                                      1851
                                   MOBY DICK;
                                  OR THE WHALE
                               by Herman Melville
  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 And there they stand- miles
of them- leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys,
streets avenues- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all
unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the
compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
  Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes.
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in
a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic
in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he
will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that
region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try
this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a
metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and
water are wedded for ever.
  But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest,
shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all
the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There
stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a
crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep
his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep
into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs
of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture
lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs
like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the
shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit
the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade
knee-deep among Tiger-lilies- what is the one charm wanting?- Water-
there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of
sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor
poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver,
deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest
his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost
every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some
time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a
passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first
told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the
old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a
separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not
without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of
Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image
he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same
image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of
the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
  Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I
begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of
my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a
passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a
purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides,
passengers get sea-sick- grow quarrelsome- don't sleep of nights- do
not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;- no, I never go as a
passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea
as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and
distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I
abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of
every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of
myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and
what not. And as for going as cook,- though I confess there is
considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on
ship-board- yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;- though once
broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and
peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say
reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the
idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and
roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in
their huge bakehouses the pyramids.
  No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the
mast, plumb down into the fore-castle, aloft there to the royal
mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump
from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first,
this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of
honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the
land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more
than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot,
you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest
boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure
you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong
decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear
it. But even this wears off in time.
  What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to,
weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think
the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I
promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular
instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old
sea-captains may order me about- however they may thump and punch me
about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that
everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way- either
in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the
universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's
shoulder-blades, and be content.
  Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point
of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a
single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers
themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world
between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most
uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon
us. But being paid,- what will compare with it? The urbane activity
with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that
we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills,
and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how
cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
  Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome
exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,
head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is,
if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part
the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand
from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first;
but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their
leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little
suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt
the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to
go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the
Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs
me, and influences me in some unaccountable way- he can better
answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling
voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was
drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude
and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part
of the bill must have run something like this:

  "Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
                 "WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
                 "BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."

  Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers,
the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage,
when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and
short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces-
though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall
all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and
motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises,
induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me
into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own
unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
  Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great
whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all
my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his
island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these,
with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and
sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such
things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am
tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail
forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is
good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social
with it- would they let me- since it is but well to be on friendly
terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.
  By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the
great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated
into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most
of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
  CHAPTER 2
  The Carpet-Bag

  I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under
my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good
city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday
night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the
little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of
reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday.
  As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop
at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may
as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my
mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because
there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with
that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New
Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing 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 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 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 "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 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 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 oil painting 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 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 favorite 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 woolen, 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- yea, 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
snowstorm- "landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one
another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a
bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other
half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer,
whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most
mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an
uncomfortable feeling 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 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 corncobs or broken
crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and
could not sleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze,
and had pretty nearly made a good offing 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 color, 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 a 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 headpeddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.
Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and
confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of
him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at
the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game
enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer
concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.
  Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last
showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him
were checkered with the same squares as his face, his back, too, was
all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty
Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt.
Still more, his very legs were marked, as 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 color 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
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-colored 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 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 favor to give me
a good slippering for my misbehaviour: anything indeed but
condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time. But
she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had
to go to my room. For several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a
great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from the greatest
subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a troubled
nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it- half steeped in
dreams- I opened my eyes, and the before sunlit room was now wrapped
in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my
frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a
supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the
counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom,
to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my 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 the 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 quickley 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
to 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; 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 a 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 ot 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 the 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 favorite. 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
color, 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 distant spot of
radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate
now inserted into 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
favorable 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. "Star board 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 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
worldwide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of
all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God;
prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the
seas. So disordered, self-condemning in 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 apprenhension 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. Frightened 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
wrestling 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 bare 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 all-outward 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 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 dishonor! Woe to
him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation!
Yea, woe to him who as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to
others is himself a castaway!
  He drooped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his
face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out
with a heavenly enthusiasm,- "But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand
of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that
delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the 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 for 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 as
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. 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 firebrand. 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 headboard with our four knees drawn up close together, and
our two noses bending over them, as if our knee-pans 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 blankets 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
once love 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 on 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
reapers and mowers, who go into the farmer's 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 honor, 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 punch bowl;- 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 toward 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 toward the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were
the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst of this
consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling
under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to
the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it
round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the
spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into
the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat,
Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long
living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen swimming
like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by
turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I
looked at the grand and glorious 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 the 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
quahogs 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 hc 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 peaceful 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 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 biscuits, 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 slipshod, I assure ye.
  Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs.
Hussey concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about
to precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and
demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. "Why
not? said I; "every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon- but why
not?" "Because it's dangerous," says she. "Ever since young Stiggs
coming from that 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 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 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 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 merchant 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
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 shipowner; Bildad, as I hinted before,
had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active
life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days
to the quiet receiving of his 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-colored eye intently
looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could
clutch something- a hammer or a marrling-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 that 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 who 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 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 forthing 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 soulbolts, but I'll- I'll- yes, I'll
swallow a live goat with all his hair and horns on. Out of the
cabin, ye canting, drab-colored 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, 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 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 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; 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 had 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 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 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 after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force
open the door.
  "I won'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 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 land. It
must be so; yes, it's a 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 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 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 broadskirted drab coat took out a bundle of tracts, and
selecting one entitled "The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to Lose,"
placed it in 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 from
the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when
the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before
us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He
was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a
rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent smallpox
had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the
complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been
dried up.
  "Have ye shipped in her?" he repeated.
  "You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose," said I, trying to gain a
little more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
  "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. Any
how, it's all fixed and arranged already; 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 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 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 shadow; she's off by sunrise, I guess;
come on!"
  "Avast!" cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close
behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating
himself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the
uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was
Elijah.
  "Going aboard?"
  "Hands off, will you," said I.
  "Lookee here," said Queequeg, shaking himself, "go 'way!"
  "Aint going aboard, then?"
  "Yes, we are," said I, "but what business is that of yours? Do you
know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?"
  "No, no, no; I 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 around 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 vapor 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 nightcap 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 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 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 art 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 hardearned dollars were invested; a ship, in
which an old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he,
once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw;
loath to say 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 bound 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 the
cabin to deck- now a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the
chief mate.
  But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look
about him,- "Captain Bildad- come, old shipmate, we must go. Back
the mainyard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside,
now! Careful, careful!- come, Bildad, boy- say your last. Luck to
ye, Starbuck- luck to ye, Mr. Stubb- luck to ye, Mr. Flask- 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 visting card, such a procedure
would be deemed preeminently presuming and ridiculous.
  Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring 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 honor. 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 Cooke
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 honor 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
Cookes, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains
have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater, than
your Cooke and your Krusenstern. For in their succorless
empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the
beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders
and terrors that Cooke with all his marines and muskets would not have
willingly 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 whalemen 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 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 honorable 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 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
honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College
and my Harvard.
  CHAPTER 25
  Postscript

  In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain 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
blame-worthy?
  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 hairoil, 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 the 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 and
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 eves, 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
organization 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; but it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking,
to expose the fall of valor 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 around 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
commoners; 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 whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a
dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular about
the comfortable arrangements 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 fail of grave peddlers, 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 early air,
whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless
miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as
in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated
handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal
tribulations, Stubb's tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of
disinfecting agent.
  The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard.
A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,
who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally
and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point
of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly
lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their
majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an
apprehension of any possible danger 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 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 ringbolts, 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 the 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 literally 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. Yet, 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 was 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
warranty to cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with
the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish,
and motley set than any of the tame 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 colorless 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 gladhearted visitants; so Ahab did,
in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that
girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a
look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a
smile.
  CHAPTER 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's 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 me. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was
so taken aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached
bone. What the devil's the matter with me? I don't stand right on my
legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong
side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though- How? how?
how?- but the only way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again;
and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over
by daylight."
  CHAPTER 30
  The Pipe

  When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the
bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a
sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also
his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the
stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.
  In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings
were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How
could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without
bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the
plank, and a king of the sea and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
  Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his
mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his
face. "How now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube,
"this smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with
me if thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not
pleasuring- aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while;
to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying
whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What
business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for
sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not
among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more-"
  He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in
the waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking
pipe made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.
  CHAPTER 31
  Queen Mab

  Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.
  "Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old
man's ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried
to kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right
off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I like a blazing
fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask-
you know how curious all dreams are- through all this rage that I
was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all,
it was not much of an insult, that kick from Ahab. 'Why,' thinks I,
'what's the row? It's not a real leg, only a false one.' 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 whale-bone
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 thought,
'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
gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn't going to stop saying over
his 'wise Stubb, wise Stubb,' I thought I might as well fall to
kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my foot for
it, when he roared out, 'Stop that kicking!' 'Halloa,' says I, 'what's
the matter now, old fellow?' 'Look ye here,' says he; 'let's argue the
insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,' says I-
'right here it was.' 'Very good,' says he- 'he used his ivory leg,
didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,' says I. 'Well then,' says he, 'wise
Stubb, what have you to complain of? Didn't he kick with right good
will? it wasn't a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No,
you were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb.
It's an honor; I consider it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old
England the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a
queen, and made garter-knights of; but, be your boast, Stubb, that
ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I
say; be kicked by him; account his kicks honors; and on no account
kick back; for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see that
pyramid?' With that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some
queer fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored; rolled over; and
there I was in my hammock! Now, what do you think of that dream,
Flask?"
  "I don't know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.'"
  "May be; may be. But it's made a wise man of me, Flask. D'ye see
Ahab standing there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best
thing you can do, Flask, is to let the old man alone; never speak to
him, whatever he says. Halloa! What's that he shouts? Hark!"
  "Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales
hereabouts!
  If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!
  "What do you think of that now, Flask? ain't there a small drop of
something queer about that, eh? A white whale- did ye mark that,
man? Look ye- there's something special in the wind. Stand by for
it, Flask. Ahab has that that's bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes
this way."
  CHAPTER 32
  Cetology

  Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be
lost in its unshored harborless 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 the 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-outward 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 space 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 moveable 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
Humpbacked 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 baptized. What then is the whale, which I
include in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus
of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English
whaleman; 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 color,
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 fisherman's
names for a few sorts.
  In connexion 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 record 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. (Razar 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 octave 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 color, 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 naturalists. 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 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 in 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 fisher- 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 him. 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 colors, 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; &c. 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 cranes 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 between officer and man at sea, is
this- the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and
merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and
so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in
the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in
the captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating
with it.
  Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the
longest of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils
of it, and the community of interest prevailing among a company, all
of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed
wages, but upon their common luck, together with their common
vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in
some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in
merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an old
Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances,
live together; for all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of
the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance
done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will
see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur
not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much
outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the
shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
  And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the
least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only
homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience;
though he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere
stepping upon the quarter-deck; and though there were times when,
owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events hereafter to
be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of
condescension or in terrorem, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab
was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the
sea.
  Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind
those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself;
incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than
they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of
his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested;
through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an
irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual superiority
what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy
over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and
entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base.
This it is, that for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire
from the world's hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air
can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite
inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than
through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass.
Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political
superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to
idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the
case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire
encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased
before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist
who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and
direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his
art, as the one now alluded to.
  But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical
trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in
thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the
deep, and featured in the unbodied air!
  CHAPTER 34
  The Cabin-Table

