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was
cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick.  For a time,
there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting
apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in
order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last
in the remotest and most savage seas.

These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a
wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in
which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a
devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas
so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our
vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like
prow.

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began
howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas
that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the
blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of
silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this
desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more
dismal than before.

Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and
thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable
sea-ravens.  And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these
birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time
obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some
drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and
therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves.  And heaved
and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast
tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish
and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye?  Rather Cape Tormentoto, as
called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that
before had attended us, we found ourselves launched into this
tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and
these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any
haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon.  But
calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain of
feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before, the solitary
jet would at times be descried.

During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for
the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous
deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever
addressed his mates.  In tempestuous times like these, after
everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done
but passively to await the issue of the gale.  Then Captain and crew
become practical fatalists.  So, with his ivory leg inserted into its
accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for
hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an
occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very
eyelashes together.  Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part
of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,
stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to
guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a
loosened belt.  Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as
if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through
all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves.  By night
the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean
prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still
wordless Ahab stood up to the blast.  Even when wearied nature seemed
demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock.
Never could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night
going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw him
with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the
rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time
before emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and
coat.  On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of
tides and currents which have previously been spoken of.  His lantern
swung from his tightly clenched hand.  Though the body was erect, the
head was thrown back so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the
needle of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in the ceiling.*


*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to
the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself
of the course of the ship.


Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this
gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.



CHAPTER 52

The Albatross.


South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good
cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney
(Albatross) by name.  As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at
the fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to
a tyro in the far ocean fisheries--a whaler at sea, and long absent
from home.

As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
skeleton of a stranded walrus.  All down her sides, this spectral
appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all
her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees
furred over with hoar-frost.  Only her lower sails were set.  A wild
sight it was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three
mast-heads.  They seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and
bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four years of
cruising.  Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and
swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided
close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each
other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one
ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen,
mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own
look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.

"Ship ahoy!  Have ye seen the White Whale?"

But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in
the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his
hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove
to make himself heard without it.  Meantime his ship was still
increasing the distance between.  While in various silent ways
the seamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance of this
ominous incident at the first mere mention of the White Whale's name
to another ship, Ahab for a moment paused; it almost seemed as though
he would have lowered a boat to board the stranger, had not the
threatening wind forbade.  But taking advantage of his windward
position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect that
the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home, he
loudly hailed--"Ahoy there!  This is the Pequod, bound round the
world!  Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean!
and this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address
them to--"

At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly,
then, in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small
harmless fish, that for some days before had been placidly swimming
by our side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged
themselves fore and aft with the stranger's flanks.  Though in the
course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed
a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles
capriciously carry meanings.

"Swim away from me, do ye?" murmured Ahab, gazing over into the
water.  There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed
more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before
evinced.  But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding
the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old
lion voice,--"Up helm!  Keep her off round the world!"

Round the world!  There is much in that sound to inspire proud
feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct?  Only
through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where
those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could
for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and
strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were
promise in the voyage.  But in pursuit of those far mysteries we
dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time
or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this
round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave
us whelmed.



CHAPTER 53

The Gam.


The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we
had spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms.  But even had
this not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded
her--judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions--if so it
had been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative
answer to the question he put.  For, as it eventually turned out, he
cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger
captain, except he could contribute some of that information he so
absorbingly sought.  But all this might remain inadequately
estimated, were not something said here of the peculiar usages of
whaling-vessels when meeting each other in foreign seas, and
especially on a common cruising-ground.

If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the
equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering
each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of
them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a
moment to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a
while and resting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon
the illimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two
whaling vessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth--off
lone Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how much more
natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not
only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and
sociable contact.  And especially would this seem to be a matter of
course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose
captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to
each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things
to talk about.

For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters
on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers
of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and
thumb-worn files.  And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound
ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the
cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost
importance to her.  And in degree, all this will hold true concerning
whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the cruising-ground
itself, even though they are equally long absent from home.  For one
of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and
now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the
people of the ship she now meets.  Besides, they would exchange the
whaling news, and have an agreeable chat.  For not only would they
meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the
peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually
shared privations and perils.

Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference;
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case
with Americans and English.  Though, to be sure, from the small
number of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and
when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between
them; for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he
does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself.  Besides,
the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan
superiority over the American whalers; regarding the long, lean
Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of
sea-peasant.  But where this superiority in the English whalemen
does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees
in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English,
collectively, in ten years.  But this is a harmless little foible in
the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much
to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles
himself.

So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the
whalers have most reason to be sociable--and they are so.  Whereas,
some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic,
will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of
recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a
brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in
finical criticism upon each other's rig.  As for Men-of-War, when
they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such a string of
silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there
does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly
love about it at all.  As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are
in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as
possible.  And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other's
cross-bones, the first hail is--"How many skulls?"--the same way that
whalers hail--"How many barrels?"  And that question once answered,
pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on
both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villanous
likenesses.

But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,
free-and-easy whaler!  What does the whaler do when she meets another
whaler in any sort of decent weather?  She has a "GAM," a thing so
utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name
even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it,
and repeat gamesome stuff about "spouters" and "blubber-boilers," and
such like pretty exclamations.  Why it is that all Merchant-seamen,
and also all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors,
cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a
question it would be hard to answer.  Because, in the case of
pirates, say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs
has any peculiar glory about it.  It sometimes ends in uncommon
elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows.  And besides, when a man
is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his
superior altitude.  Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be
high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no
solid basis to stand on.

But what is a GAM?  You might wear out your index-finger running up
and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word.  Dr.
Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's ark does not
hold it.  Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many
years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born
Yankees.  Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be
incorporated into the Lexicon.  With that view, let me learnedly
define it.

GAM.  NOUN--A SOCIAL MEETING OF TWO (OR MORE) WHALESHIPS, GENERALLY
ON A CRUISING-GROUND; WHEN, AFTER EXCHANGING HAILS, THEY EXCHANGE
VISITS BY BOATS' CREWS; THE TWO CAPTAINS REMAINING, FOR THE TIME, ON
BOARD OF ONE SHIP, AND THE TWO CHIEF MATES ON THE OTHER.

There is another little item about Gamming which must not be
forgotten here.  All professions have their own little peculiarities
of detail; so has the whale fishery.  In a pirate, man-of-war, or
slave ship, when the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always
sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat
there, and often steers himself with a pretty little milliner's
tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons.  But the whale-boat has
no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all.
High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about the water
on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs.  And as for a
tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy; and
therefore as in gamming a complete boat's crew must leave the ship,
and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number, that
subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain,
having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing
like a pine tree.  And often you will notice that being conscious of
the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from the sides of
the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to the importance
of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs.  Nor is this any
very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting steering
oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the after-oar
reciprocating by rapping his knees in front.  He is thus completely
wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by
settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of
the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of
foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth.  Merely make a
spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up.  Then,
again, it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes,
it would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen
steadying himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything
with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command,
he generally carries his hands in his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps
being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for
ballast.  Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well
authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an
uncommonly critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say--to seize
hold of the nearest oarsman's hair, and hold on there like grim
death.



CHAPTER 54

The Town-Ho's Story.


(AS TOLD AT THE GOLDEN INN)


The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there,
is much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you
meet more travellers than in any other part.

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another
homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered.  She was
manned almost wholly by Polynesians.  In the short gam that ensued
she gave us strong news of Moby Dick.  To some the general interest
in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the
Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a
certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called
judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men.  This
latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming
what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be
narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates.  For
that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain of the
Town-Ho himself.  It was the private property of three confederate
white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to
Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy, but the following night
Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that
way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest.
Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those
seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by
such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this
matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never
transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast.  Interweaving in its proper
place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the
ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on
lasting record.


*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the
mast-head, still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos
terrapin.


For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once
narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one
saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden
Inn.  Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian,
were on the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions
they occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.

"Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am
about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of
Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days'
sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn.  She was
somewhere to the northward of the Line.  One morning upon handling
the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that she made
more water in her hold than common.  They supposed a sword-fish had
stabbed her, gentlemen.  But the captain, having some unusual reason
for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and
therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then
considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it
after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy
weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working
at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more
days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it
sensibly increased.  So much so, that now taking some alarm, the
captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the
islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired.

"Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance
favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the
way, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically
relieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep
the ship free; never mind if the leak should double on her.  In
truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very
prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in
perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least
fatality, had it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the
mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt,
a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.

"'Lakeman!--Buffalo!  Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?'
said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.

"On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but--I crave your
courtesy--may be, you shall soon hear further of all that.  Now,
gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as
large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far
Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had
yet been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions
popularly connected with the open ocean.  For in their interflowing
aggregate, those grand fresh-water seas of ours,--Erie, and Ontario,
and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan,--possess an ocean-like
expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits; with many of
its rimmed varieties of races and of climes.  They contain round
archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in
large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the
Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous
territorial colonies from the East, dotted all round their banks;
here and there are frowned upon by batteries, and by the goat-like
craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the fleet thunderings
of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their beaches to wild
barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry
wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered
forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in
Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of
prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar
Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as
well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant
ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech
canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as
any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out
of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a
midnight ship with all its shrieking crew.  Thus, gentlemen, though
an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured;
as much of an audacious mariner as any.  And for Radney, though in
his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to
nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long followed
our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite
as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh
from the latitudes of buck-horn handled bowie-knives.  Yet was this
Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a
mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible
firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition
which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had
long been retained harmless and docile.  At all events, he had proved
so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt--but,
gentlemen, you shall hear.

"It was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her
prow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho's leak seemed again
increasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps
every day.  You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like
our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping
their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should
the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect,
the probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again
remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom.
Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward,
gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at
their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable
length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if
any other reasonable retreat is afforded them.  It is only when a
leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters,
some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a
little anxious.

"Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was
found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern
manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney the mate.
He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew,
and every way expanded to the breeze.  Now this Radney, I suppose,
was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of
nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless,
unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently
imagine, gentlemen.  Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about
the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only
on account of his being a part owner in her.  So when they were
working that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small
gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they stood with their feet
continually overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any
mountain spring, gentlemen--that bubbling from the pumps ran across
the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the lee
scupper-holes.

"Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this
conventional world of ours--watery or otherwise; that when a person
placed in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very
significantly his superior in general pride of manhood, straightway
against that man he conceives an unconquerable dislike and
bitterness; and if he have a chance he will pull down and pulverize
that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it.  Be
this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt
was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing
golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's
snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him,
gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son
to Charlemagne's father.  But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule;
yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious.  He did not love Steelkilt,
and Steelkilt knew it.

"Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the
rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on
with his gay banterings.

"'Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin,
one of ye, and let's have a taste.  By the Lord, it's worth bottling!
I tell ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had
best cut away his part of the hull and tow it home.  The fact is,
boys, that sword-fish only began the job; he's come back again with a
gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and
the whole posse of 'em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at
the bottom; making improvements, I suppose.  If old Rad were here
now, I'd tell him to jump overboard and scatter 'em.  They're playing
the devil with his estate, I can tell him.  But he's a simple old
soul,--Rad, and a beauty too.  Boys, they say the rest of his
property is invested in looking-glasses.  I wonder if he'd give a
poor devil like me the model of his nose.'

"'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared Radney,
pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk.  'Thunder away at
it!'

'Aye, aye, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket.  'Lively, boys,
lively, now!'  And with that the pump clanged like fifty
fire-engines; the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that
peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest
tension of life's utmost energies.

"Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman
went forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his
face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from
his brow.  Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed
Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated
state, I know not; but so it happened.  Intolerably striding along
the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the
planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters
consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large.

"Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of
household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly
attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case
of ships actually foundering at the time.  Such, gentlemen, is the
inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in
seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing
their faces.  But in all vessels this broom business is the
prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard.  Besides,
it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been divided into
gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic seaman
of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of
the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any trivial
business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the
case with his comrades.  I mention all these particulars so that you
may understand exactly how this affair stood between the two men.

"But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost
as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had
spat in his face.  Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will
understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman
fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command.  But as he sat
still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's
malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in
him and the slow-match silently burning along towards them; as he
instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and
unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in any already
ireful being--a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really
valiant men even when aggrieved--this nameless phantom feeling,
gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt.

"Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily
exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that
sweeping the deck was not his business, and he would not do it.  And
then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three
lads as the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the
pumps, had done little or nothing all day.  To this, Radney replied
with an oath, in a most domineering and outrageous manner
unconditionally reiterating his command; meanwhile advancing upon the
still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper's club hammer which he
had snatched from a cask near by.

"Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps,
for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating
Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow
still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he
remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed
Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously
commanding him to do his bidding.

"Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily
followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated
his intention not to obey.  Seeing, however, that his forbearance had
not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with
his twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it
was to no purpose.  And in this way the two went once slowly round
the windlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking
him that he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the
Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:

"'Mr. Radney, I will not obey you.  Take that hammer away, or look to
yourself.'  But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him,
where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an
inch of his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable
maledictions.  Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch;
stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance,
Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing
it back, told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek
he (Steelkilt) would murder him.  But, gentlemen, the fool had been
branded for the slaughter by the gods.  Immediately the hammer
touched the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was
stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale.

"Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays
leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their
mastheads.  They were both Canallers.

"'Canallers!' cried Don Pedro.  'We have seen many whale-ships in our
harbours, but never heard of your Canallers.  Pardon: who and what are
they?'

"'Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal.
You must have heard of it.'

"'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and
hereditary land, we know but little of your vigorous North.'

"'Aye?  Well then, Don, refill my cup.  Your chicha's very fine; and
ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for
such information may throw side-light upon my story.'

"For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire
breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities
and most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps,
and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by
billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great
forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade;
by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery
of those noble Mohawk counties; and especially, by rows of snow-white
chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one
continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life.
There's your true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your pagans; where
you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung shadow,
and the snug patronising lee of churches.  For by some curious
fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that
they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen,
most abound in holiest vicinities.

"'Is that a friar passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downwards into
the crowded plazza, with humorous concern.

"'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in
Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian.  'Proceed, Senor.'

"'A moment!  Pardon!' cried another of the company.  'In the name of
all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we
have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present
Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison.  Oh! do not bow
and look surprised; you know the proverb all along this
coast--"Corrupt as Lima."  It but bears out your saying, too;
churches more plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open--and
"Corrupt as Lima."  So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city
of the blessed evangelist, St. Mark!--St. Dominic, purge it!  Your
cup!  Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.'

"Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would
make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is
he.  Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed,
flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his
red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny
deck.  But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed.  The brigandish
guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and
gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features.  A terror to the
smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart
visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities.  Once a vagabond
on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these
Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it
is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of
violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor
stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one.  In sum,
gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is emphatically
evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so many of its
most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except
Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains.  Nor does
it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many
thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its line, the
probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition
between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field, and recklessly
ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.

"'I see!  I see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his
chicha upon his silvery ruffles.  'No need to travel!  The world's
one Lima.  I had thought, now, that at your temperate North the
generations were cold and holy as the hills.--But the story.'

"I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay.
Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior
mates and the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck.  But
sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed
into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards the
forecastle.  Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt,
and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm's way, the
valiant captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling upon
his officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him
along to the quarter-deck.  At intervals, he ran close up to the
revolving border of the confusion, and prying into the heart of it
with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment.  But
Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all; they
succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing
about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass, these
sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade.

"'Come out of that, ye pirates!' roared the captain, now menacing
them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward.
'Come out of that, ye cut-throats!'

"Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there,
defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to
understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt's) death would be the
signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands.  Fearing in
his heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little
desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to
their duty.

"'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their
ringleader.

"'Turn to! turn to!--I make no promise;--to your duty!  Do you want
to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this?  Turn to!' and
he once more raised a pistol.

"'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt.  'Aye, let her sink.  Not a man of
us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us.
What say ye, men?' turning to his comrades.  A fierce cheer was their
response.

"The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his
eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:--'It's
not our fault; we didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away;
it was boy's business; he might have known me before this; I told him
not to prick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here
against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives down in the
forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties.
Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool;
forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're
your men; but we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to!  I make no promises, turn to, I say!'

"'Look ye, now,' cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him,
'there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped
for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our
discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don't want a row; it's
not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but
we won't be flogged.'

"'Turn to!' roared the Captain.

"Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:--'I tell you
what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a
shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us;
but till you say the word about not flogging us, we don't do a hand's
turn.'

"'Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there
till ye're sick of it.  Down ye go.'

"'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men.  Most of them were
against it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded
him down into their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears
into a cave.

"As the Lakeman's bare head was just level with the planks, the
Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over
the slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and
loudly called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock
belonging to the companionway.

Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something down
the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them--ten in
number--leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had
remained neutral.

"All night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward
and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway;
at which last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after
breaking through the bulkhead below.  But the hours of darkness
passed in peace; the men who still remained at their duty toiling
hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals through
the dreary night dismally resounded through the ship.

"At sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck,
summoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused.  Water
was then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit
were tossed after it; when again turning the key upon them and
pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-deck.  Twice every
day for three days this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a
confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary
summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the
forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to.  The fetid closeness
of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of
ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at
discretion.  Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to
the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his
babbling and betake himself where he belonged.  On the fifth morning
three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the
desperate arms below that sought to restrain them.  Only three were
left.

"'Better turn to, now?' said the Captain with a heartless jeer.

"'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt.

"'Oh certainly,' the Captain, and the key clicked.

"It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of
seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that
had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place
as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt
proposed to the two Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with
him, to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the
garrison; and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic,
heavy implements with a handle at each end) run amuck from the
bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation
possible, seize the ship.  For himself, he would do this, he said,
whether they joined him or not.  That was the last night he should
spend in that den.  But the scheme met with no opposition on the part
of the other two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any
other mad thing, for anything in short but a surrender.  And what was
more, they each insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the
time to make the rush should come.  But to this their leader as
fiercely objected, reserving that priority for himself; particularly
as his two comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the
matter; and both of them could not be first, for the ladder would but
admit one man at a time.  And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these
miscreants must come out.

"Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own
separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same
piece of treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in
order to be the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to
surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such
conduct might merit.  But when Steelkilt made known his determination
still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle
chemistry of villany, mixed their before secret treacheries together;
and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls
to each other in three sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords,
and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out for the Captain at
midnight.

"Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he
and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle.
In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot,
the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his
perfidious allies, who at once claimed the honour of securing a man
who had been fully ripe for murder.  But all these were collared, and
dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were
seized up into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and
there they hung till morning.  'Damn ye,' cried the Captain, pacing
to and fro before them, 'the vultures would not touch ye, ye
villains!'

"At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had
rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the
former that he had a good mind to flog them all round--thought, upon
the whole, he would do so--he ought to--justice demanded it; but for
the present, considering their timely surrender, he would let them go
with a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.

"'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to the three men in the
rigging--'for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;' and,
seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the
two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their
heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.

"'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is
still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give
up.  Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say
for himself.'

"For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his
cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a
sort of hiss, 'What I say is this--and mind it well--if you flog me,
I murder you!'

"'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'--and the Captain drew off
with the rope to strike.

"'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.

"'But I must,'--and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.

"Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the
Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the
deck rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his
rope, said, 'I won't do it--let him go--cut him down: d'ye hear?'

But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale
man, with a bandaged head, arrested them--Radney the chief mate.
Ever since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning,
hearing the tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had
watched the whole scene.  Such was the state of his mouth, that he
could hardly speak; but mumbling something about his being willing
and able to do what the captain dared not attempt, he snatched the
rope and advanced to his pinioned foe.

"'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman.

"'So I am, but take that.'  The mate was in the very act of striking,
when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm.  He paused: and then
pausing no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat,
whatever that might have been.  The three men were then cut down, all
hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the
iron pumps clanged as before.

"Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor
was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running
up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the
crew.  Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at
their own instance they were put down in the ship's run for
salvation.  Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest.  On
the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they
had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders
to the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body.
But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all
agreed to another thing--namely, not to sing out for whales, in case
any should be discovered.  For, spite of her leak, and spite of all her
other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and her
captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on
the day his craft first struck the cruising ground; and Radney the mate
was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his
bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale.