  It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale
loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his
lord and master who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been
taking an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the
latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that
daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete
inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not
heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds,
he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice,
saying, "Dinner, Mr. Starbuck," disappears into the cabin.
  When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck,
the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then
Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks,
and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of
pleasantness, "Dinner, Mr. Stubb," and descends the scuttle. The
second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly
shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all right with
that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a
rapid "Dinner, Mr. Flask," follows after his predecessors.
  But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the
quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for,
tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and
kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of
a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a
dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a
shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible
from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the
rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he
pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious
little Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of
Abjectus, or the Slave.
  It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck
some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and
defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those
very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in
that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to
say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head
of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore
this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King
of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but
courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane
grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit
presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that
man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for
the time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's, for
Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends,
has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social
czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration
you super-add 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 war-like 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 shin-bones 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 the 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 fore-castle, as I used to when I was before the mast.
There's the fruit 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 dinnertime, 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 indiscretion. 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 streetdoor 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 stairlike formation of all four sides of those
edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs,
those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for
new stars; even as the 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 even
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 seacoast, 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 crosstrees.
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 convenience closet of your watch-coat.
  Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads
of a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little
tents or pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the look-outs of a
Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the
frozen seas. In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A
Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and
incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of
Old Greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads
are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then
recently invented crow's-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of
Captain Sleet's good craft. He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in
honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and
free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call
our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original
inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after
ourselves any other apparatus we may beret. 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 sidescreen to
keep to windward of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the
summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little 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
whaleships' 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 corking care of earth, and
seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently
perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed
whale-ship, and in moody phrase  ejaculates:-

     "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
      Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded
young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling
sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so
hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret
souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in
vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is
imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the
visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.
  "Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've
been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a
whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up
here." Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of
them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like
listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded
youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last
he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the
visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind
and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing
that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some
undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive
thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.
In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came;
becomes diffused through time and space; like 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 gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea,
from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is
on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your
identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And
perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one 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 though 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 fore-going 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 eves 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 fishermen fathers
before me. O men, you will yet see that- Ha! boy, come back? bad
pennies come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run
brimming again, wert not thou St. Vitus' imp- away, thou ague!
  "Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let
me touch the axis." So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three
level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so doing,
suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile glancing intently from
Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some
nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them
the same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own
magnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained,
and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the
honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.
  "In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three
but once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing,
that had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have
dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye
mates, I do appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen
there- yon three most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant
harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the great Pope washes the
feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals!
your own condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye;
ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!"
  Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the
detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held,
barbs up, before him.
  "Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know
ye not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye
cup-bearers, advance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!"
Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed
the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.
  "Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble
league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now
waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men
that man the deathful whaleboat's bow- Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us
all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" The long, barbed steel
goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white
whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss.
Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally,
the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when,
waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired
within his cabin.
  CHAPTER 37
  Sunset

 The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out.

  I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er
I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let
them; but first I pass.
  Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like
wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun- slow dived from
noon- goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill.
Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of
Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not
its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly
confounds. 'Tis iron- that I know- not gold. 'Tis split, too- that I
feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against
the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet
in the most brain-battering fight!
  Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly
spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it
lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er
enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying
power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst
of Paradise! Good night-good night! (waving his hand, he moves from
the window.)
  'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the
least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels,
and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder,
they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire
others, the match itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared,
I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad-
Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild
madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I
should be dismembered; and- Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy
that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and
the fulfiller one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I
laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes
and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies-
Take some one of your own size; don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked
me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth
from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come,
Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me?
ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there.
Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails,
whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through
the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I
rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!
  CHAPTER 38
  Dusk

  By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.

  My soul is more than matched; she's over-manned; 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

  (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 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 harpooneer 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 lassies. 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-bits; 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 yourself!

                    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 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 ingle 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; 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, has 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 chiselled 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 wildest 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. Nor even at the present day has the original prestige of the
Sperm Whale, as fearfully distinguished from all other species of
the leviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body.
There are those this day among them, who, though intelligent and
courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right
whale, would perhaps- either from professional inexperience, or
incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale;
at any rate, there are plenty of whalemen, especially among those
whaling nations not sailing under the American flag, who have never
hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the
leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued
in the North; seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a
childish fireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of
Southern whaling. Nor is the preeminent tremendousness of the great
Sperm Whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of
those prows which stem him.
  And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former
legendary times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book
naturalists- Olassen and Povelson- declaring the Sperm Whale not
only to be a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but
also to be so incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for
human blood. Nor even down to so late a time as 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 lances
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 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 color 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 honor; 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 honorable, 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 analyze 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 import 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 and 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 solitude. 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
color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the
concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a
dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a
colorless, all-color 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 colorless 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 colored and coloring 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, Traders; 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 are! 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 color, 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 recognized 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
known an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive
salutations to him in the street, lest if they pursued the
acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump for their
presumption.
  But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great
individual celebrity- nay, you may call it an oceanwide renown; not
only was he famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories
after death, but he was admitted into all the rights, privileges,
and distinctions of a name; had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or
Caesar. Was it not so, O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like
a 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 will 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 attempted 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 later, 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 uncommonly 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 honor 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 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 mastheads 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-colored 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 revelry lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed
resolved into his own invisible self.
  I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I
kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between
the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and
as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken
sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water,
carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn; I say so strange
a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the
sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that
it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a
shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There
lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever
returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to
admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own.
This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I
ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable
threads. Meantime, 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- wise
incompatible- all interweavingly working together. The straight warp
of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course- its every
alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still
free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though
restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and
sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus
prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the
last featuring blow at events.

  Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball
of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds
whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the 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 around, 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 we, 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 silverspoons! 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 most terri and
fury, and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a spice to the
fun, that no oarsmen 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
logger head 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 onto
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 logger head 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 vapor 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 vapor they spouted, seemed their
forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders.
  All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled
water and air. But it bade far outstrip them; it flew on and on, 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
his shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must
put out their eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usages
announcing 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
host 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 vapor 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 vapor 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 may 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 dancer;
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 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 Robbins, 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; 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 selfsame 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 foamflakes flew over her bulwarks; then all
this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more
dismal than before.
  Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and
thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable
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 respose 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 eves 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 us. 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 the 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 whaleman 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 hy 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
buckhorn 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
gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this imagine, 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 had 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 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
unlifted 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 windless,
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 whaleships in
our harbors, 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; 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 patronizing 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 fair 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 he is. 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 had 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 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 the 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 honor 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 he had a good mind to flog them all round- thought, upon the
while, 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 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 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 unseaman-like way of sitting on the
bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of
the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the 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
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, lie 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 woolen 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 risks 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 honor 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 whaleship so that he can be fairly stepped upon
there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those
curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present
day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set
the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the
whale all wrong.
  It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions
will be found among the oldest 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 Elephants, 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 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 titlepages of many books both old and new- that is a very
picturesque but purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from
the like figures on antique vases. Though universally denominated a
dolphin, I nevertheless call this 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 suckling 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 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 much 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, &c.
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
fore-ground 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 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 honor 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 ship, the little craft stands
half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From that 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
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
weathercocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all
intents and purposes so labelled with "Hands off!" you cannot
examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit.
  In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high
broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon
the plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of
the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks
against them in a surf of green surges.
  Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is
continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from
some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the
profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must
be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if
you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take
the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first
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-ruffled 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 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 lips.
  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 recognized 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 feeling 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 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-color, 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 catch 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 vapored 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 tubline, 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 squill, 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 whaleboat, 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, everpresent 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 vapory 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 honor 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 their 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 frightened 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 harpoons, whose other naked, barbed end sloping
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 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 piglead 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 tall 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 them!"
  Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the
deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand drooping 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
slapping 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 then 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 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 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 of Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within
the last month or two that the society passed a resolution to
patronize 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
nailheads 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, 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 seacoast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent
scraping contact with vast floating icebergs- I should say, that those
rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular.
It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made
by hostile contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them in
the large, 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, waited 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 vulturism of
earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.
  Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost
survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid
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 hereabout: 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 the 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
discolored, 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 skillfully 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 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 crutchwise under one arm, and so stood
leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.
  It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the 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 has 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 distance, 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 the 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
trapdoor, 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 ardor 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, on 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 honor 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 to 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 masthead. But suddenly in the distance, they saw a
great heap of tumultuous white water, and soon after news came from
aloft that one or both the boats must be fast. An interval passed
and the boats were in plain sight, in the act of being dragged right
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 the ship; "well,
that's the figure one; now take all the hoops in the Pequod's hold,
and string along in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you see;
well, that wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's age. Nor all the coopers in
creation couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts enough."
  "But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now,
that you meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good
chance. Now, if he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and
if he is going to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him
overboard- tell me that?
  "Give him a good ducking, anyhow."
  "But he'd crawl back."
  "Duck him again; and keep ducking him."
  "Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though- yes,
and drown you- what then?"
  "I should like to see him try it; I'd give him such a pair of
black eyes that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's
cabin again for a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where
he lives, and hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much.
Damn the devil, Flask; so you suppose I'm afraid of the devil? Who's
afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him and
put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about
kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the
people the devil kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor!"
  "Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?"
  "Do I suppose it? You'll know it before long, Flask. But I am
going now to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything
very suspicious going on, I'll just take him by the nape of his
neck, and say- Look here, Beelzebub, you don't do it; and if he
makes any fuss, by the Lord I'll make a grab into his pocket for his
tail, take it to the capstan, and give him such a wrenching and
heaving, that his tail will come short off at the stump- do you see;
and then, I rather guess when he finds himself docked in that queer
fashion, he'll sneak off without the poor satisfaction of feeling
his tail between his legs."
  "And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?"
  "Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;- what else?"
  "Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along,
Stubb?"
  "Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship."
  The boats were here halled, to tow the whale on the larboard side,
where fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for
securing him.
  "Didn't I tell you so?" said Flask; "yes, you'll soon see this right
whale's head hoisted up opposite that parmacety's."
  In good time, Flask's saying proved true. As before, the Pequod
steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the
counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though
sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you
hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other
side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor
plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye
foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will
float light and right.
  In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside
the ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in
the case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is
cut off whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately
removed and hoisted on deck, with all the well known black bone
attached to what is called the crown-piece. But nothing like this,
in the present case, had been done. The carcases of both whales had
dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a little resembled a
mule carrying a pair of overburdening panniers.
  Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and
ever and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in
his own hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied
his shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed
only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's. As the crew toiled on,
Laplandish speculations were bandied among them, concerning all
these passing things.
  CHAPTER 74
  The Sperm Whale's Head - Contrasted View

  Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us
join them, and lay together our own.
  Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the
Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales
regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two
extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external
difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as
a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as
we may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across
the deck:- where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better
chance to study practical cetology than here?
  In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between
these heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but, there
is a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the
Right Whale's sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm
Whale's head. As you behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense
superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present
instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt color
of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and large
experience. In short, he is what the fishermen technically call a
"grey-headed whale."
  Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads- namely, the
two most important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side
of the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale's jaw, if
you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you
would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it
to the magnitude of the head.
  Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes, it
is plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no
more than he can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the
whale's eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy,
for yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey
objects through your ears. You would find that you could only
command some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight
side-line of sight; and about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest
foe were walking straight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad
day, you would not be able to see him, any more than if he were
stealing upon you from behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so
to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for
what is it that makes the front of a man- what, indeed, but his eyes?
  Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the
eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so
as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar
position of the whale's eyes, effectually divided as they are by
many cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a
great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course,
must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ
imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this
side, and another distinct picture on that side; while all between
must be profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in
effect, be said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with two
joined sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two sashes are
separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly
impairing the view. This peculiarity of the whale's eyes is a thing
always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the
reader in some subsequent scenes.
  A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning
this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content
with a hint. So long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of
seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically
seeing whatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one's
experience will teach him, that though he can take in an
undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossible
for him, attentively, and completely, to examine any two things-
however large or however small- at one and the same instant of time;
never mind if they lie side by side and touch each other. But if you
now come to separate these two objects, and surround each by a
circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one of them, in
such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be
utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it,
then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must
simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more comprehensive,
combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same moment of
time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of
him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he can, then
is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able
simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct
problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any
incongruity in this comparison.
  It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the
extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when
beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer
frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly
proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their
divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.
  But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are
an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two
heads for hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no
external leaf whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert
a quill, so wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind
the eye. With respect to their ears, this important difference is to
be observed between the sperm whale and the right. While the ears of
the former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and
evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible
from without.
  Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see
the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear
which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens
of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches
of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper
of hearing? Not at all.- Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind?
Subtilize it.
  Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand,
cant over the sperm whale's head, so, that it may lie bottom up; then,
ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and
were it not that the body is now completely separated from it, with
a lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his
stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us
where we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from
floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a glistening white
membrane, glossy as bridal satins.
  But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems
like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at
one end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it
overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific
portcullis; and such, alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the
fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force. But far more
terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some
sulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some
fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his
body; for all the world like a ship's jibboom. This whale is not dead;
he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so
supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there
in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who
must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.
  In most cases this lower jaw- being easily unhinged by a practised
artist- is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of
extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white
whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious
articles including canes, umbrellasticks, and handles to riding-whips.
  With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it
were an anchor; and when the proper time comes- some few days after
the other work- Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished
dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade,
Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts,
and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as
Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild woodlands. There are
generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but
undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is
afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building
houses.
  CHAPTER 75
  The Right Whale's Head - Contrasted View

  Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the the Right
Whale's head.
  As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared
to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly
rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather
inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred
years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a
shoemaker's last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the
nursery tale with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be
lodged, she and all her progeny.
  But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume
different aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on
its summit and look at these two f-shaped spout-holes, you would
take the whole head for an enormous bass viol, and these spiracles,
the apertures in its soundingboard. Then, again, if you fix your eye
upon this strange, crested, comblike incrustation on the top of the
mass- this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the
"crown," and the Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale;
fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk
of some huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate,
when you watch those live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet,
such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your
fancy has been fixed by the technical term "crown" also bestowed
upon it; in which case you will take great interest in thinking how
this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose
green crown has been put together for him in this marvellous manner.
But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to
grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and
pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's measurement, about
twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield
you some 500 gallons of oil and more.
  A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be
hare-lipped. The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother
during an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when
earthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a
slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I
at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian
wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about
twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a
regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides,
present us with those wondrous, half vertical, scimitar-shaped slats
of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from the
upper part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which
have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones
are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains
the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when
openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the
central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there
are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some
whalemen calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its
circular rings. Though the certainty of this criterion is far from
demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical probability. At any
rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to the
Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.
  In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious
fancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the
wondrous "whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth;* another, "hogs'
bristles"; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following
elegant language: "There are about two hundred and fifty fins
growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his tongue
on each side of his mouth."

  *This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of
whisker, or rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white
hairs on the upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes
these tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise
solemn countenance.

  As every one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers,"
"blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks
and other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the
demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time
that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the
fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the
jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like
thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for
protection; the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.
  But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,
standing in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing
all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you
not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing
upon its thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of
the softest Turkey- the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the
floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in
pieces in hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now before us;
at a passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it
will yield you about that amount of oil.
  Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started
with- that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely
different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no
great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender
mandible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm
Whale are there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and
scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external
spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.
  Look your last now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they
yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea;
the other will not be very long in following.
  Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the
same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead
seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a
prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to
death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower
lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to
embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous
practical resolution facing death? This Right Whale I take to have
been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up
Spinoza in his latter years.
  CHAPTER 76
  The Battering-Ram

  Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale's head, I would have
you, as a sensible physiologist, simply- particularly remark its front
aspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you
investigate it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some
unexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power
may be lodged there. Here is a vital point; for you must either
satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an
infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events,
perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.
  You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm
Whale, the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical
plane to the water; you observe that the lower part of that front
slopes considerably backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat
for the long socket which receives the boom-like lower jaw; you
observe that the mouth is entirely under the head, much in the same
way, indeed, as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin.
Moreover you observe that the whale has no external nose; and that
what nose he has- his spout hole- is on the top of his head; you
observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides of his head; nearly
one third of his entire length from the front. Wherefore, you must now
have perceived that the front of the Sperm Whale's head is a dead,
blind wall, without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort
whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the
extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the front of the head, is
there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you get near
twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial
development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one
wad. Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly
comprise the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the
nature of the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent
effeminacy. In some previous place I have described to you how the
blubber wraps the body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just
so with the head; but with this difference: about the head this
envelope, though not so thick is of a boneless toughness,
inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed
harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm,
impotently rebounds from it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm
Whale were paved with horses' hoofs. I do not think that any sensation
lurks in it.
  Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded
Indian-men chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the
docks, what do the sailors do? They do not suspend between them, at
the point of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or
wood. No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork,
enveloped in the thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and
uninjured takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken
handspikes and iron crow-bars. By itself this sufficiently illustrates
the obvious fact I drive at. But supplementary to this, it has
hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess what is
called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of distension
or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no
such provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable
manner in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the
surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out of the water;
considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope; considering
the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically occurred to me,
I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs there may possibly
have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with the outer
air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and
contraction. If this be so, fancy the irresistibleness of that
might, to which the most impalpable and destructive of all elements
contributes.
  Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable,
uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims
behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately
estimated as piled wood is- by the cord; and all obedient to one
volition, as the smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter
detail to you all the specialities and concentrations of potency
everywhere lurking in this expansive monster; when I shall show you
some of his more inconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will
have renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by
this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the
Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you
would not elevate one hair of your eye-brow. For unless you own the
whale, you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear
Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small
the chances for the provincials then? What befell the weakling youth
lifting the dread goddess's veil at Lais?
  CHAPTER 77
  The Great Heidelburgh Tun

  Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you
must know something of the curious internal structure of the thing
operated upon.
  Regarding the Sperm Whale's head as a solid oblong, you may, on an
inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower
is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper
an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming
the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of
the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you
have two almost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an
internal wall of a thick tendinous substance.

  *Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical
mathematics. I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is
a solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by
the steep inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of
both sides.

  The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb
of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand
infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its
whole extent. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as
the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous great
tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale's vast plaited
forehead forms innumerable strange devices for emblematical
adornment of his wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was
always replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish
valleys, so the tun of the whale contains by far the most precious
of all his oily vintages; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its
absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor is this precious
substance found unalloyed in any other part of the creature. Though in
life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air,
after death, it soon begins to concrete; sending forth beautiful
crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just
forming in water. A large whale's case generally yields about five
hundred gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances,
considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or is
otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business of securing what
you can.
  I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun
was coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could
not possibly have compared with the silken pearl-colored membrane,
like the lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the
Sperm Whale's case.
  It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale
embraces the entire length of the entire top of the head; and since-
as has been elsewhere set forth- the head embraces one third of the
whole length of the creature, then setting that length down at
eighty feet for a good sized whale, you have more than twenty-six feet
for the depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and down
against a ship's side.
  As in decapitating the whale, the operator's instrument is brought
close to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the
spermaceti magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest
a careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and
wastingly let out its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated
end of the head, also, which is at last elevated out of the water, and
retained in that position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose
hempen combinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness of ropes
in that quarter.
  Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous
and- in this particular instance- almost fatal operation whereby the
Sperm Whale's great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.
  CHAPTER 78
  Cistern and Buckets

  Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his
erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to
the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has
carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only
two parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this
block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of
the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on the deck.
Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through
the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. There-
still high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom he
vivaciously cries- he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good
people to prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp spade
being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper place to
begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds very
heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding the
walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this
cautious search is over, a stout ironbound bucket, precisely like a
well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other
end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three
alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the
Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole.
Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the
bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word
to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling
like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its
height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand,
and quickly emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it
again goes through the same round until the deep cistern will yield no
more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and
harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet
of the pole have gone down.
  Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;
several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once
a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild
Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his
one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or
whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or
whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without
stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no
telling now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket
came suckingly up- my God! poor Tashtego- like the twin
reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down
into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling,
went clean out of sight!
  "Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation
first came to his senses. "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting one
foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the
whip itself the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head,
almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom.
Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw
the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the
surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous idea;
whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those
struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk.
  At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was
clearing the whip- which had somehow got foul of the great cutting
tackles- a sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable
horror of all, one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head
tore out, and with a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways
swung, till the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an
iceberg. The one remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now
depended, seemed every instant to be on the point of giving way; an
event still more likely from the violent motions of the head.
  "Come down, come down!" yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one
hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop,
he would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul
line, rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that
the buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.
  "In heaven's name, man," cried Stubb, "are you ramming home a
cartridge there?- Avast! How will that help him; jamming that
iron-bound bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye!"
  "Stand clear of the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting of a
rocket.
  Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass
dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool;
the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her
glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging-
now over the sailors' heads, and now over the water- Daggoo, through a
thick mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous
tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to
the bottom of the sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away,
when a naked figure with a boardingsword in his hand, was for one
swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud
splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One
packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every
ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or
the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat
alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.
  "Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging
perch overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm
thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an
arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave.
  "Both! both!- it is both!"-cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout;
and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand,
and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into
the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but
Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.
  Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving
after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had
made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there;
then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and
upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that
upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing
that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great
trouble;- he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and
toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next
trial, he came forth in the good old way-head foremost. As for the
great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected.
  And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of
Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was
successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and
apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be
forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with
fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.
  I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be sure to
seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have
either seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern ashore; an
accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too
than the Indian's, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the
curb of the Sperm Whale's well.
  But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We
thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the
lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in
an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee
there. Not at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in,
the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving
little but the dense tendinous wall of the well- a double welded,
hammered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea
water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the
tendency to rapid sinking in this substance was in the present
instance materially counteracted by the other parts of the head
remaining undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and
deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing
his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a running
delivery, so it was.
  Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragment
spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner
chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can
readily be recalled- the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter,
who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding
store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he
died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's
honey head, and sweetly perished there?
  CHAPTER 79
  The Prairie

  To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist
has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful
as for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of
Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the
dome of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not
only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively
studies the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells
in detail upon the modifications of expression discernible therein.
Nor have Gall and his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some
hints touching the phrenological characteristics of other beings
than man. Therefore, though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in
the application of these two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do
my endeavor. I try all things; I achieve what I can.
  Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature.
He has no proper nose. And since the nose is the central and most
conspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most modifies and
finally controls their combined expression; hence it would seem that
its entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely affect
the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a
spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost
indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no face can be
physiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of
the nose. Dash the nose from Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry
remainder! Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all
his proportions are so stately, that the same deficiency which in
the sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no blemish at all. Nay, it
is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale would have been impertinent.
As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast head in
your jollyboat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by
the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit,
which so often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the
mightiest royal beadle on his throne.
  In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view
to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head.
This aspect is sublime.
  In thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with
the morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull
has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain
defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the
mystical brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German
Emperors to their decrees. It signifies- "God: done this day by my
hand." But in most creatures, nay in man himself, very often the
brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along the snow line. Few
are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so
high, and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear,
eternal, tideless mountain lakes; and above them in the forehead's
wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there
to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer.
But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity
inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it,
in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers
more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature. For
you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is
revealed; no nose, eyes, cars, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper;
nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with
riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men.
Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish; though that way
viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you
plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the
forehead's middle, which, in a man, is Lavater's mark of genius.
  But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written
a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing
nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his
pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm
Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified
by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the
Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has
no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be
incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical
nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of
old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in
the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the
great Sperm Whale shall lord it.
  Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there
is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every
being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a
passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty
languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its
profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope
to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that
brow before you. Read it if you can.
  CHAPTER 80
  The Nut