"But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of
passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till
all was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the
man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart.  He was in
Radney the chief mate's watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to
run more than half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the
rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the captain,
upon resuming the head of his watch at night.  Upon this, and one or
two other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of
his revenge.

"During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of
the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side.
In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed.  There was a
considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between
this was the sea.  Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his
next trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the
morning of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed.  At
his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very
carefully in his watches below.

"'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

"'What do you think? what does it look like?'

"'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length
before him; 'but I think it will answer.  Shipmate, I haven't enough
twine,--have you any?'

"But there was none in the forecastle.

"'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

"'You don't mean to go a begging to HIM!' said a sailor.

"'Why not?  Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help
himself in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at
him quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock.  It
was given him--neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the
next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the
pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat
into his hammock for a pillow.  Twenty-four hours after, his trick at
the silent helm--nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave
always ready dug to the seaman's hand--that fatal hour was then to
come; and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was
already stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed
in.

"But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody
deed he had planned.  Yet complete revenge he had, and without being
the avenger.  For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to
step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he
would have done.

"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the
second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid
Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted
out, 'There she rolls! there she rolls!'  Jesu, what a whale!  It was
Moby Dick.

"'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic!  Sir sailor, but do
whales have christenings?  Whom call you Moby Dick?'

"'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster,
Don;--but that would be too long a story.'

"'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

"'Nay, Dons, Dons--nay, nay!  I cannot rehearse that now.  Let me get
more into the air, Sirs.'

"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend looks
faint;--fill up his empty glass!'

"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.--Now, gentlemen, so
suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the
ship--forgetful of the compact among the crew--in the excitement of
the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily
lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it
had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads.  All was
now a phrensy.  'The White Whale--the White Whale!' was the cry from
captain, mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours,
were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the
dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of
the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun,
shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea.
Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these
events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted.
The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it
was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in
the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command.
Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the start;
and none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he
strained at his oar.  After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast,
and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow.  He was always a
furious man, it seems, in a boat.  And now his bandaged cry was, to
beach him on the whale's topmost back.  Nothing loath, his bowsman
hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two
whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a
sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate.  That
instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted,
and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into
the sea, on the other flank of the whale.  He struck out through the
spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly
seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick.  But the whale
rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his
jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went
down.

"Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had
slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly
looking on, he thought his own thoughts.  But a sudden, terrific,
downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line.
He cut it; and the whale was free.  But, at some distance, Moby Dick
rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woollen shirt, caught
in the teeth that had destroyed him.  All four boats gave chase
again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.

"In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port--a savage, solitary
place--where no civilized creature resided.  There, headed by the
Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately
deserted among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a
large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some
other harbor.

"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain
called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of
heaving down the ship to stop the leak.  But to such unresting
vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small band of whites
necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard
work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea,
they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put
off with them in so heavy a vessel.  After taking counsel with his
officers, he anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded
and ran out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the
poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their
peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best
whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred
miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.

"On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which
seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals.  He steered away from
it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of
Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water.
The captain presented a pistol.  With one foot on each prow of the
yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that
if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in
bubbles and foam.

"'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.

"'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?' demanded
Steelkilt; 'no lies.'

"'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'

"'Very good.  Let me board you a moment--I come in peace.'  With that
he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale,
stood face to face with the captain.

"'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head.  Now, repeat after me.
As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder
island, and remain there six days.  If I do not, may lightning strike
me!'

"'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman.  'Adios, Senor!' and
leaping into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.

"Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the
roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due
time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination.  There, luck
befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were
providentially in want of precisely that number of men which the
sailor headed.  They embarked; and so for ever got the start of
their former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal
retribution.

"Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived,
and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized
Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea.  Chartering a small
native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all
right there, again resumed his cruisings.

"Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of
Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses
to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that
destroyed him.

"'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.

"'I am, Don.'

"'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,
this your story is in substance really true?  It is so passing
wonderful!  Did you get it from an unquestionable source?  Bear with
me if I seem to press.'

"'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don
Sebastian's suit,' cried the company, with exceeding interest.

"'Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn,
gentlemen?'

"'Nay,' said Don Sebastian; 'but I know a worthy priest near by, who
will quickly procure one for me.  I go for it; but are you well
advised? this may grow too serious.'

"'Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?'

"'Though there are no Auto-da-Fe's in Lima now,' said one of the
company to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the
archiepiscopacy.  Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight.  I see
no need of this.'

"'Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg
that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized
Evangelists you can.'


'This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,' said Don
Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.

"'Let me remove my hat.  Now, venerable priest, further into the
light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.

"'So help me Heaven, and on my honour the story I have told ye,
gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true.  I know it to
be true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew;
I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.'"



CHAPTER 55

Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.


I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to
the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is
moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon
there.  It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to
those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the
present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman.  It is
time to set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures
of the whale all wrong.

It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions
will be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian
sculptures.  For ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times
when on the marble panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues,
and on shields, medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in
scales of chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St.
George's; ever since then has something of the same sort of license
prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in
many scientific presentations of him.

Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting
to be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of
Elephanta, in India.  The Brahmins maintain that in the almost
endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and
pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages
before any of them actually came into being.  No wonder then, that in
some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there
shadowed forth.  The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate
department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the
form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar.  But though
this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the
tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong.  It
looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms
of the true whale's majestic flukes.

But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian
painter's portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the
antediluvian Hindoo.  It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing
Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale.  Where did Guido get the
model of such a strange creature as that?  Nor does Hogarth, in
painting the same scene in his own "Perseus Descending," make out one
whit better.  The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster
undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water.  It has
a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked mouth into
which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' Gate
leading from the Thames by water into the Tower.  Then, there are the
Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as
depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers.
What shall be said of these?  As for the book-binder's whale winding
like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor--as stamped
and gilded on the backs and title-pages of many books both old and
new--that is a very picturesque but purely fabulous creature,
imitated, I take it, from the like figures on antique vases.  Though
universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call this
book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended
when the device was first introduced.  It was introduced by an old
Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the
Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a
comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a
species of the Leviathan.

In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you
will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all
manner of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and
Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain.  In the
title-page of the original edition of the "Advancement of Learning"
you will find some curious whales.

But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at
those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific
delineations, by those who know.  In old Harris's collection of
voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book
of voyages, A.D. 1671, entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in
the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master."
In one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are
represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running over
their living backs.  In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made
of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes.

Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain
Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage round
Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the
Spermaceti Whale Fisheries."  In this book is an outline purporting
to be a "Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale
from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on
deck."  I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for
the benefit of his marines.  To mention but one thing about it, let
me say that it has an eye which applied, according to the
accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye
of that whale a bow-window some five feet long.  Ah, my gallant
captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!

Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for
the benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness
of mistake.  Look at that popular work "Goldsmith's Animated Nature."
In the abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an
alleged "whale" and a "narwhale."  I do not wish to seem inelegant,
but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as
for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in
this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine
upon any intelligent public of schoolboys.

Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede, a great
naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are
several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan.  All
these are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or
Greenland whale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a
long experienced man as touching that species, declares not to have
its counterpart in nature.

But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous
Baron.  In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which
he gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale.  Before showing
that picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your
summary retreat from Nantucket.  In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm
Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash.  Of course, he never had
the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he
derived that picture, who can tell?  Perhaps he got it as his
scientific predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his
authentic abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing.  And what sort
of lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and
saucers inform us.

As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the
shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them?  They are generally
Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage;
breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full
of mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue
paint.

But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
surprising after all.  Consider!  Most of the scientific drawings
have been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as
correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would
correctly represent the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride
of hull and spars.  Though elephants have stood for their
full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated
himself for his portrait.  The living whale, in his full majesty and
significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and
afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched
line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a thing eternally
impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to
preserve all his mighty swells and undulations.  And, not to speak of
the highly presumable difference of contour between a young sucking
whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of
one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such is
then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that
his precise expression the devil himself could not catch.

But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded
whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form.  Not at
all.  For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan,
that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape.
Though Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the
library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a
burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other
leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be
inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones.  In fact, as the
great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same
relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the insect does
to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it.  This peculiarity
is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will
be incidentally shown.  It is also very curiously displayed in the
side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the
human hand, minus only the thumb.  This fin has four regular
bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger.  But all
these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human
fingers in an artificial covering.  "However recklessly the whale may
sometimes serve us," said humorous Stubb one day, "he can never be
truly said to handle us without mittens."

For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the
world which must remain unpainted to the last.  True, one portrait
may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with
any very considerable degree of exactness.  So there is no earthly
way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like.  And
the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his
living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you
run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him.
Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your
curiosity touching this Leviathan.



CHAPTER 56

Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of
Whaling Scenes.


In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly
tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them
which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern,
especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc.  But I
pass that matter by.

I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;
Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's.  In the
previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to.  Huggins's
is far better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best.
All Beale's drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle
figure in the picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping
his second chapter.  His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales,
though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some
parlor men, is admirably correct and life-like in its general effect.
Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J.  Ross Browne are pretty
correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved.  That is not
his fault though.

Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but
they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression.
He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad
deficiency, because it is by such pictures only, when at all well
done, that you can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living
whale as seen by his living hunters.

But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details
not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to
be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed,
and taken from paintings by one Garnery.  Respectively, they
represent attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale.  In the first
engraving a noble Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might,
just risen beneath the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and
bearing high in the air upon his back the terrific wreck of the
stoven planks.  The prow of the boat is partially unbroken, and is
drawn just balancing upon the monster's spine; and standing in that
prow, for that one single incomputable flash of time, you behold an
oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the whale,
and in the act of leaping, as if from a precipice.  The action of the
whole thing is wonderfully good and true.  The half-emptied line-tub
floats on the whitened sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons
obliquely bob in it; the heads of the swimming crew are scattered
about the whale in contrasting expressions of affright; while in the
black stormy distance the ship is bearing down upon the scene.
Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details of this
whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I could not draw
so good a one.

In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside
the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his
black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the
Patagonian cliffs.  His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so
that from so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there
must be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below.  Sea fowls
are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and
maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent
back.  And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing
through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake,
and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught
nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer.  Thus, the foreground is
all raging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is
the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of
the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered
fortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole
inserted into his spout-hole.

Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not.  But my life for it
he was either practically conversant with his subject, or else
marvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman.  The French are
the lads for painting action.  Go and gaze upon all the paintings of
Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and
breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at
Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the
consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash
of the Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors
dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs?  Not wholly unworthy of a
place in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.

The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of
things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and
engravings they have of their whaling scenes.  With not one tenth of
England's experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of
that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations
with the only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real
spirit of the whale hunt.  For the most part, the English and
American whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the
mechanical outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the
whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is
about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid.  Even
Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us a stiff
full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of
classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels;
and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the
inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified
Arctic snow crystals.  I mean no disparagement to the excellent
voyager (I honour him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it
was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a
sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.

In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two
other French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes
himself "H.  Durand."  One of them, though not precisely adapted to
our present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts.
It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French
whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on
board; the loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the
palms in the background, both drooping together in the breezeless
air.  The effect is very fine, when considered with reference to its
presenting the hardy fishermen under one of their few aspects of
oriental repose.  The other engraving is quite a different affair:
the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of the
Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the
act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a
boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is about
giving chase to whales in the distance.  The harpoons and lances lie
levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its
hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands
half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse.  From the ship,
the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the
smoke over a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud,
rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the
activity of the excited seamen.



CHAPTER 57

Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in
Mountains; in Stars.


On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen
a crippled beggar (or KEDGER, as the sailors say) holding a painted
board before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his
leg.  There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats
(presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity)
is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale.  Any time these
ten years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and
exhibited that stump to an incredulous world.  But the time of his
justification has now come.  His three whales are as good whales as
were ever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as
unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the western clearings.
But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a stump-speech
does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands ruefully
contemplating his own amputation.

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and
Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and
whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm
Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone,
and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the
numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of
the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure.  Some of them
have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially
intended for the skrimshandering business.  But, in general, they
toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent
tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in
the way of a mariner's fancy.

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a
man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called
savagery.  Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois.
I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the
Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.

Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his
domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of industry.  An ancient
Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and
elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as
a Latin lexicon.  For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a
shark's tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been
achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady application.

As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage.  With
the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth,
of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone
sculpture, not quite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its
maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full
of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old
Dutch savage, Albert Durer.

Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs
of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the
forecastles of American whalers.  Some of them are done with much
accuracy.

At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales
hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door.  When the porter
is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best.  But these knocking
whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays.  On the spires of
some old-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed
there for weather-cocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that
are to all intents and purposes so labelled with "HANDS OFF!" you
cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit.

In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken
cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the
plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of
the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks
against them in a surf of green surges.

Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is
continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from
some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the
profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges.  But you must
be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but
if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and
take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first
stand-point, else so chance-like are such observations of the hills,
that your precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious
re-discovery; like the Soloma Islands, which still remain incognita,
though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old Figuera
chronicled them.

Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace
out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them;
as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw
armies locked in battle among the clouds.  Thus at the North have I
chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the
bright points that first defined him to me.  And beneath the
effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined
the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of
Hydrus and the Flying Fish.

With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons
for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies,
to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents
really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!



CHAPTER 58

Brit.


Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast
meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right
Whale largely feeds.  For leagues and leagues it undulated round us,
so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and
golden wheat.

On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure
from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws
sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing
fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that
manner separated from the water that escaped at the lip.

As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance
their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so
these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and
leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*


*That part of the sea known among whalemen as the "Brazil Banks" does
not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there
being shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable
meadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually
floating in those latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.


But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at
all reminded one of mowers.  Seen from the mast-heads, especially
when they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black
forms looked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else.
And as in the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a
distance will sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants
without knowing them to be such, taking them for bare, blackened
elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who for the first
time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea.  And even
when recognised at last, their immense magnitude renders it very
hard really to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can
possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of life that
lives in a dog or a horse.

Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the
deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore.  For
though some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the
land are of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general
view of the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties,
where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in
disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog?  The
accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear
comparative analogy to him.

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the
seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and
repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra
incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to
discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the
most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and
indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who
have gone upon the waters; though but a moment's consideration will
teach, that however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and
however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may
augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea
will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest
frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of
these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness
of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a
widow.  That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the
wrecked ships of last year.  Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is
not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers.

Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a
miracle upon the other?  Preternatural terrors rested upon the
Hebrews, when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground
opened and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever
sets, but in precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships
and crews.

But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but
it is also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host
who murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself
hath spawned.  Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle
overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales
against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split
wrecks of ships.  No mercy, no power but its own controls it.
Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider,
the masterless ocean overruns the globe.

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures
glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously
hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure.  Consider also the
devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless
tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks.
Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose
creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the
world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most
docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you
not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?  For as this
appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man
there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed
by all the horrors of the half known life.  God keep thee!  Push not
off from that isle, thou canst never return!


CHAPTER 59

Squid.


Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on
her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air
impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three
tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three
mild palms on a plain.  And still, at wide intervals in the silvery
night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen.

But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost
preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with any
stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed
a golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the
slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran on; in this
profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by
Daggoo from the main-mast-head.

In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher
and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed
before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills.  Thus
glistening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank.  Then once
more arose, and silently gleamed.  It seemed not a whale; and yet is
this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo.  Again the phantom went down, but on
re-appearing once more, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every
man from his nod, the negro yelled out--"There! there again! there
she breaches! right ahead!  The White Whale, the White Whale!"

Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time
the bees rush to the boughs.  Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab
stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in
readiness to wave his orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance
in the direction indicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm
of Daggoo.

Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had
gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to connect
the ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the
particular whale he pursued; however this was, or whether his
eagerness betrayed him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner
did he distinctly perceive the white mass, than with a quick
intensity he instantly gave orders for lowering.

The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab's in advance, and all
swiftly pulling towards their prey.  Soon it went down, and while,
with oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the
same spot where it sank, once more it slowly rose.  Almost forgetting
for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most
wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to
mankind.  A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a
glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long
arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest
of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within
reach.  No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable
token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the
billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck
still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild
voice exclaimed--"Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him,
than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!"

"What was it, Sir?" said Flask.

"The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld,
and returned to their ports to tell of it."

But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the
vessel; the rest as silently following.

Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected
with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it
being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it
with portentousness.  So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all
of them declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet
very few of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its
true nature and form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to
the sperm whale his only food.  For though other species of whales
find their food above water, and may be seen by man in the act of
feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones
below the surface; and only by inference is it that any one can tell
of what, precisely, that food consists.  At times, when closely
pursued, he will disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms
of the squid; some of them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty
feet in length.  They fancy that the monster to which these arms
belonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed of the ocean; and that
the sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied with teeth in
order to attack and tear it.

There seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop
Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid.  The manner in
which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking,
with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two
correspond.  But much abatement is necessary with respect to the
incredible bulk he assigns it.

By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of
cuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would
seem to belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe.



CHAPTER 60

The Line.


With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well
as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere
presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible
whale-line.

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp,
slightly vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of
ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp
more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more
convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the
ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close
coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are
beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's
durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and
gloss.

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though
not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and
elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things),
is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp.  Hemp is a
dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a
golden-haired Circassian to behold.

The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness.  At first
sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is.  By
experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one
hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain
nearly equal to three tons.  In length, the common sperm whale-line
measures something over two hundred fathoms.  Towards the stern of
the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the
worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round,
cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or layers of
concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart," or
minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese.  As the least
tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take
somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is
used in stowing the line in its tub.  Some harpooneers will consume
almost an entire morning in this business, carrying the line high
aloft and then reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub,
so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and
twists.

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line
being continuously coiled in both tubs.  There is some advantage in
this; because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily
into the boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American
tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes
a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch
in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice,
which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very
much of a concentrated one.  When the painted canvas cover is clapped
on the American line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling off
with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales.

Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the
tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything.
This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts.
First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional
line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound
so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally
attached to the harpoon.  In these instances, the whale of course is
shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the
other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its
consort.  Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common
safety's sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached
to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end
almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not
stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down
after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no
town-crier would ever find her again.

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is
taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is
again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting
crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs
against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as
they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks
or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden
pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping
out.  From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and
is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms
(called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues
its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then
attached to the short-warp--the rope which is immediately connected
with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes
through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction.  All the
oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the
timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the
deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs.  Nor can any son
of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen
intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him
that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these
horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot
be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in
his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly.  Yet habit--strange
thing! what cannot habit accomplish?--Gayer sallies, more merry
mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over
your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of
the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six
burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew
pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you
may say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for
those repeated whaling disasters--some few of which are casually
chronicled--of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by
the line, and lost.  For, when the line is darting out, to be seated
then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold
whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and
shaft, and wheel, is grazing you.  It is worse; for you cannot sit
motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking
like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the
slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and
simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a
Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could
never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm;
and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the
fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose
of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before
being brought into actual play--this is a thing which carries more of
true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair.  But why
say more?  All men live enveloped in whale-lines.  All are born with
halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift,
sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle,
ever-present perils of life.  And if you be a philosopher, though
seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more
of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,
and not a harpoon, by your side.



CHAPTER 61

Stubb Kills a Whale.


If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents,
to Queequeg it was quite a different object.

"When you see him 'quid," said the savage, honing his harpoon in the
bow of his hoisted boat, "then you quick see him 'parm whale."

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing
special to engage them, the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the
spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea.  For this part of the
Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen
call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of
porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of
more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the
in-shore ground off Peru.

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders
leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed
in what seemed an enchanted air.  No resolution could withstand it;
in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went
out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum
will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the
seamen at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy.  So
that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for
every swing that we made there was a nod from below from the
slumbering helmsman.  The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests;
and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the
sun over all.

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices
my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency
preserved me; with a shock I came back to life.  And lo! close under
our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in
the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy
back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a
mirror.  But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and
anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet, the whale looked like a
portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon.  But that pipe,
poor whale, was thy last.  As if struck by some enchanter's wand, the
sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once started into
wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts of the
vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth
the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted
the sparkling brine into the air.

"Clear away the boats!  Luff!" cried Ahab.  And obeying his own
order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the
spokes.