  If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist
his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to
square.
  In in full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty
feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull
is as the side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on
a level base. But in life- as we have elsewhere seen- this inclined
plane is angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous
superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skull
forms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while under the long
floor of this crater- in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in
length and as many in depth reposes the mere handful of this monster's
brain. The brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in
life; it is hidden away behind its vast outworks, like the innermost
citadel within the amplified fortifications of Quebec. So like a
choice casket is it secreted in him, that I have known some whalemen
who peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale has any other brain than
that palpable semblance of one formed by the cubic-yards of his
sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions,
to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea of
his general might to regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his
intelligence.
  It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this
Leviathan, in the creature's living intact state, is an entire
delusion. As for his true brain, you can then see no indications of
it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears
a false brow to the common world.
  If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear
view of its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its
resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from
the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down
to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and you would
involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions
on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say- This
man had no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by those negations,
considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk
and power, you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the
most exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is.
  But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper
brain, you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I
have another idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any
quadruped's spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its
vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing
rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit,
that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the
curious external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first
men to perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the
skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was
inlaying, in a sort of basso-relieve, the beaked prow of his canoe.
Now, I consider that the phrenologists have omitted an important thing
in not pushing their investigations from the cerebellum through the
spinal canal. For I believe that much of a man's character will be
found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than
your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet
upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm
audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.
  Apply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His
cranial cavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in that
vertebra the bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches
across, being eight in height, and of a triangular figure with the
base downwards. As it passes through the remaining vertebrae the canal
tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of large
capacity. Now, of course, this canal is filled with much the same
strangely fibrous substance- the spinal cord- as the brain; and
directly communicates with the brain. And what is still more, for many
feet after emerging from the brain's cavity, the spinal cord remains
of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the brain. Under all
these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to survey and map out
the whale's spine phrenologically? For, viewed in this light, the
wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper is more than
compensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord.
  But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I
would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to
the Sperm Whale's hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over
one of the larger vertebrae, and is, therefore, in some sort, the
outer convex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should
call this high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the
Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet
have reason to know.
  CHAPTER 81
  The Pequod Meets The Virgin

  The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau,
Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.
  At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch
and Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide
intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet
with their flag in the Pacific.
  For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her
respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and
dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently
standing in the bows instead of the stern.
  "What has he in his hand there?" cried Starbuck, pointing to
something wavingly held by the German. "Impossible!- a lamp-feeder!"
  "Not that," said Stubb, "no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck;
he's coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see
that big tin can there alongside of him?- that's his boiling water.
Oh! he's all right, is the Yarman."
  "Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an
oil-can. He's out of oil, and has come a-begging."
  However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on
the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the
old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a
thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer
did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.
  As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all
heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German
soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately
turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some
remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in
profound darkness- his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a
single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding
by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically
called a clean one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name of
Jungfrau or the Virgin.
  His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his
ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the
mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick,
that without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he
slewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.
  Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German
boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the
Pequod's keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of
their danger, they were going all abreast with great speed straight
before the wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of
horses in harness. They left a great, wide wake, as though continually
unrolling a great wide parchment upon the sea.
  Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a
huge, humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as
well as by the unusual yellowish incrustations over-growing him,
seemed afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether
this whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it
is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social.
Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their back water
must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad
muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile
currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming
forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds,
followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which seemed to
have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters behind
him to upbubble.
  "Who's got some paregoric?" said Stubb, "he has the stomach-ache,
I'm afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache!
Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It's the first
foul wind ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale
yaw so before? it must be, he's lost his tiller."
  As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a
deck load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on
her way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then
partly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of
his devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin.
Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it,
it were hard to say.
  "Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that
wounded arm," cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.
  "Mind he don't sling thee with it," cried Starbuck. "Give way, or
the German will have him."
  With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this
one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the
most valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other
whales were going with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to
defy pursuit for the time. At this juncture, the Pequod's keels had
shot by the three German boats last lowered; but from the great
start he had had, Derick's boat still led the chase, though every
moment neared by his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared,
was, that from being already so nigh to his mark, he would be
enabled to dart his iron before they could completely overtake and
pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quite confident that this would
be the case, and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook his
lamp-feeder at the other boats.
  "The ungracious and ungrateful dog!" cried Starbuck; "he mocks and
dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes
ago!"- Then in his old intense whisper- "give way, greyhounds! Dog
to it!"
  "I tell ye what it is, men"- cried Stubb to his crew- "it's
against my religion to get mad; but I'd like to eat that villainous
Yarman- Pull-  won't ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do
ye love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why
don't some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who's that been dropping an
anchor overboard- we don't budge an inch- we're becalmed. Halloo,
here's grass growing in the boat's bottom- and by the Lord, the mast
there's budding. This won't do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short
and long of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?"
  "Oh! see the suds he makes!" cried Flask, dancing up and down- "What
a hump- Oh, do pile on the beef- lays like a log! Oh! my lads, do
spring- slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads- baked
clams and muffins- ho, do, do, spring,- he's a hundred barreler- don't
lose him now- don't oh, don't!- see that Yarman- Oh, won't ye pull for
your duff, my lads- such a sog! such a sogger! Don't ye love sperm?
There goes three thousand dollars, men!- a bank!- a whole bank! The
bank of England!- Oh, do, do, do!- What's that Yarman about now?"
  At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder
at the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the
double view of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same time
economically accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the
backward toss.
  "The unmannerly Dutch dogger!" cried Stubb. "Pull now, men, like
fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What
d'ye say, Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in
two-and-twenty pieces for the honor of old Gayhead? What d'ye say?"
  "I say, pull like god-dam,"- cried the Indian.
  Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the
Pequod's three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so
disposed, momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous
attitude of the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three
mates stood up proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an
exhilarating cry of, "There she slides, now! Hurrah for the
white-ash breeze! Down with the Yarman! Sail over him!"
  But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all
their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not
a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the
blade of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to
free his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick's boat was
nigh to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty
rage;- that was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a
shout, they took a mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged up
on the German's quarter. An instant more, and all four boats were
diagonically in the whale's immediate wake, while stretching from
them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.
  It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was
now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual
tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of
fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering
flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank
in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So
have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making affrighted broken
circle in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks.
But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her
fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained
up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking
respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him
unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis
jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man
who so pitied.
  Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the
Pequod's boat the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his
game, Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most
unusually long dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.
  But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all
three tigers- Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo- instinctively sprang to
their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed
their barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer,
their three Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam
and white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's
headlong rush, bumped the German's aside with such force, that both
Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by
the three flying keels.
  "Don't be afraid, my butter-boxes," cried Stubb, casting a passing
glance upon them as he shot by; "ye'll be picked up presently- all
right- I saw some sharks astern- St. Bernard's dogs, you know- relieve
distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel
a sunbeam! Hurrah!- Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a
mad cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a
tilbury on a plain- makes the wheelspokes fly, boys, when you fasten
to him that way; and there's danger of being pitched out too, when you
strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he's
going to Davy Jones- all a rush down an endless inclined plane!
Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!"
  But the monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he
tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew
round the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in
them; while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding
would soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might,
they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at
last- owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-lined chocks
of the boat, whence the three ropes went straight down into the
blue- the gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water,
while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon
ceasing to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude,
fearful of expending more line, though the position was a little
ticklish. But though boats have been taken down and lost in this
way, yet it is this "holding on," as it is called; this hooking up
by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is that
often torments the Leviathan into soon rising again to meet the
sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing,
it is to be doubted whether this course is always the best; for it
is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken whale stays
under water, the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the
enormous surface of him- in a full grown sperm whale something less
than 2000 square feet- the pressure of the water is immense. We all
know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up
under; even here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden
of a whale, bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of
ocean! It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One
whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle
ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on board.
  As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down
into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any
sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its
depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that
silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and
wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were
visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads
the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight
day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the
creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said- "Canst thou fill
his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of
him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the
habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee;
darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a
spear!" This the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should
follow the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his
tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to
hide him from the Pequod's fishspears!
  In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats
sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad
enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the
wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his
head!
  "Stand by, men; he stirs," cried Starbuck, as the three lines
suddenly vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them,
as by magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so
that every oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in
great part from the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a
sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd
of white bears are scared from it into the sea.
  "Haul in! Haul in!" cried Starbuck again; "he's rising."
  The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand's
breadth could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung
back all dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water
within two ship's length of the hunters.
  His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land
animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their
veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least
instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one
of whose peculiarities it is, to have an entire non-valvular structure
of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as
a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial
system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressure of
water at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said to
pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of
blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that
he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period;
even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is the
well-springs of far-off and indiscernible hills. Even now, when the
boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew over his swaying
flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by
steady jets from the new made wound, which kept continually playing,
while the natural spout-hole in his head was only at intervals,
however rapid, sending its affrighted moisture into the air. From this
last vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of him had thus far
been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, was untouched.
  As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part
of his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly
revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were
beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the
noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's eyes
had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to
see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm,
and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to
light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to
illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional
inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at last
he partially disclosed a strangely discolored bunch or protuberance,
the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.
  "A nice spot," cried Flask; "just let me prick him there once."
  "Avast!" cried Starbuck, "there's no need of that!"
  But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an
ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more
than sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with
swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their
glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat
and marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so
spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the
wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with
his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like a waning
world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and
died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen
hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain,
and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and
lowers to the ground- so the last long dying spout of the whale.
  Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the
body showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled.
Immediately, by Starbuck's orders, lines were secured to it at
different points, so that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken
whale being suspended a few inches beneath them by the cords. By
very heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was
transferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by the
stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially
upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom.
  It so chanced that almost upon first him with the spade, the
entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh,
on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps
of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured
whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence
of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have
been some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account
for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact
of a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried
iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone
lance? And when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian
long before America was discovered.
  What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous
cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further
discoveries, by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways
to the sea, owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink.
However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to
the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the
ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking arms
with the body; then, when the command was given to break clear from
it, such was the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which the
fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossible to
cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant. To
cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the steep
gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory
inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places,
by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were
brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift
from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the
submerged ends could not be at all approached, while every moment
whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the
ship seemed on the point of going over.
  "Hold on, hold on, won't ye?" cried Stubb to the body, "don't be
in such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do
something or go for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your
handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and
cut the big chains."
  "Knife? Aye, aye," cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter's heavy
hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began
slashing at the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of
sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest.
With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted,
the carcase sank.
  Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm
Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately
accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great
buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the
surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and
broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all
their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason
assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity
in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter
in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and
swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush
and May of life, with all their panting lard about them! even these
brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.
  Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this
accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down,
twenty Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt
imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the
Right Whale; his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than
a ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there
are instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several days,
the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the
reason of this is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to
a prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A
line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then. In the Shore
Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right
Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of
rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to look for
it when it shall have ascended again.
  It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard
from the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again
lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a
Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because
of its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's
spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful
fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all
his host were now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The
Virgin crowding all sail, made after her four young keels, and thus
they all disappeared far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.
  Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.
  CHAPTER 82
  The Honor and Glory of Whaling