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and
ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the
leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few
ripples as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be
alarmed, Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man
must speak but in whispers.  So seated like Ontario Indians on the
gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the
calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set.  Presently, as
we thus glided in chase, the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail
forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower
swallowed up.

"There go flukes!" was the cry, an announcement immediately followed
by Stubb's producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a
respite was granted.  After the full interval of his sounding had
elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of the
smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb
counted upon the honour of the capture.  It was obvious, now, that the
whale had at length become aware of his pursuers.  All silence of
cautiousness was therefore no longer of use.  Paddles were dropped,
and oars came loudly into play.  And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb
cheered on his crew to the assault.

Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish.  All alive to his
jeopardy, he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting
from the mad yeast which he brewed.*


*It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance
the entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists.
Though apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant
part about him.  So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and
invariably does so when going at his utmost speed.  Besides, such is
the breadth of the upper part of the front of his head, and such the
tapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that by obliquely
elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform himself from
a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New York
pilot-boat.


"Start her, start her, my men!  Don't hurry yourselves; take plenty
of time--but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all,"
cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke.  "Start her, now;
give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego.  Start her, Tash, my
boy--start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool--cucumbers is the
word--easy, easy--only start her like grim death and grinning devils,
and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves,
boys--that's all.  Start her!"

"Woo-hoo!  Wa-hee!" screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some
old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat
involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke
which the eager Indian gave.

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild.
"Kee-hee!  Kee-hee!" yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards
on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage.

"Ka-la!  Koo-loo!" howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a
mouthful of Grenadier's steak.  And thus with oars and yells the
keels cut the sea.  Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the
van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the
smoke from his mouth.  Like desperadoes they tugged and they
strained, till the welcome cry was heard--"Stand up, Tashtego!--give
it to him!"  The harpoon was hurled.  "Stern all!"  The oarsmen
backed water; the same moment something went hot and hissing along
every one of their wrists.  It was the magical line.  An instant
before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round
the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a
hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes
from his pipe.  As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so
also, just before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through
and through both of Stubb's hands, from which the hand-cloths, or
squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had
accidentally dropped.  It was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged
sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it
out of your clutch.

"Wet the line! wet the line!" cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him
seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into
it.*  More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place.
The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins.
Stubb and Tashtego here changed places--stem for stern--a staggering
business truly in that rocking commotion.


*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be
stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the
running line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or
bailer, is set apart for that purpose.  Your hat, however, is the
most convenient.


From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part
of the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you
would have thought the craft had two keels--one cleaving the water,
the other the air--as the boat churned on through both opposing
elements at once.  A continual cascade played at the bows; a
ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion
from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking
craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea.  Thus they
rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent
being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the
steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his
centre of gravity.  Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as
they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened
his flight.

"Haul in--haul in!" cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round
towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while
yet the boat was being towed on.  Soon ranging up by his flank,
Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart
after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat
alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow,
and then ranging up for another fling.

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks
down a hill.  His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood,
which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake.  The
slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back
its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other
like red men.  And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was
agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff
after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart,
hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb
straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the
gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.

"Pull up--pull up!" he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale
relaxed in his wrath.  "Pull up!--close to!" and the boat ranged
along the fish's flank.  When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly
churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there,
carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel
after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which
he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out.  But that gold
watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish.  And now it is
struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing
called his "flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood,
overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the
imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to
struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the
day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into
view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and
contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized
respirations.  At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it
had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and
falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into
the sea.  His heart had burst!

"He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo.

"Yes; both pipes smoked out!" and withdrawing his own from his mouth,
Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment,
stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.



CHAPTER 62

The Dart.


A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.

According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat
pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as
temporary steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the
foremost oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar.  Now it needs a
strong, nervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for
often, in what is called a long dart, the heavy implement has to be
flung to the distance of twenty or thirty feet.  But however
prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is expected to
pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed, he is expected to
set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not only by
incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations;
and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's compass, while
all the other muscles are strained and half started--what that is
none know but those who have tried it.  For one, I cannot bawl very
heartily and work very recklessly at one and the same time.  In this
straining, bawling state, then, with his back to the fish, all at
once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry--"Stand up, and
give it to him!"  He now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round
on his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with
what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into
the whale.  No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body,
that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful;
no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and
disrated; no wonder that some of them actually burst their
blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm whalemen are
absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many ship
owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer
that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how
can you expect to find it there when most wanted!

Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical
instant, that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and
harpooneer likewise start to running fore and aft, to the imminent
jeopardy of themselves and every one else.  It is then they change
places; and the headsman, the chief officer of the little craft,
takes his proper station in the bows of the boat.

Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both
foolish and unnecessary.  The headsman should stay in the bows from
first to last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no
rowing whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances
obvious to any fisherman.  I know that this would sometimes involve a
slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various
whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so
much the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the
harpooneer that has caused them.

To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of
this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not
from out of toil.



CHAPTER 63

The Crotch.


Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs.  So, in
productive subjects, grow the chapters.

The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent
mention.  It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in
length, which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale
near the bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden
extremity of the harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly
projects from the prow.  Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to
its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest as a
backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall.  It is customary to have
two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called the first
and second irons.

But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with
the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the
coming drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold.
It is a doubling of the chances.  But it very often happens that
owing to the instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale
upon receiving the first iron, it becomes impossible for the
harpooneer, however lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the
second iron into him.  Nevertheless, as the second iron is already
connected with the line, and the line is running, hence that weapon
must, at all events, be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat,
somehow and somewhere; else the most terrible jeopardy would involve
all hands.  Tumbled into the water, it accordingly is in such cases;
the spare coils of box line (mentioned in a preceding chapter) making
this feat, in most instances, prudently practicable.  But this
critical act is not always unattended with the saddest and most fatal
casualties.

Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror,
skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the
lines, or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all
directions.  Nor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until
the whale is fairly captured and a corpse.

Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging
one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these
qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of
such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be
simultaneously dangling about him.  For, of course, each boat is
supplied with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the
first one be ineffectually darted without recovery.  All these
particulars are faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to
elucidate several most important, however intricate passages, in
scenes hereafter to be painted.



CHAPTER 64

Stubb's Supper.


Stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship.  It was a
calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow
business of towing the trophy to the Pequod.  And now, as we eighteen
men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and
fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish
corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at
long intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the
enormousness of the mass we moved.  For, upon the great canal of
Hang-Ho, or whatever they call it, in China, four or five laborers on
the foot-path will draw a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile
an hour; but this grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if
laden with pig-lead in bulk.

Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod's
main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab
dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks.  Vacantly
eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual orders for
securing it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman,
went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again until
morning.

Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had
evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the
creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or
despair, seemed working in him; as if the sight of that dead body
reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a
thousand other whales were brought to his ship, all that would not
one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object.  Very soon you would
have thought from the sound on the Pequod's decks, that all hands
were preparing to cast anchor in the deep; for heavy chains are being
dragged along the deck, and thrust rattling out of the port-holes.
But by those clanking links, the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is
to be moored.  Tied by the head to the stern, and by the tail to the
bows, the whale now lies with its black hull close to the vessel's
and seen through the darkness of the night, which obscured the spars
and rigging aloft, the two--ship and whale, seemed yoked together
like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines while the other remains
standing.*


*A little item may as well be related here.  The strongest and most
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored
alongside, is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density
that part is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the
side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low
beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from
the boat, in order to put the chain round it.  But this difficulty is
ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden
float at its outer end, and a weight in its middle, while the other
end is secured to the ship.  By adroit management the wooden float is
made to rise on the other side of the mass, so that now having
girdled the whale, the chain is readily made to follow suit; and
being slipped along the body, is at last locked fast round the
smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with its broad
flukes or lobes.


If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be
known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest,
betrayed an unusual but still good-natured excitement.  Such an
unwonted bustle was he in that the staid Starbuck, his official
superior, quietly resigned to him for the time the sole management of
affairs.  One small, helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb,
was soon made strangely manifest.  Stubb was a high liver; he was
somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to his
palate.

"A steak, a steak, ere I sleep!  You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and
cut me one from his small!"

Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a
general thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the
enemy defray the current expenses of the war (at least before
realizing the proceeds of the voyage), yet now and then you find some
of these Nantucketers who have a genuine relish for that particular
part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering
extremity of the body.

About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two
lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti
supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard.  Nor
was Stubb the only banqueter on whale's flesh that night.  Mingling
their mumblings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of
sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its
fatness.  The few sleepers below in their bunks were often startled
by the sharp slapping of their tails against the hull, within a few
inches of the sleepers' hearts.  Peering over the side you could just
see them (as before you heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black
waters, and turning over on their backs as they scooped out huge
globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human head.  This
particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous.  How at such
an apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out such
symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of all
things.  The mark they thus leave on the whale, may best be likened
to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a screw.

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight,
sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like
hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to
bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while
the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving
each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled,
the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely
carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you
to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much
the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough
for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders
of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting
alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or
a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like
instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and
occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most
hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when
you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more
jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a
whaleship at sea.  If you have never seen that sight, then suspend
your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the
expediency of conciliating the devil.

But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was
going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of
his own epicurean lips.

"Cook, cook!--where's that old Fleece?" he cried at length, widening
his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his
supper; and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if
stabbing with his lance; "cook, you cook!--sail this way, cook!"

The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously
roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came
shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was
something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well
scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him,
came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs,
which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops;
this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of
command, came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb's
sideboard; when, with both hands folded before him, and resting on
his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back still further over, at
the same time sideways inclining his head, so as to bring his best
ear into play.

"Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his
mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone?  You've been
beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender.  Don't I always
say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough?  There are those
sharks now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and
rare?  What a shindy they are kicking up!  Cook, go and talk to 'em;
tell 'em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in
moderation, but they must keep quiet.  Blast me, if I can hear my own
voice.  Away, cook, and deliver my message.  Here, take this
lantern," snatching one from his sideboard; "now then, go and preach
to 'em!"

Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the
deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low
over the sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the
other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the
side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb,
softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.

"Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam
noise dare.  You hear?  Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lips!  Massa
Stubb say dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but
by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!"

"Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden
slap on the shoulder,--"Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear
that way when you're preaching.  That's no way to convert sinners,
cook!"