  There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is
the true method.
  The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my
researches up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I
impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially
when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts,
who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported
with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to
so emblazoned a fraternity.
  The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and
to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale
attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent.
Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms
to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every
one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely
Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the
sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off,
Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the
monster, and delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable
artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the
present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first
dart. And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient
Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples,
there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the
city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical
bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans took Joppa,
the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most
singular and suggestively important in this story, is this: it was
from Joppa that Jonah set sail.
  Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda- indeed, by some
supposed to be indirectly derived from it- is that famous story of St.
George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale;
for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled
together, and often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of the
waters, and as a dragon of the sea," said Ezekiel; hereby, plainly
meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word
itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the
exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land,
instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man
may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the
heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.
  Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though
the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely
represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted
on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great
ignorance of those times, when the true form of the whale was
unknown to artists; and considering that as in Perseus' case, St.
George's whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach;
and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have been
only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will not
appear altogether incompatible with the sacred legend and the
ancientest draughts of the scene, to hold this so-called dragon no
other than the great Leviathan himself. In fact, placed before the
strict and piercing truth, this whole story will fare like that
fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who
being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and both
the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or
fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp,
even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good
rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most
noble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of
that honorable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever
had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye
a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and
tarred trowers we are much better entitled to St. George's
decoration than they.
  Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long
remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies,
that antique Crockett and Kit Carson- that brawny doer of rejoicing
good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still,
whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted.
It nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless,
indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of
involuntary whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did
not the whale. I claim him for one of our clan.
  But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of
Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more
ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly
they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the
prophet?
  Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the
whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for
like royal kings of old times, we find the head-waters of our
fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That
wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which
gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of
the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;-
Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for
ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of
Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of
its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over
the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem
to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the creation,
and which therefore must have contained something in the shape of
practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the
bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and
sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred
volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who
rides a horse is called a horseman?
  Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a
member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like
that?
  CHAPTER 83
  Jonah Historically Regarded

  Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in
the preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this
historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some
sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox
pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the
whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those
traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts,
for all that.
  One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's chief reason for questioning the
Hebrew story was this:- He had one of those quaint old-fashioned
Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which
represented Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head- a peculiarity
only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale,
and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen
have this saying, "A penny roll would choke him"; his swallow is so
very small. But, to this, Bishop Jebb's anticipative answer is
ready. It is not necessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah
as tombed in the whale's belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part
of his mouth. And this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For
truly, the Right Whale's mouth would accommodate a couple of
whist-tables, and comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too,
Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second
thoughts, the Right Whale is toothless.
  Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his
want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely
in reference to his incarcerated body and the whale's gastric
juices. But this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a
German exegetist supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the
floating body of a dead whale- even as the French soldiers in the
Russian campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawled into
them. Besides, it has been divined by other continental
commentators, that when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa
ship, he straightway effected his escape to another vessel near by,
some vessel with a whale for a figure-head; and, I would add, possibly
called "The Whale," as some craft are nowadays christened the "Shark,"
the "Gull," the "Eagle." Nor have there been wanting learned
exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned in the book of
Jonah merely meant a life-preserver- an inflated bag of wind- which
the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom.
Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But he had
still another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I remember
right: Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea,
and after three days' he was vomited up somewhere within three days'
journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very much more than three
days' journey across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean
coast. How is that?
  But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet
within that short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried
him round by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak of the
passage through the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another
passage up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would
involve the complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not
to speak of the Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too
shallow for any whale to swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah's
weathering the Cape of Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the
honor of the discovery of that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz,
its reputed discoverer, and so make modern history a liar.
  But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his
foolish pride of reason- a thing still more reprehensible in him,
seeing that he had but little learning except what he had picked up
from the sun and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious
pride, and abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy.
For by a Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah's going
to Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal
magnification of the general miracle. And so it was. Besides, to
this day, the highly enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the
historical story of Jonah. And some three centuries ago, an English
traveller in old Harris's Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in
honor of Jonah, in which Mosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt
without any oil.
  CHAPTER 84
  Pitchpoling

  To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are
anointed; and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an
analogous operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it
to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly
be of no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and water are
hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is
to make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in
anointing his boat, and one morning not long after the German ship
Jungfrau disappeared, took more than customary pains in that
occupation; crawling under its bottom, where it hung over the side,
and rubbing in the unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure
a crop of hair from the craft's bald keel. He seemed to be working
in obedience to some particular presentiment. Nor did it remain
unwarranted by the event.
  Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down
to them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered
flight, as of Cleopatra's barges from Actium.
  Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb's was foremost. By
great exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but
the stricken whale, without at all sounding, still continued his
horizontal flight, with added fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings
upon the planted iron must sooner or later inevitably extract it. It
became imperative to lance the flying whale, or be content to lose
him. But to haul the boat up to his flank was impossible, he swam so
fast and furious. What then remained?
  Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand
and countless subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often
forced, none exceed that fine manoeuvre with the lance called
pitchpoling. Small sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises
boasts nothing like it. It is only indispensable with an inveterate
running whale; its grand fact and feature is the wonderful distance to
which the long lance is accurately darted from a violently rocking,
jerking boat, under extreme headway. Steel and wood included, the
entire spear is some ten or twelve feet in length; the staff is much
slighter than that of the harpoon, and also of a lighter material-
pine. It is furnished with a small rope called a warp, of considerable
length, by which it can be hauled back to the hand after darting.
  But before going further, it is important to mention here, that
though the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance,
yet it is seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently
successful, on account of the greater weight and inferior length of
the harpoon as compared with the lance, which in effect become serious
drawbacks. As a general thing, therefore, you must first get to a
whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play.
  Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate
coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially
qualified to excel in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in
the tossed bow of the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing
whale is forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing
twice or thrice along its length to see if it be exactly straight,
Stubb whistlingly gathers up the coil of the wrap in one hand, so as
to secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed.
Then holding the lance full before his waistband's middle, he levels
it at the whale; when, covering him with it, he steadily depresses the
butt-end in his hand, thereby elevating the point till the weapon
stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He
minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his chin.
Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb arch the
bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life
spot of the whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red
blood.
  "That drove the spigot out of him!" cried Stubb. "'Tis July's
immortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were
old Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela!
Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we'd
drink round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew choice punch in
the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl
quaff the living stuff."
  Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is
repeated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in
skilful leash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line
is slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and
mutely watches the monster die.
  CHAPTER 85
  The Fountain

  That for six thousand years- and no one knows how many millions of
ages before- the great whales should have been spouting all over the
sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so
many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries
back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of
the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings- that all this
should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a
quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of
December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether
these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapor-
this is surely a noteworthy thing.
  Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items
contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their
gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all
times is combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a
herring or a cod might live a century, and never once raise its head
above the surface. But owing to his marked internal structure which
gives him regular lungs, like a human being's, the whale can only live
by inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the
necessity for his periodical visits to the upper world. But he
cannot in any degree breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary
attitude, the Sperm Whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet
beneath the surface; and what is still more, his windpipe has no
connexion with his mouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle
alone; and this is on the top of his head.
  If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function
indispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a
certain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with
the blood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think
I shall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific
words. Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood in a man
could be aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils
and not fetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, he
would then live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is
precisely the case with the whale, who systematically lives, by
intervals, his full hour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing
a single breath, or so much as in any way inhaling a particle of
air; for, remember, he has no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and
on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable involved
Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he
quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated blood.
So that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries
a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel crossing the
waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for future use in
its four supplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth
is indisputable; and that the supposition founded upon it is
reasonable and true, seems the more cogent to me, when I consider
the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in having his
spoutings out, as the fishermen phrase it. This is what I mean. If
unmolested, upon rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will
continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with all his other
unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy
times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he rises
again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a
minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so
that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his
regular allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told,
will he finally go down to stay out his full term below. Remark,
however, that in different individuals these rates are different;
but in any one they are alike. Now, why should the whale thus insist
upon having his spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir
of air, ere descending for good? How obvious it is too, that this
necessity for the whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal
hazards of the chase. And not by hook or by net could this vast
leviathan be caught, when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the
sunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great
necessities that strike the victory to thee!
  In man, breathing is incessantly going on- one breath only serving
for two or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to
attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But
the Sperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.
  It has been said that the whale only breathes through his
spout-hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are
mixed with water, then I opine we should be furnished with the
reason why his sense of smell seems obliterated in him; for the only
thing about him that at all answers to his nose is that identical
spout-hole; and being so clogged with two elements, it could not be
expected to have the power of smelling. But owing to the mystery of
the spout- whether it be water or whether it be vapor- no absolute
certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it is,
nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what
does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the
sea.
  Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his
spouting canal, and as that long canal- like the grand Erie Canal-
is furnished with a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the
downward retention of air or the upward exclusion of water,
therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying,
that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then
again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound
being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer
out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world
is such an excellent listener!
  Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it
is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along,
horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little
to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down
in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether
this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the
spout of the Sperm Whale is the mere vapor of the exhaled breath, or
whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth,
and discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that the mouth
indirectly communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be
proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water through the
spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to
be, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm
Whale's food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout
even if he would. Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time
him with your watch, you will find that when unmolested, there is an
undeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets and the ordinary
periods of respiration.
  But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak
out! You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can
you not tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so
easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things
the knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost
stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.
  The central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist
enveloping it; and how can you certainly tell whether any water
falls from it, when, always, when you are close enough to a whale to
get a close view of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the
water cascading all around him. And if at such times you should
think that you really perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do
you know that they are not merely condensed from its vapor; or how
do you know that they are not those identical drops superficially
lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which is countersunk into the summit
of the whale's head? For even when tranquilly swimming through the
mid-day sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a
dromedary's in the desert; even then, the whale always carries a small
basin of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will
sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain.
  Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious
touching the precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him
to be peering into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go
with your pitcher to this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For
even when coming into slight contact with the outer, vapory shreds
of the jet, which will often happen, your skin will feverishly
smart, from the acridness of the thing so touching it. And I know one,
who coming into still closer contact with the spout, whether with some
scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled
off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is
deemed poisonous; they try to evade it. Another thing; I have heard it
said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted
into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator
can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone.
  Still, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My
hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides
other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations
touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm
Whale; I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an
undisputed fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores;
all other whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And
I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings,
such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there
always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of
thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity,
I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw
reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the
atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while
plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled
attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional argument for the
above supposition.
  And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to
behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast,
mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his
incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor- as you will sometimes
see it- glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal
upon his thoughts. For d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear
air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of
the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot,
enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for
all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with
them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of
some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor
infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.
  CHAPTER 86
  The Tail

  Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the
antelope, and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights;
less celestial, I celebrate a tail.
  Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale's tail to begin at that
point of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it
comprises upon its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty
square feet. The compact round body of its root expands into two
broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less
than an inch in thickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes
slightly overlap, then sideways recede from each other like wings,
leaving a wide vacancy between. In no living thing are the lines of
beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of
these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the
tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across.
  The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut
into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:- upper,
middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are
long and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and
running crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure,
as much as anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the student of
old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to
the thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those
wonderful relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so
much to the great strength of the masonry.
  But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not
enough, the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and
woof of muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side
the loins and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with
them, and largely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the
confluent measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a
point. Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do
it.
  Nor does this- its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the
graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates
through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive
their most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs
beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything
imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take
away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in
the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman
lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was
overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a
Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in
human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may
reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled,
hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most
successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are of all
brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine
one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded,
form the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings.
  Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that
whether wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be
the mood it be in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding
grace. Therein no fairy's arm can transcend it.
  Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for
progression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in
sweeping; Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.
  First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts
in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It
never wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To
the whale his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled
forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is
this which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the
monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer by.
  Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale
only fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless,
in his conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his
tail. In striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from
it, and the blow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the
unobstructed air, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke
is then simply irresistible. No ribs of man or boat can withstand
it. Your only salvation lies in eluding it; but if it comes sideways
through the opposing water, then partly owing to the light buoyancy of
the whale-boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib
or a dashed plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally
the most serious result. These submerged side blows are so often
received in the fishery, that they are accounted mere child's play.
Some one strips off a frock, and the hole is stopped.
  Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the
whale the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this
respect there is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of
the elephant's trunk. This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action
of sweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft
slowness moves his immense flukes side to side upon the surface of the
sea; and if he feel but a sailor's whisker, woe to that sailor,
whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that preliminary
touch! Had this tail any prehensile power, I should straightway
bethink me of Darmonodes' elephant that so frequented the
flower-market, and with low salutations presented nosegays to damsels,
and then caressed their zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is
that the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue in his tail;
for I have heard of yet another elephant, that when wounded in the
fight, curved round his trunk and extracted the dart.
  Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security
of the middle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast
corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as
if it were a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The
broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the air! then smiting
the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would
almost think a great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the
light wreath of vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you
would think that that was the smoke from the touch-hole.
  Fifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the
flukes lies considerably below the level of his back, they are then
completely out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to
plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet
of his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a
moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime
breach- somewhere else to be described- this peaking of the whale's
flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated
nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems
spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I
seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from
the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in
all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur
to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the
mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I
once saw a large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards the
sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it
seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment of adoration of
the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of the fire
worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African
elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most
devout of all beings. For according to King Juba, the military
elephants of antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks
uplifted in the profoundest silence.
  The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the
elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the
trunk of the other are concerned, should not tend to place those two
opposite organs on an equality, much less the creatures to which
they respectively belong. For as the mightiest elephant is but a
terror to Leviathan, so, compared with Leviathan's tail, his trunk
is but the stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the
elephant's trunk were as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the
measureless crush and crash of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes,
which in repeated instances have one after the other hurled entire
boats with all their oars and crews into the air, very much as an
Indian juggler tosses his balls.*

  *Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the
whale and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular
the elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog
does to the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some
points of curious similitude; among these is the spout. It is well
known that the elephant will often draw up water or dust in his trunk,
and then elevating it, jet it forth in a stream.