"Who dat?  Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turning to go.

"No, cook; go on, go on."

"Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:"-

"Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to it; try that,"
and Fleece continued.

"Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you,
fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness--'top dat dam slappin' ob de
tail!  How you tink to hear, spose you keep up such a dam slappin'
and bitin' dare?"

"Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have that swearing.
Talk to 'em gentlemanly."

Once more the sermon proceeded.

"Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for;
dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur,
dat is de pint.  You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in
you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark
well goberned.  Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil,
a helping yourselbs from dat whale.  Don't be tearin' de blubber out
your neighbour's mout, I say.  Is not one shark dood right as toder
to dat whale?  And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale;
dat whale belong to some one else.  I know some o' you has berry brig
mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de
small bellies; so dat de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid,
but to bit off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get
into de scrouge to help demselves."

"Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on."

"No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scougin' and slappin'
each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word; no use a-preaching
to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is full, and
dare bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get 'em full, dey wont
hear you den; for den dey sink in the sea, go fast to sleep on de
coral, and can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber."

"Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the
benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to my supper."

Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his
shrill voice, and cried--

"Cussed fellow-critters!  Kick up de damndest row as ever you can;
fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust--and den die."

"Now, cook," said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; "stand
just where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay
particular attention."

"All 'dention," said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in
the desired position.

"Well," said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; "I shall now go
back to the subject of this steak.  In the first place, how old are
you, cook?"

"What dat do wid de 'teak," said the old black, testily.

"Silence!  How old are you, cook?"

"'Bout ninety, dey say," he gloomily muttered.

"And you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, cook,
and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak?" rapidly bolting
another mouthful at the last word, so that morsel seemed a
continuation of the question.  "Where were you born, cook?"

"'Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roanoke."

"Born in a ferry-boat!  That's queer, too.  But I want to know what
country you were born in, cook!"

"Didn't I say de Roanoke country?" he cried sharply.

"No, you didn't, cook; but I'll tell you what I'm coming to, cook.
You must go home and be born over again; you don't know how to cook a
whale-steak yet."

"Bress my soul, if I cook noder one," he growled, angrily, turning
round to depart.

"Come back here, cook;--here, hand me those tongs;--now take that bit
of steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it
should be?  Take it, I say"--holding the tongs towards him--"take it,
and taste it."

Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old
negro muttered, "Best cooked 'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy."

"Cook," said Stubb, squaring himself once more; "do you belong to the
church?"

"Passed one once in Cape-Down," said the old man sullenly.

"And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town,
where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as
his beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook!  And yet you come here,
and tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?" said Stubb.
"Where do you expect to go to, cook?"

"Go to bed berry soon," he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.

"Avast! heave to!  I mean when you die, cook.  It's an awful
question.  Now what's your answer?"

"When dis old brack man dies," said the negro slowly, changing his
whole air and demeanor, "he hisself won't go nowhere; but some
bressed angel will come and fetch him."

"Fetch him?  How?  In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah?  And
fetch him where?"

"Up dere," said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and
keeping it there very solemnly.

"So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook, when
you are dead?  But don't you know the higher you climb, the colder it
gets?  Main-top, eh?"

"Didn't say dat t'all," said Fleece, again in the sulks.

"You said up there, didn't you? and now look yourself, and see where
your tongs are pointing.  But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven
by crawling through the lubber's hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you
don't get there, except you go the regular way, round by the rigging.
It's a ticklish business, but must be done, or else it's no go.  But
none of us are in heaven yet.  Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my
orders.  Do ye hear?  Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t'other
a'top of your heart, when I'm giving my orders, cook.  What! that
your heart, there?--that's your gizzard!  Aloft! aloft!--that's
it--now you have it.  Hold it there now, and pay attention."

"All 'dention," said the old black, with both hands placed as
desired, vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears
in front at one and the same time.

"Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad,
that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that,
don't you?  Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak
for my private table here, the capstan, I'll tell you what to do so
as not to spoil it by overdoing.  Hold the steak in one hand, and
show a live coal to it with the other; that done, dish it; d'ye hear?
And now to-morrow, cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure
you stand by to get the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle.
As for the ends of the flukes, have them soused, cook.  There, now ye
may go."

But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.

"Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch.
D'ye hear? away you sail, then.--Halloa! stop! make a bow before you
go.--Avast heaving again!  Whale-balls for breakfast--don't forget."

"Wish, by gor! whale eat him, 'stead of him eat whale.  I'm bressed
if he ain't more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself," muttered the old
man, limping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his
hammock.



CHAPTER 65

The Whale as a Dish.


That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp,
and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems
so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the
history and philosophy of it.

It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right
Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large
prices there.  Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a certain cook of
the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce
to be eaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a
species of whale.  Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine
eating.  The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard
balls, and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for
turtle-balls or veal balls.  The old monks of Dunfermline were very
fond of them.  They had a great porpoise grant from the crown.

The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all
hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but
when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet
long, it takes away your appetite.  Only the most unprejudiced of men
like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are
not so fastidious.  We all know how they live upon whales, and have
rare old vintages of prime old train oil.  Zogranda, one of their
most famous doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as
being exceedingly juicy and nourishing.  And this reminds me that
certain Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland
by a whaling vessel--that these men actually lived for several months
on the mouldy scraps of whales which had been left ashore after
trying out the blubber.  Among the Dutch whalemen these scraps are
called "fritters"; which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown
and crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam housewives'
dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh.  They have such an eatable look
that the most self-denying stranger can hardly keep his hands off.

But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his
exceeding richness.  He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to
be delicately good.  Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating
as the buffalo's (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a
solid pyramid of fat.  But the spermaceti itself, how bland and
creamy that is; like the transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a
cocoanut in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply
a substitute for butter.  Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method
of absorbing it into some other substance, and then partaking of it.
In the long try watches of the night it is a common thing for the
seamen to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them
fry there awhile.  Many a good supper have I thus made.

In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine
dish.  The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the
two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two
large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a
most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head,
which is quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that
some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon
calves' brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own,
so as to be able to tell a calf's head from their own heads; which,
indeed, requires uncommon discrimination.  And that is the reason why
a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's head before him, is
somehow one of the saddest sights you can see.  The head looks a sort
of reproachfully at him, with an "Et tu Brute!" expression.

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively
unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with
abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the
consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly
murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light.  But no
doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a
murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by
oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if
any murderer does.  Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see
the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead
quadrupeds.  Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's
jaw?  Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?  I tell you it will be more
tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his
cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that
provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee,
civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground
and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is
adding insult to injury, is it?  Look at your knife-handle, there, my
civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what
is that handle made of?--what but the bones of the brother of the
very ox you are eating?  And what do you pick your teeth with, after
devouring that fat goose?  With a feather of the same fowl.  And with
what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of
Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars?  It is only within
the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to
patronise nothing but steel pens.



CHAPTER 66

The Shark Massacre.


When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and
weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a
general thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business
of cutting him in.  For that business is an exceedingly laborious
one; is not very soon completed; and requires all hands to set about
it.  Therefore, the common usage is to take in all sail; lash the
helm a'lee; and then send every one below to his hammock till
daylight, with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches
shall be kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each couple, the
crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see that all goes well.

But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan
will not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks
gather round the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours,
say, on a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by
morning.  In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish
do not so largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times
considerably diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp
whaling-spades, a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some
instances, only seems to tickle them into still greater activity.
But it was not thus in the present case with the Pequod's sharks;
though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights, to have
looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the whole
round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.

Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper
was concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle
seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among the
sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side,
and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light
over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long
whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks,* by
striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only
vital part.  But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling
hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought
about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe.  They
viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like
flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails
seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be
oppositely voided by the gaping wound.  Nor was this all.  It was
unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures.  A
sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very
joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had
departed.  Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one
of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried
to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.


*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best
steel; is about the bigness of a man's spread hand; and in general
shape, corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named;
only its sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably
narrower than the lower.  This weapon is always kept as sharp as
possible; and when being used is occasionally honed, just like a
razor.  In its socket, a stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long,
is inserted for a handle.


"Queequeg no care what god made him shark," said the savage,
agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; "wedder Fejee god or
Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."



CHAPTER 67

Cutting In.


It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed!  Ex officio
professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen.  The ivory Pequod
was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher.  You
would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the
sea gods.

In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other
ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted
green, and which no single man can possibly lift--this vast bunch of
grapes was swayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower
mast-head, the strongest point anywhere above a ship's deck.  The end
of the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then
conducted to the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles
was swung over the whale; to this block the great blubber hook,
weighing some one hundred pounds, was attached.  And now suspended in
stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their
long spades, began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of
the hook just above the nearest of the two side-fins.  This done, a
broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted,
and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence
heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass.  When instantly, the
entire ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like
the nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she trembles,
quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky.  More and more
she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the
windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at
last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship
rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle
rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of
the first strip of blubber.  Now as the blubber envelopes the whale
precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the
body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it.
For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps
the whale rolling over and over in the water, and as the blubber in
one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the "scarf,"
simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates;
and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very
act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher aloft
till its upper end grazes the main-top; the men at the windlass then
cease heaving, and for a moment or two the prodigious blood-dripping
mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and every one
present must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may
box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard.

One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen
weapon called a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he
dexterously slices out a considerable hole in the lower part of the
swaying mass.  Into this hole, the end of the second alternating
great tackle is then hooked so as to retain a hold upon the blubber,
in order to prepare for what follows.  Whereupon, this accomplished
swordsman, warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a
scientific dash at the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate,
lunging slicings, severs it completely in twain; so that while the
short lower part is still fast, the long upper strip, called a
blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready for lowering.  The
heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one tackle is
peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other is
slowly slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the main
hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the
blubber-room.  Into this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep
coiling away the long blanket-piece as if it were a great live mass
of plaited serpents.  And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles
hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass
heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the
mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing
occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction.



CHAPTER 68

The Blanket.


I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin
of the whale.  I have had controversies about it with experienced
whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore.  My original opinion
remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion.

The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale?  Already
you know what his blubber is.  That blubber is something of the
consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic
and compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen
inches in thickness.

Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any
creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness,
yet in point of fact these are no arguments against such a
presumption; because you cannot raise any other dense enveloping
layer from the whale's body but that same blubber; and the outermost
enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be
but the skin?  True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you
may scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent
substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only
it is almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to
being dried, when it not only contracts and thickens, but becomes
rather hard and brittle.  I have several such dried bits, which I use
for marks in my whale-books.  It is transparent, as I said before;
and being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself
with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence.  At any rate, it is
pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you
may say.  But what I am driving at here is this.  That same
infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the
entire body of the whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin
of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were
simply ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous
whale is thinner and more tender than the skin of a new-born child.
But no more of this.

Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this
skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk
of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in
quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only
three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea
may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere
part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that.
Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net
weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale's skin.

In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least
among the many marvels he presents.  Almost invariably it is all over
obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in
thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line
engravings.  But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the
isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it,
as if they were engraved upon the body itself.  Nor is this all.  In
some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as
in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other
delineations.  These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those
mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that
is the proper word to use in the present connexion.  By my retentive
memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was
much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters
chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the
Upper Mississippi.  Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked
whale remains undecipherable.  This allusion to the Indian rocks
reminds me of another thing.  Besides all the other phenomena which
the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the
back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the
regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches,
altogether of an irregular, random aspect.  I should say that those
New England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to bear
the marks of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs--I
should say, that those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm
Whale in this particular.  It also seems to me that such scratches in
the whale are probably made by hostile contact with other whales; for
I have most remarked them in the large, full-grown bulls of the
species.

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of
the whale.  It has already been said, that it is stript from him in
long pieces, called blanket-pieces.  Like most sea-terms, this one is
very happy and significant.  For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his
blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an
Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity.  It is
by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is
enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas,
times, and tides.  What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in
those shuddering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy
surtout?  True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those
Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded,
lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that
warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter
would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs
and warm blood.  Freeze his blood, and he dies.  How wonderful is it
then--except after explanation--that this great monster, to whom
corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful
that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in
those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are
sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the
hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber.  But more
surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the
blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in
summer.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong
individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare
virtue of interior spaciousness.  Oh, man! admire and model thyself
after the whale!  Do thou, too, remain warm among ice.  Do thou, too,
live in this world without being of it.  Be cool at the equator; keep
thy blood fluid at the Pole.  Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and
like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of
thine own.

But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things!  Of
erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few
vast as the whale!



CHAPTER 69

The Funeral.


Haul in the chains!  Let the carcase go astern!

The vast tackles have now done their duty.  The peeled white body of
the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in
hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk.  It is still
colossal.  Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it
torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed
with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so
many insulting poniards in the whale.  The vast white headless
phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that
it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of
fowls, augment the murderous din.  For hours and hours from the
almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen.  Beneath the
unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea,
wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and
on, till lost in infinite perspectives.

There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral!  The sea-vultures
all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or
speckled.  In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I
ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his
funeral they most piously do pounce.  Oh, horrible vultureism of
earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.

Nor is this the end.  Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare.  Espied by some timid
man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the
distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the
white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high
against it; straightway the whale's unharming corpse, with trembling
fingers is set down in the log--SHOALS, ROCKS, AND BREAKERS
HEREABOUTS: BEWARE!  And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun
the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because
their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held.  There's
your law of precedents; there's your utility of traditions; there's
the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on
the earth, and now not even hovering in the air!  There's orthodoxy!

Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a real
terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic
to a world.

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend?  There are other ghosts than
the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe
in them.



CHAPTER 70

The Sphynx.


It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping
the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded.  Now, the beheading of
the Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which
experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not
without reason.

Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a
neck; on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there,
in that very place, is the thickest part of him.  Remember, also,
that the surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet
intervening between him and his subject, and that subject almost
hidden in a discoloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and
bursting sea.  Bear in mind, too, that under these untoward
circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh; and in that
subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep into
the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer clear
of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a
critical point hard by its insertion into the skull.  Do you not
marvel, then, at Stubb's boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to
behead a sperm whale?

When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a
cable till the body is stripped.  That done, if it belong to a small
whale it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of.  But,
with a full grown leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm whale's
head embraces nearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely to
suspend such a burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a
whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn
in jewellers' scales.

The Pequod's whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head
was hoisted against the ship's side--about half way out of the sea,
so that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native
element.  And there with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it,
by reason of the enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and
every yard-arm on that side projecting like a crane over the waves;
there, that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod's waist like the
giant Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith.

When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went
below to their dinner.  Silence reigned over the before tumultuous
but now deserted deck.  An intense copper calm, like a universal
yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless
leaves upon the sea.

A short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Ahab alone
from his cabin.  Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to
gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took
Stubb's long spade--still remaining there after the whale's
Decapitation--and striking it into the lower part of the
half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm,
and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert.  "Speak, thou
vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished
with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee.  Of all
divers, thou hast dived the deepest.  That head upon which the upper
sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations.  Where
unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot;
where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with
bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land,
there was thy most familiar home.  Thou hast been where bell or diver
never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless
mothers would give their lives to lay them down.  Thou saw'st the
locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart
they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven
seemed false to them.  Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by
pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper
midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on
unharmed--while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that
would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms.
O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an
infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!"

"Sail ho!" cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.

"Aye?  Well, now, that's cheering," cried Ahab, suddenly erecting
himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow.  "That
lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better
man.--Where away?"

"Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze
to us!

"Better and better, man.  Would now St. Paul would come along that
way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze!  O Nature, and O soul
of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not
the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning
duplicate in mind."



CHAPTER 71

The Jeroboam's Story.


Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster
than the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.

By and by, through the glass the stranger's boats and manned
mast-heads proved her a whale-ship.  But as she was so far to
windward, and shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other
ground, the Pequod could not hope to reach her.  So the signal was
set to see what response would be made.

Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships
of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which
signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective
vessels attached, every captain is provided with it.  Thereby, the
whale commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean,
even at considerable distances and with no small facility.

The Pequod's signal was at last responded to by the stranger's
setting her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of
Nantucket.  Squaring her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under the
Pequod's lee, and lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the
side-ladder was being rigged by Starbuck's order to accommodate the
visiting captain, the stranger in question waved his hand from his
boat's stern in token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary.
It turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board,
and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of infecting the Pequod's
company.  For, though himself and boat's crew remained untainted, and
though his ship was half a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea
and air rolling and flowing between; yet conscientiously adhering to
the timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily refused to come
into direct contact with the Pequod.

But this did by no means prevent all communications.  Preserving an
interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the
Jeroboam's boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep
parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by
this time it blew very fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though,
indeed, at times by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the
boat would be pushed some way ahead; but would be soon skilfully
brought to her proper bearings again.  Subject to this, and other the
like interruptions now and then, a conversation was sustained between
the two parties; but at intervals not without still another
interruption of a very different sort.

Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a singular
appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual
notabilities make up all totalities.  He was a small, short, youngish
man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant
yellow hair.  A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded
walnut tinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which were
rolled up on his wrists.  A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in
his eyes.

So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had
exclaimed--"That's he! that's he!--the long-togged scaramouch the
Town-Ho's company told us of!"  Stubb here alluded to a strange story
told of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time
previous when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho.  According to this
account and what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the
scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost
everybody in the Jeroboam.  His story was this:

He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna
Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret
meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of a
trap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which
he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing
gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum.  A strange,
apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for
Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed
a steady, common-sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand
candidate for the Jeroboam's whaling voyage.  They engaged him; but
straightway upon the ship's getting out of sight of land, his
insanity broke out in a freshet.  He announced himself as the
archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard.  He
published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the
deliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica.
The unflinching earnestness with which he declared these things;--the
dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited imagination, and all the
preternatural terrors of real delirium, united to invest this Gabriel
in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew, with an atmosphere
of sacredness.  Moreover, they were afraid of him.  As such a man,
however, was not of much practical use in the ship, especially as he
refused to work except when he pleased, the incredulous captain would
fain have been rid of him; but apprised that that individual's
intention was to land him in the first convenient port, the archangel
forthwith opened all his seals and vials--devoting the ship and all
hands to unconditional perdition, in case this intention was carried
out.  So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the crew, that
at last in a body they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel
was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain.  He was
therefore forced to relinquish his plan.  Nor would they permit
Gabriel to be any way maltreated, say or do what he would; so that it
came to pass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship.  The
consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared little or
nothing for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had broken
out, he carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the plague,
as he called it, was at his sole command; nor should it be stayed but
according to his good pleasure.  The sailors, mostly poor devils,
cringed, and some of them fawned before him; in obedience to his
instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a god.
Such things may seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are
true.  Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to
the measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his
measureless power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others.  But
it is time to return to the Pequod.

"I fear not thy epidemic, man," said Ahab from the bulwarks, to
Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern; "come on board."

But now Gabriel started to his feet.

"Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious!  Beware of the
horrible plague!"

"Gabriel!  Gabriel!" cried Captain Mayhew; "thou must either--"  But
that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its
seethings drowned all speech.

"Hast thou seen the White Whale?" demanded Ahab, when the boat
drifted back.

"Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk!  Beware of the
horrible tail!"

"I tell thee again, Gabriel, that--"  But again the boat tore ahead
as if dragged by fiends.  Nothing was said for some moments, while a
succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those
occasional caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it.
Meantime, the hoisted sperm whale's head jogged about very violently,
and Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than
his archangel nature seemed to warrant.

When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story
concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions
from Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that
seemed leagued with him.

It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon
speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the
existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made.  Greedily sucking
in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against
attacking the White Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his
gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being
than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible.  But
when, some year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from
the mast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter
him; and the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the
opportunity, despite all the archangel's denunciations and
forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his boat.
With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and many
perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one
iron fast.  Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head,
was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies
of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity.  Now,
while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat's bow, and with
all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild
exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for
his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its
quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the
bodies of the oarsmen.  Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of
furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc
in his descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty
yards.  Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any
oarsman's head; but the mate for ever sank.

It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the
Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.
Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated;
oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which
the headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body.
But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances
than one, when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of
violence is discernible; the man being stark dead.