  The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my
inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which,
though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly
inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are
these mystic gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared
them akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed,
by these methods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there
wanting other motions of the whale in his general body, full of
strangeness, and unaccountable to his most experienced assailant.
Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep. I know him not, and
never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how
understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face
he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say,
but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his
back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has
no face.
  CHAPTER 87
  The Grand Armada

  The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward
from the territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of
all Asia. In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long
islands of Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others,
form a vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with
Australia, and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the
thickly studded oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced by
several sally-ports for the convenience of ships and whales;
conspicuous among which are the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the
straits of Sunda, chiefly, vessels bound to China from the west,
emerge into the China seas.
  Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing
midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold
green promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little
correspond to the central gateway opening into some vast walled
empire: and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks,
and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of
that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of
nature, that such treasures, by the very formation of the land, should
at least bear the appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded
from the all-grasping western world. The shores of the Straits of
Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering fortresses which guard the
entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis.
Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequious
homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of ships
before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have
passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the
costliest cargoes of the east. But while they freely waive a
ceremonial like this, they do by no means renounce their claim to more
solid tribute.
  Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among
the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon
the vessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at
the point of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements
they have received at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity
of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at
the present day, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels,
which, in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged.
  With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these
straits; Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Java sea, and
thence, cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented here
and there by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands,
and gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whaling
season there. By these means, the circumnavigating Pequod would
sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the
world, previous to descending upon the Line in the Pacific; where
Ahab, though everywhere else foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted
upon giving battle to Moby Dick, in the sea he was most known to
frequent; and at a season when he might most reasonably be presumed to
be haunting it.
  But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does
his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long
time, now, the circus-running sun had raced within his fiery ring, and
needs no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in
the whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to
be transferred to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship
carries no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons and their
wants. She has a whole lake's contents bottled in her ample hold.
She is ballasted with utilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead
and kentledge. She carries years' water in her. Clear old prime
Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in
the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday
rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is,
that, while other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back
again, touching at a score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that
interval, may not have sighted one grain of soil; her crew having seen
no man but floating seamen like themselves. So that did you carry them
the news that another flood had come; they would only answer- "Well,
boys, here's the ark!"
  Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western coast of
Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda; indeed, as most of
the ground, roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen as
an excellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod gained more
and more upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and
admonished to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs of
the land soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils
the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was
descried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game
hereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when the
customary cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a
spectacle of singular magnificence saluted us.
  But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity with
which of late they have been hunted over all four oceans, the Sperm
Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached
companies, as in former times, are now frequently met with in
extensive herds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that it
would almost seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn
league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection. To this
aggregation of the Sperm Whale into such immense caravans, may be
imputed the circumstance that even in the best cruising grounds, you
may now sometimes sail for weeks and months together, without being
greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly saluted by what
sometimes seems thousands on thousands.
  Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles,
and forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level
horizon, a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and
sparkling in the noon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular
twin-jets of the Right Whale, which, dividing at top, fall over in two
branches, like the cleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single
forward-slanting spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush
of white mist, continually rising and falling away to leeward.
  Seen from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high
hill of the sea, this host of vapory spouts, individually curling up
into the air, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze,
showed like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis,
descried of a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.
  As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the
mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that
perilous passage in their rear, and once more expand in comparative
security upon the plain; even so did this vast fleet of whales now
seem hurrying forward through the straits; gradually contracting the
wings of their semicircle, and swimming on, in one solid, but still
crescentic centre.
  Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers
handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads of their
yet suspended boats. If the wind only held, little doubt had they,
that chased through these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only
deploy into the Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of
their number. And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan,
Moby Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming, like the
worshipped white-elephant in the coronation procession of the Siamese!
So with stun-sail piled on stun-sail, we sailed along, driving these
leviathans before us; when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego was
heard, loudly directing attention to something in our wake.
  Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in the
rear. It seemed formed of detached white vapors, rising and falling
something like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so
completely come and go; for they constantly hovered, without finally
disappearing. Levelling his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly revolved
in his pivot-hole, crying, "Aloft there, and rig whips and buckets
to wet the sail;- Malays, sir, and after us!"
  As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod
should fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were
now in hot pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay. But when
the swift Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was herself in hot chase;
how very kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her
on to her own chosen pursuit,- mere riding-whips and rowels to her,
that they were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the
deck; in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased, and in the
after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him; some such fancy as the
above seemed his. And when he glanced upon the green walls of the
watery defile in which the ship was then sailing, and bethought him
that through that gate lay the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how
that through that same gate he was now both chasing and being chased
to his deadly end; and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild
pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him on
with their curses;- when all these conceits had passed through his
brain, Ahab's brow was left gaunt and ribbed, like the black sand
beach after some stormy tide had been gnawing it, without being able
to drag the firm thing from its place.
  But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew;
and when, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the
Pequod at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra
side, emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the
harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been
gaining upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so
victoriously gained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the
wake of the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed;
gradually the ship neared them; and the wind now dying away, word
was passed to spring to the boats. But no sooner did the herd, by some
presumed wonderful instinct of the Sperm Whale, become notified of the
three keels that were after them,- though as yet a mile in their
rear,- than they rallied again, and forming in close ranks and
battalions, so that their spouts all looked like flashing lines of
stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.
  Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash,
and after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce
the chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave
animating tokens that they were now at last under the influence of
that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the
fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied. The
compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly and
steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout; and
like King Porus' elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander, they
seemed going mad with consternation. In all directions expanding in
vast irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither,
by their short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their
distraction of panic. This was still more strangely evinced by those
of their number, who, completely paralysed as it were, helplessly
floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the sea. Had these
Leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep, pursued over the
pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not possibly have evinced
such excessive dismay. But this occasional timidity is
characteristic of almost all herding creatures. Though banding
together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes of the West
have fled before a solitary horseman. Witness, too, all human
beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold of a theatre's
pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter
for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorselessly
dashing each other to death. Best, therefore, withhold any amazement
at the strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly of
the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the
madness of men.
  Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,
yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced nor
retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is customary
in those cases, the boats at once separated, each making for some
one lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three
minutes' time, Queequeg's harpoon was flung; the stricken fish
darted blinding spray in faces, and then running away with us like
light, steered straight for the heart of the herd. Though such a
movement on the part of the whale struck under such circumstances,
is in no wise unprecedented; and indeed is almost always more or
less anticipated; yet does it present one of the more perilous
vicissitudes of the fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper
and deeper into the frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life
and only exist in a delirious throb.
  As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer
power of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to
him; as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced
as we flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our
beset boat was like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and
striving to steer through complicated channels and straits, knowing
not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed.
  But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering
off from this monster directly across our route in advance; now edging
away from that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while
all the time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand, pricking
out of our way whatever whales he could reach by short darts, for
there was no time to make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen quite
idle, though their wonted duty was now altogether dispensed with. They
chiefly attended to the shouting part of the business. "Out of the
way, Commodore!" cried one, to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose
bodily to the surface, and for an instant threatened to swamp us.
"Hard down with your tail, there!" cried a second to another, which,
close to our gunwale, seemed calmly cooling himself with his own
fan-like extremity.
  All whale-boats carry certain curious contrivances, originally
invented by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares of
wood of equal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they cross
each other's grain at right angles; a line of considerable length is
then attached to the middle of this block, and the other end of the
line being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It
is chiefly among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For then,
more whales are close round you than you can possibly chase at one
time. But sperm whales are not every day encountered; while you may,
then, you must kill all you can. And if you cannot kill them all at
once, you must wing them, so that they can be afterwards killed at
your leisure. Hence it is, that at times like these the drug, comes
into requisition. Our boat was furnished with three of them. The first
and second were successfully darted, and we saw the whales
staggeringly running off, fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance
of the towing drugg. They were cramped like malefactors with the chain
and ball. But upon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard
the clumsy wooden block, it caught under one of the seats of the boat,
and in an instant tore it out and carried it away, dropping the
oarsman in the boat's bottom as the seat slid from under him. On
both sides the sea came in at the wounded planks, but we stuffed two
or three drawers and shirts in, and so stopped the leaks for the time.
  It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons,
were it not that as we advanced into the herd, our whale's way greatly
diminished; moreover, that as we went still further and further from
the circumference of commotion, the direful disorders seemed waning.
So that when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing
whale sideways vanished; then, with the tapering force of his
parting momentum, we glided between two whales into the innermost
heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid
into a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens
between the outermost whales, were heard but not felt. In this central
expanse the sea presented that smooth satin-like surface, called a
sleek, produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in
his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm which
they say lurks at the heart of every commotion. And still in the
distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric
circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight or ten in each,
swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of horses in a
ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider
might easily have over-arched the middle ones, and so have gone
round on their backs. Owing to the density of the crowd of reposing
whales, more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd,
no possible chance of escape was at present afforded us. We must watch
for a breach in the living wall that hemmed us in; the wall that had
only admitted us in order to shut us up. Keeping at the centre of
the lake, we were occasionally visited by small tame cows and
calves; the women and children of this routed host.
  Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the
revolving outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the
various pods in any one of those circles, the entire area at this
juncture, embraced by the whole multitude, must have contained at
least two or three square miles. At any rate- though indeed such a
test at such a time might be deceptive- spoutings might be
discovered from our low boat that seemed playing up almost from the
rim of the horizon. I mention this circumstance, because, as if the
cows and calves had been purposely locked up in this innermost fold;
and as if the wide extent of the herd had hitherto prevented them from
learning the precise cause of its stopping; or, possibly, being so
young, unsophisticated, and every way innocent and inexperienced;
however it may have been, these smaller whales- now and then
visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the lake- evinced a
wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or else a still becharmed
panic which it was impossible not to marvel at. Like household dogs
they came snuffing round us, right up to our gunwales, and touching
them; till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly
domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched
their backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the
time refrained from darting it.
  But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and
still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For,
suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing
mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed
shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a
considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while
suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if
leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing
mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some
unearthly reminiscence;- even so did the young of these whales seem
looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of
Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers
also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that
from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured
some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a
little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from
that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal
reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the
unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins,
and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited
crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign parts.
  "Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; "him fast!
him fast!- Who line him! Who struck?- Two whale; one big, one little!"
  "What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck.
  "Look-e here," said Queequeg, pointing down.
  As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out
hundreds of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up
again, and shows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and
spiralling towards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the
umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed
still tethered to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the
chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes
entangled with the hempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped.
Some of the subtlest secrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this
enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan amours in the deep.*

  *The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but
unlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a
gestation which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but
one at a time; though in some few known instances giving birth to an
Esau and Jacob:- a contingency provided for in suckling by two
teats, curiously situated, one on each side of the anus; but the
breasts themselves extend upwards from that. When by chance these
precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter's lance, the
mother's pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolor the sea for rods.
The milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might
do well with strawberries. When overflowing with mutual esteem, the
whales salute more hominum.

  And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of
consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the
centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments;
yes, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the
tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally
disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe
revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me
in eternal mildness of joy.
  Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats,
still engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host; or
possibly carrying on the war within the first circle, where
abundance of room and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But
the sight of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting
to and fro across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our
eyes. It is sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than
commonly powerful and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were,
by sundering or maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by
darting a short-handled cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for
hauling it back again. A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned) in
this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had broken away from the
boat, carrying along with him half of the harpoon line; and in the
extraordinary agony of the wound, he was now dashing among the
revolving circles like the lone mounted desperado Arnold, at the
battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay wherever he went.
  But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling
spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he
seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which
at first the intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we
perceived that by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery,
this whale had become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed;
he had also run away with the cutting-spade in him; and while the free
end of the rope attached to that weapon, had permanently caught in the
coils of the harpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade itself had
worked loose from his flesh. So that tormented to madness, he was
now churning through the water, violently flailing with his flexible
tail, and tossing the keen spade about him, wounding and murdering his
own comrades.
  This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake
began to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted
by half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly to
heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished;
in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central
circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was
departing. A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the
tumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up
in Spring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner
centre, as if to pile themselves up in one common mountain.
Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck taking the
stern.
  "Oars! Oars!" he intensely whispered, seizing the helm- "gripe
your oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove
him off, you Queequeg- the whale there!- prick him!- hit him! Stand
up- stand up, and stay so! Spring men- pull, men; never mind their
backs- scrape them!- scrape away!"
  The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks,
leaving a narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by
desperate endeavor we at last shot into a temporary opening; then
giving way rapidly, and at the same time earnestly watching for
another outlet. After many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last
swiftly glided into what had just been one of the outer circles, but
now crossed by random whales, all violently making for one centre.
This lucky salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg's
hat, who, while standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales, had
his hat taken clean from his head by the air-eddy made by the sudden
tossing of a pair of broad flukes close by.
  Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon
resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having
clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their
onward flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless;
but the boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged
whales might be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one which Flask
had killed and waited. The waif is a pennoned pole, two or three of
which are carried by every boat; and when additional game is at
hand, are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale,
both to mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior
possession, should the boats of any other ship draw near.
  The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that
sagacious saying in the Fishery,- the more whales the less fish. Of
all the drugged whales only one was captured. The rest contrived to
escape for the time, but only to be taken, as will hereafter be
seen, by some other craft than the Pequod.
  CHAPTER 88
  Schools and Schoolmasters

  The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of
Sperm Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause
inducing those vast aggregations.
  Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must
have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are
occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals
each. Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two
sorts; those composed almost entirely of females, and those
mustering none but young vigorous males, or bulls as they are
familiarly designated.
  In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably
see a male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any
alarm, evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the
flight of his ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman,
swimming about over the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all
the solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrast between this
Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of
the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full
growth, are not more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized
male. They are comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to
exceed half a dozen yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot
be denied, that upon the whole they are hereditarily entitled to
embonpoint.
  It is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their
indolent ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move
in leisurely search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time
for the full flower of the Equatorial feeding season, having just
returned, perhaps, from spending the summer in the Northern seas,
and so cheating summer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By
the time they have lounged up and down the promenade of the Equator
awhile, they start for the Oriental waters in anticipation of the cool
season there, and so evade the other excessive temperature of the
year.
  When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange
suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his
interesting family. Should any unwarranted pert young Leviathan coming
that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies,
with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away!
High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be
permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the
Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his
bed; for alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often
cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with
the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love.
They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them
together, and so striving for the supremacy like elks that warringly
interweave their antlers. Not a few are captured having the deep scars
of these encounters,- furrowed heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins;
and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths.
  But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away
at the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to
watch that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again
and revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young
Lothario, like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand
concubines. Granting other whales to be in sight, the fisherman will
seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks
are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is
small. As for the sons and daughters they beget, why, those sons and
daughters must take care of themselves; at least, with only the
maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that
might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however
much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he leaves his
anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In good
time, nevertheless, as the ardor of youth declines; as years and dumps
increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a
general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and
virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the
impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the
harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone
among the meridians and parallels saying his prayers, and warning each
young Leviathan from his amorous errors.
  Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school,
so is the lord and master of that school technically known as the
schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict character, however
admirably satirical, that after going to school himself, he should
then go abroad inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of
it. His title, schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from
the name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that
the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must
have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a
country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days,
and what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into
some of his pupils.
  The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster
whale betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged
Sperm Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale- as a solitary
Leviathan is called- proves an ancient one. Like venerable
moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature
herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the
best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets.
  The schools composing none but young and vigorous males,
previously mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools.
For while those females are characteristically timid, the young males,
or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most
pugnacious of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to
encounter; excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales,
sometimes met, and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated
by a penal gout.
  The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools.
Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and
wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking
rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he
would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this
turbulence though, and when about three-fourths grown, break up, and
separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.
  Another point of difference between the male and female schools is
still more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a
Forty-barrel-bull- poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike a
member of the harem school, and her companions swim around her with
every token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long,
as themselves to fall a prey.
  CHAPTER 89
  Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish

  The allusion to the waif-poles in the last chapter but one,
necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale
fishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.
  It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in
company, a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be
finally killed and captured by another vessel; and herein are
indirectly comprised many minor contingencies, all partaking of this
one grand feature. For example,- after a weary and perilous chase
and capture of a whale, the body may get loose from the ship by reason
of a violent storm; and drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by
a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly tows it alongside, without
risk of life or line. Thus the most vexatious and violent disputes
would often arise between the fishermen, were there not some written
or unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases.
  Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative
enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General
in A.D. 1695. But though no other nation has ever had any written
whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own
legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system
which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and
the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling
with other People's Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a
Queen Anne's forthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the
neck, so small are they.
  I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
  II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.
  But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable
brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to
expound it.
  First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically
fast, when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any
medium at all controllable by the occupant or occupants,- a mast, an
oar, a nine-inch cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is
all the same. Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a
waif, or any other recognized symbol of possession; so long as the
party wailing it plainly evince their ability at any time to take it
alongside, as well as their intention so to do.
  These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the
whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks-
the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright
and honorable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar
cases, where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party
to claim possession of a whale previously chased or killed by
another party. But others are by no means so scrupulous.
  Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover
litigated in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a
hard chase of a whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed they
(the plaintiffs) had succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at
last, through peril of their lives, obliged to forsake not only
their lines, but their boat itself. Ultimately the defendants (the
crew of another ship) came up with the whale, struck, killed,
seized, and finally appropriated it before the very eyes of the
plaintiffs. And when those defendants were remonstrated with, their
captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs' teeth, and assured them
that by way of doxology to the deed he had done, he would now retain
their line, harpoons, and boat, which had remained attached to the
whale at the time of the seizure. Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued
for the recovery of the value of their whale, line, harpoons, and
boat.
  Mr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; Lord Ellenborough was
the judge. In the course of the defence, the witty Erskine went on
to illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con. case,
wherein a gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife's
viciousness, had at last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in
the course of years, repenting of that step, he instituted an action
to recover possession of her. Erskine was on the other side; and he
then supported it by saying, that though the gentleman had
originally harpooned the lady, and had once had her fast, and only
by reason of the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last
abandoned her; yet abandon her he did, so that she became a
loose-fish; and therefore when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned
her, the lady then became that subsequent gentleman's property,
along with whatever harpoon might have been found sticking in her.
  Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the
whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative to each other.
  These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the
very learned Judge in set terms decided, to wit,- That as for the
boat, he awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely
abandoned it to save their lives; but that with regard to the
controverted whale, harpoons, and line, they belonged to the
defendants; the whale, because it was a Loose-Fish at the time of
the final capture; and the harpoons and line because when the fish
made off with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those
articles; and hence anybody who afterwards took the fish had a right
to them. Now the defendants afterwards took the fish; ergo, the
aforesaid articles were theirs.
  A common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge,
might possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of
the matter, the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling
laws previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord
Ellenborough in the above cited case; these two laws touching
Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say, will on reflection, be found the
fundamentals of all human jurisprudence; for notwithstanding its
complicated tracery of sculpture, the Temple of the Law, like the
Temple of the Philistines, has but two props to stand on.
  Is it not a saying in every one's mouth, Possession is half of the
law: that is, regardless of how the thing came into possession? But
often possession is the whole of the law. What are the sinews and
souls of Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof
possession is the whole of the law? What to the rapacious landlord
is the widow's last mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected
villain's marble mansion with a doorplate for a waif; what is that but
a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinous discount which Mordecai, the
broker, gets from the poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to
keep Woebegone's family from starvation; what is that ruinous discount
but a Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop of Savesoul's income of
L100,000 seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of
thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven without any of
Savesoul's help) what is that globular 100,000 but a Fast-Fish. What
are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish?
What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland, but a
Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas
but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these, is not Possession the whole
of the law?
  But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the
kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is
internationally and universally applicable.
  What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus
struck the Spanish standard by way of wailing it for his royal
master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the
Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United
States? All Loose-Fish.
  What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What
is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to
the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but
Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And
what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?
  CHAPTER 90
  Heads or Tails

  "De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam."
                                      BRACTON, L. 3, C. 3.

  Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along
with the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the
coast of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must
have the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the
tail. A division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple;
there is no intermediate remainder. Now as this law, under a
modified form, is to this day in force in England; and as it offers in
various respects a strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast-
and Loose-Fish, it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the
same courteous principle that prompts the English railways to be at
the expense of a separate car, specially reserved for the
accommodation of royalty. In the first place, in curious proof of
the fact that the above-mentioned law is still in force, I proceed
to lay before you a circumstance-that happened within the last two
years.
  It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some
one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing
and beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar
off from the shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow
under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord
Warden. Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the
royal emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by
assignment his. By some writers this office is called a sinecure.
But not so. Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in
fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that
same fobbing of them.
  Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with
their trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled
their fat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good L150 from the
precious oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their
wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their
respective shares; up steps a very learned and most Christian and
charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm; and
laying it upon the whale's head, he says- "Hands off! this fish, my
masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden's." Upon this
the poor mariners in their respectful consternation- so truly English-
knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their heads all
round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the stranger. But
that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the hard heart of
the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone. At length one of
them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak,
  "Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?"
  "The Duke."
  "But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?"
  "It is his."
  "We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and
is all that to go to the Duke's benefit; we getting nothing at all for
our pains but our blisters?"
  "It is his."
  "Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode
of getting a livelihood?"
  "It is his."
  "I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share
of this whale."
  "It is his."
  "Won't the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?"
  "It is his."
  In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke
of Wellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some
particular lights, the case might by a bare possibility in some
small degree be deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one,
ali honest clergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to
his Grace, begging him to take the case of those unfortunate
mariners into full consideration. To which my Lord Duke in substance
replied (both letters were published) that he had already done so, and
received the money, and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman
if for the future he (the reverend gentleman) would decline meddling
with other people's business. Is this the still militant old man,
standing at the corners of the three kingdoms, on all hands coercing
alms of beggars?
  It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the
Duke to the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must
needs inquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally
invested with that right. The law itself has already been set forth.
But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so
caught belongs to the King and Queen, "because of its superior
excellence." And by the soundest commentators this has ever been
held a cogent argument in such matters.
  But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A
reason for that, ye lawyers!
  In his treatise on "Queen-Gold," or Queen-pin-money, an old King's
Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: "Ye tail is ye
Queen's, that ye Queen's wardrobe may be supplied with ye
whalebone." Now this was written at a time when the black limber
bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies'
bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head,
which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is
the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical
meaning may lurk here.
  There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers- the
whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations,
and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary
revenue. I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter;
but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in
the same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and
elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded,
may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality.
And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law.
  CHAPTER 91
  The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud

  "In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this
Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying not inquiry."
                                   SIR T. BROWNE, V. E.