The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly
descried from the ship.  Raising a piercing shriek--"The vial! the
vial!"  Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further
hunting of the whale.  This terrible event clothed the archangel with
added influence; because his credulous disciples believed that he had
specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general
prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit
one of many marks in the wide margin allowed.  He became a nameless
terror to the ship.

Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions to
him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he
intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer.  To
which Ahab answered--"Aye."  Straightway, then, Gabriel once more
started to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently
exclaimed, with downward pointed finger--"Think, think of the
blasphemer--dead, and down there!--beware of the blasphemer's end!"

Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, "Captain, I have
just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy
officers, if I mistake not.  Starbuck, look over the bag."

Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various
ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,
depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans.
Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only
received after attaining an age of two or three years or more.

Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand.  It was sorely
tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in
consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin.  Of such a
letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy.

"Can'st not read it?" cried Ahab.  "Give it me, man.  Aye, aye, it's
but a dim scrawl;--what's this?"  As he was studying it out, Starbuck
took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the
end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the
boat, without its coming any closer to the ship.

Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, "Mr. Har--yes, Mr.
Harry--(a woman's pinny hand,--the man's wife, I'll wager)--Aye--Mr.
Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam;--why it's Macey, and he's dead!"

"Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife," sighed Mayhew; "but
let me have it."

"Nay, keep it thyself," cried Gabriel to Ahab; "thou art soon going
that way."

"Curses throttle thee!" yelled Ahab.  "Captain Mayhew, stand by now
to receive it"; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck's hands,
he caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the
boat.  But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from
rowing; the boat drifted a little towards the ship's stern; so that,
as if by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel's eager
hand.  He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and
impaling the letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship.
It fell at Ahab's feet.  Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to
give way with their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat
rapidly shot away from the Pequod.

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the
jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to
this wild affair.



CHAPTER 72

The Monkey-Rope.


In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale,
there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew.  Now
hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there.  There
is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time
everything has to be done everywhere.  It is much the same with him
who endeavors the description of the scene.  We must now retrace our
way a little.  It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in
the whale's back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original
hole there cut by the spades of the mates.  But how did so clumsy and
weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole?  It was
inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was,
as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster's back for the special
purpose referred to.  But in very many cases, circumstances require
that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole tensing
or stripping operation is concluded.  The whale, be it observed, lies
almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated
upon.  So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the
poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the
water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him.  On
the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume--a
shirt and socks--in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to
uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as
will presently be seen.

Being the savage's bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the
bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful
duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon
the dead whale's back.  You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a
dancing-ape by a long cord.  Just so, from the ship's steep side, did
I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called
in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas
belted round his waist.

It was a humorously perilous business for both of us.  For, before we
proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at
both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my
narrow leather one.  So that for better or for worse, we two, for the
time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more,
then both usage and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord,
it should drag me down in his wake.  So, then, an elongated Siamese
ligature united us.  Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother;
nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the
hempen bond entailed.

So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then,
that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to
perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock
company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and
that another's mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into
unmerited disaster and death.  Therefore, I saw that here was a sort
of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could
have so gross an injustice.  And yet still further pondering--while I
jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would
threaten to jam him--still further pondering, I say, I saw that this
situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that
breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese
connexion with a plurality of other mortals.  If your banker breaks,
you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your
pills, you die.  True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you
may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of
life.  But handle Queequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would,
sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard.
Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the
management of one end of it.*


*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the
Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together.  This
improvement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man
than Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest
possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his
monkey-rope holder.


I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the
whale and the ship--where he would occasionally fall, from the
incessant rolling and swaying of both.  But this was not the only
jamming jeopardy he was exposed to.  Unappalled by the massacre made
upon them during the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly
allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from the
carcass--the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive.

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them
aside with his floundering feet.  A thing altogether incredible were
it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise
miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.

Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a
ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to
them.  Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and
then jerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of
what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark--he was provided with still
another protection.  Suspended over the side in one of the stages,
Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of
keen whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they
could reach.  This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very
disinterested and benevolent of them.  They meant Queequeg's best
happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from
the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half
hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet spades of theirs
would come nearer amputating a leg than a tall.  But poor Queequeg, I
suppose, straining and gasping there with that great iron hook--poor
Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life
into the hands of his gods.

Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in
and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea--what matters
it, after all?  Are you not the precious image of each and all of us
men in this whaling world?  That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is
Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what
between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor
lad.

But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg.  For
now, as with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at
last climbs up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily
trembling over the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent,
consolatory glance hands him--what?  Some hot Cognac?  No! hands him,
ye gods! hands him a cup of tepid ginger and water!

"Ginger?  Do I smell ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb, coming near.
"Yes, this must be ginger," peering into the as yet untasted cup.
Then standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards
the astonished steward slowly saying, "Ginger? ginger? and will you
have the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of
ginger?  Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to
kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal?  Ginger!--what the devil is
ginger?--sea-coal? firewood?--lucifer
matches?--tinder?--gunpowder?--what the devil is ginger, I say, that
you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg here."

"There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this
business," he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just
come from forward.  "Will you look at that kannakin, sir; smell of
it, if you please."  Then watching the mate's countenance, he added,
"The steward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and
jalap to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale.  Is the steward
an apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters
by which he blows back the life into a half-drowned man?"

"I trust not," said Starbuck, "it is poor stuff enough."

"Aye, aye, steward," cried Stubb, "we'll teach you to drug it
harpooneer; none of your apothecary's medicine here; you want to
poison us, do ye?  You have got out insurances on our lives and want
to murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?"

"It was not me," cried Dough-Boy, "it was Aunt Charity that brought
the ginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any
spirits, but only this ginger-jub--so she called it."

"Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with ye to
the lockers, and get something better.  I hope I do no wrong, Mr.
Starbuck.  It is the captain's orders--grog for the harpooneer on a
whale."

"Enough," replied Starbuck, "only don't hit him again, but--"

"Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something
of that sort; and this fellow's a weazel.  What were you about
saying, sir?"

"Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself."

When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and a
sort of tea-caddy in the other.  The first contained strong spirits,
and was handed to Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity's gift, and
that was freely given to the waves.



CHAPTER 73

Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him.


It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale's
prodigious head hanging to the Pequod's side.  But we must let it
continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to
it.  For the present other matters press, and the best we can do now
for the head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold.

Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually
drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit,
gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the
Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking
anywhere near.  And though all hands commonly disdained the capture
of those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not
commissioned to cruise for them at all, and though she had passed
numbers of them near the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now
that a Sperm Whale had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the
surprise of all, the announcement was made that a Right Whale should
be captured that day, if opportunity offered.

Nor was this long wanting.  Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two
boats, Stubb's and Flask's, were detached in pursuit.  Pulling
further and further away, they at last became almost invisible to the
men at the mast-head.  But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great
heap of tumultuous white water, and soon after news came from aloft
that one or both the boats must be fast.  An interval passed and the
boats were in plain sight, in the act of being dragged right towards
the ship by the towing whale.  So close did the monster come to the
hull, that at first it seemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly
going down in a maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he wholly
disappeared from view, as if diving under the keel.  "Cut, cut!" was
the cry from the ship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on
the point of being brought with a deadly dash against the vessel's
side.  But having plenty of line yet in the tubs, and the whale not
sounding very rapidly, they paid out abundance of rope, and at the
same time pulled with all their might so as to get ahead of the ship.
For a few minutes the struggle was intensely critical; for while
they still slacked out the tightened line in one direction, and still
plied their oars in another, the contending strain threatened to take
them under.  But it was only a few feet advance they sought to gain.
And they stuck to it till they did gain it; when instantly, a swift
tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel, as the
strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under
her bows, snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its drippings,
that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water, while the
whale beyond also rose to sight, and once more the boats were free to
fly.  But the fagged whale abated his speed, and blindly altering his
course, went round the stern of the ship towing the two boats after
him, so that they performed a complete circuit.

Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close
flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for
lance; and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while the
multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm Whale's
body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking
at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting
fountains that poured from the smitten rock.

At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he
turned upon his back a corpse.

While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his
flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing,
some conversation ensued between them.

"I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard," said
Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with
so ignoble a leviathan.

"Wants with it?" said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat's
bow, "did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm
Whale's head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a
Right Whale's on the larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that
ship can never afterwards capsize?"

"Why not?

"I don't know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying
so, and he seems to know all about ships' charms.  But I sometimes
think he'll charm the ship to no good at last.  I don't half like
that chap, Stubb.  Did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort
of carved into a snake's head, Stubb?"

"Sink him!  I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of
a dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by;
look down there, Flask"--pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion
of both hands--"Aye, will I!  Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the
devil in disguise.  Do you believe that cock and bull story about his
having been stowed away on board ship?  He's the devil, I say.  The
reason why you don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of
sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, I guess.  Blast him!
now that I think of it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the
toes of his boots."

"He sleeps in his boots, don't he?  He hasn't got any hammock; but
I've seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging."

"No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do
ye see, in the eye of the rigging."

"What's the old man have so much to do with him for?"

"Striking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose."

"Bargain?--about what?"

"Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and
the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away
his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then
he'll surrender Moby Dick."

"Pooh!  Stubb, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?"

"I don't know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked
one, I tell ye.  Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the
old flag-ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and
gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at home.  Well,
he was at home, and asked the devil what he wanted.  The devil,
switching his hoofs, up and says, 'I want John.'  'What for?' says
the old governor.  'What business is that of yours,' says the devil,
getting mad,--'I want to use him.'  'Take him,' says the
governor--and by the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn't give John the
Asiatic cholera before he got through with him, I'll eat this whale
in one mouthful.  But look sharp--ain't you all ready there?  Well,
then, pull ahead, and let's get the whale alongside."

"I think I remember some such story as you were telling," said Flask,
when at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden
towards the ship, "but I can't remember where."

"Three Spaniards?  Adventures of those three bloody-minded soladoes?
Did ye read it there, Flask?  I guess ye did?"

"No: never saw such a book; heard of it, though.  But now, tell me,
Stubb, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now,
was the same you say is now on board the Pequod?"

"Am I the same man that helped kill this whale?  Doesn't the devil
live for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead?  Did you ever
see any parson a wearing mourning for the devil?  And if the devil
has a latch-key to get into the admiral's cabin, don't you suppose he
can crawl into a porthole?  Tell me that, Mr. Flask?"

"How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?"

"Do you see that mainmast there?" pointing to