  It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and
when we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapory, mid-day sea, that
the many noses on the Pequod's deck proved more vigilant discoverers
than the three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant
smell was smelt in the sea.
  "I will bet something now," said Stubb, "that somewhere hereabouts
are some of those drugged whales we tickled the other day. I thought
they would keel up before long."
  Presently, the vapors in advance slid aside; and there in the
distance lay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of
whale must be alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed
French colors from his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture
sea-fowl that circled, and hovered, and swooped around him, it was
plain that the whale alongside must be what the fishermen call a
blasted whale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea,
and so floated an unappropriated corpse. It may well be conceived,
what an unsavory odor such a mass must exhale; worse than an
Assyrian city in the plague, when the living are incompetent to bury
the departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded by some, that no
cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it. Yet are there
those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that the oil
obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and by no
means of the nature of attar-of-rose.
  Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the
Frenchman had a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed
even more of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be
one of those problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a
sort of prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct
bodies almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless, in
the proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever turn
up his nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun
blasted whales in general.
  The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Stubb vowed
he recognized his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that
were knotted round the tail of one of these whales.
  "There's a pretty fellow, now," he banteringly laughed, standing
in the ship's bows, "there's a jackal for ye! I well knew that these
Crappoes of Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes
lowering their boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale
spouts; yes, and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold
full of boxes of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing
that all the oil they will get won't be enough to dip the Captain's
wick into; aye, we all know these things; but look ye, here's a Crappo
that is content with our leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean;
aye, and is content too with scraping the dry bones of that other
precious fish he has there. Poor devil! I say, pass round a hat,
some one, and let's make him a present of a little oil for dear
charity's sake. For what oil he'll get from that drugged whale
there, wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail; no, not in a condemned cell.
And as for the other whale, why, I'll agree to get more oil by
chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours, than he'll get
from that bundle of bones; though, now that I think of it, it may
contain something worth a good deal more than oil; yes, ambergris. I
wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It's worth trying. Yes,
I'm for it;" and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.
  By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that
whether or no, the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell,
with no hope of escaping except by its breezing up again. Issuing from
the cabin, Stubb now called his boat's crew, and pulled off for the
stranger. Drawing across her bow, he perceived that in accordance with
the fanciful French taste, the upper part of her stem-piece was carved
in the likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted green, and for
thorns had copper spikes projecting from it here and there; the
whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red
color. Upon her head boards, in large gilt letters, he read "Bouton de
Rose,"- Rose-button, or Rose-bud; and this was the romantic name of
this aromatic ship.
  Though Stubb did not understand the Bouton part of the
inscription, yet the word rose, and the bulbous figure-head put
together, sufficiently explained the whole to him.
  "A wooden rose-bud, eh?" he cried with his hand to his nose, "that
will do very well; but how like all creation it smells!"
  Now in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck,
he had to pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come
close to the blasted whale; and so talk over it.
  Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he
bawled- "Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses
that speak English?"
  "Yes," rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who turned out
to be the chief-mate.
  "Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the White Whale?"
  "What whale?"
  "The White Whale- a Sperm Whale- Moby Dick, have ye seen him?
  "Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale- no."
  "Very good, then; good bye now, and I'll call again in a minute."
  Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab
leaning over the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his
two hands into a trumpet and shouted- "No, Sir! No!" Upon which Ahab
retired, and Stubb returned to the Frenchman.
  He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the
chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of
bag.
  "What's the matter with your nose, there?" said Stubb. "Broke it?"
  "I wish it was broken, or that I didn't have any nose at all!"
answered the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relish the job he was
at very much. "But what are you holding yours for?"
  "Oh, nothing! It's a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, ain't
it? Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies,
will ye, Bouton-de-Rose?"
  "What in the devil's name do you want here?" roared the Guernseyman,
flying into a sudden passion.
  "Oh! keep cool- cool? yes, that's the word! why don't you pack those
whales in ice while you're working at 'em? But joking aside, though;
do you know, Rose-bud, that it's all nonsense trying to get any oil
out of such whales? As for that dried up one, there, he hasn't a
gill in his whole carcase."
  "I know that well enough; but, d'ye see, the Captain here won't
believe it; this is his first voyage; he was a Cologne manufacturer
before. But come aboard, and mayhap he'll believe you, if he won't me;
and so I'll get out of this dirty scrape."
  "Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow," rejoined
Stubb, and with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer
scene presented itself. The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted,
were getting the heavy tackles in readiness for the whales. But they
worked rather slow and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but
a good humor. All their noses upwardly projected from their faces like
so many jibbooms. Now and then pairs of them would drop their work,
and run up to the mast-head to get some fresh air. Some thinking
they would catch the plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at
intervals held it to their nostrils. Others having broken the stems of
their pipes almost short off at the bowl, were vigorously puffing
tobacco-smoke, so that it constantly filled their olfactories.
  Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding
from the Captain's round-house abaft; and looking in that direction
saw a fiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar from
within. This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain
remonstrating against the proceedings of the day, had betaken
himself to the Captain's round-house (cabinet he called it) to avoid
the pest; but still, could not help yelling out his entreaties and
indignations at times.
  Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to
the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger
mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited
ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory and
unprofitable a pickle. Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived
that the Guernsey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning the
ambergris. He therefore held his peace on that head, but otherwise was
quite frank and confidential with him, so that the two quickly
concocted a little plan for both circumventing and satirizing the
Captain, without his at all dreaming of distrusting their sincerity.
According to this little plan of theirs, the Guernsey-man, under cover
of an interpreter's office, was to tell the Captain what he pleased,
but as coming from Stubb; and as for Stubb, he was to utter any
nonsense that should come uppermost in him during the interview.
  By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He was a
small and dark, but rather delicate looking man for a sea-captain,
with large whiskers and moustache, however; and wore a red cotton
velvet vest with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb was
now politely introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at once
ostentatiously put on the aspect of interpreting between them.
  "What shall I say to him first?" said he.
  "Why," said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals,
"you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of
babyish to me, though I don't pretend to be a judge."
  "He says, Monsieur," said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to
his captain, "that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose
captain and chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever
caught from a blasted whale they had brought alongside."
  Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.
  "What now?" said the Guernsey-man to Stubb.
  "Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him
carefully, I'm certain that he's no more fit to command a whale-ship
than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he's a baboon."
  "He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried
one, is far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he
conjures us, as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish."
  Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his
crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast
loose the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.
  "What now?" said the Guernsey-man, when the Captain had returned
to them.
  "Why, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him now that- that- in
fact, tell him I've diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhaps
somebody else."
  "He says, Monsieur, that he's very happy to have been of any service
to us."
  Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful
parties (meaning himself and mate), and concluded by inviting Stubb
down into his cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux.
  "He wants you to take a glass of wine with him," said the
interpreter.
  "Thank him heartily; but tell him it's against my principles to
drink with the man I've diddled. In fact, tell him I must go."
  "He says, Monsieur, that his principles won't admit of his drinking;
but that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then Monsieur
had best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these
whales, for it's so calm they won't drift."
  By this time Stubb was over the side, and getting into his boat,
hailed the Guernsey-man to this effect,- that having a long tow-line
in his boat, he would do what he could to help them, by pulling out
the lighter whale of the two from the ship's side. While the
Frenchman's boats, then, were engaged in towing the ship one way,
Stubb benevolently towed away at his whale the other way,
ostentatiously slacking out a most unusually long tow-line.
  Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the
whale; hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his
distance, while the Pequod slid in between him and Stubb's whale.
Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to the floating body, and hailing the
Pequod to give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the
fruit of his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he
commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You
would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea;
and when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was
like turning up old Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English
loam. His boat's crew were all in high excitement, eagerly helping
their chief, and looking anxious as gold-hunters.
  And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and
screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was
beginning to look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay
increased, when suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there
stole a faint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of
bad smells without being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into
and then along with another, without at all blending with it for a
time.
  "I have it, I have it," cried Stubb, with delight, striking
something in the subterranean regions, "a purse! a purse!"
  Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls
of something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old
cheese; very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with
your thumb; it is of a hue between yellow and ash color. And this,
good friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any
druggist. Some six handfulls were obtained; but more was unavoidably
lost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured were
it not for impatient Ahab's loud command to Stubb to desist, and
come on board, else the ship would bid them good-bye.
  CHAPTER 92
  Ambergris

  Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important
as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born
Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons
on that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively
late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself,
a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the
French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite
distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also
dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found
except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle,
odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and
ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and
spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious
candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and
also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is
carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few
grains into claret, to flavor it.
  Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should
regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of
a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the
cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to
cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering
three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of
harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.
  I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris,
certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might
be sailors' trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they
were nothing, more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that
manner.
  Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should
be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee
of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and
incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory.
And likewise call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is
that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of
all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental
manufacturing stages, is the worst.
  I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but
cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against
whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds,
might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been
said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the
slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of
whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is
another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad.
Now how did this odious stigma originate?
  I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the
Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago.
Because those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil
at sea as the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the
fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large
casks, and carry it home in that manner; the shortness of the season
in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to which they are
exposed, forbidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon
breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries,
in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar to that
arising from excavating an old city graveyard, for the foundations
of a Lying-in Hospital.
  I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may
be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in
former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or
Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von
Slack, in his great work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As
its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was
founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch
whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland for
that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil
sheds; and when the works were in full operation certainly gave
forth no very pleasant savor. But all this is quite different with a
South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after
completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty
days in the business of boding out; and in the state that it is
casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or
dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means
creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people
of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the
nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant,
when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance
of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the
open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water
dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress
in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for
fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous
elephant, with jeweled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led
out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?
  CHAPTER 93
  The Castaway

  It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a
most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's
crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the
sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever
accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her
own.
  Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the
boats. Some few hands are reserved called shipkeepers, whose
province it is to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the
whale. As a general thing, these shipkeepers are as hardy fellows as
the men comprising the boats' crews. But if there happen to be an
unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is
certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the
little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye
have heard of him before; ye must remember his tambourine on that
dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.
  In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony
and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar color,
driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by
nature dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over
tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial,
jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy
all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other
race. For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but three
hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year's Days. Nor
smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even
blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in
king's cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all life's peaceable
securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he had
somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his
brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus
temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly
illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to
ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County
in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the
green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned
the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the
clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the
pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning
jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre,
he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by
the sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery
effulgences, infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once
the divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some
crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell. But let us to the story.
  It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's
after-oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become
quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.
  The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness;
but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale;
and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb
observing him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his
courageousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.
  Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and
as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which
happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat. The
involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle
in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack
whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with
him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the
water. That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the
line swiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to
the chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which
had taken several turns around his chest and neck.
  Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt.
He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath,
he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards
Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?" Meantime Pip's blue, choked
face plainly looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash. In
less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
  "Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was
saved.
  So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was
assailed by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting
these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain,
business-like, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip
officially; and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome
advice. The substance was, Never jump from a boat, Pip, except- but
all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in
general, Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling; but cases
will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better.
Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he should give undiluted
conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a margin
to jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and
concluded with a peremptory command "Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the
Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can't afford to
lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times
what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don't jump any
more." Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved
his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too
often interferes with his benevolence.
  But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It
was under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but
this time he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale
started to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried
traveller's trunk. Alas! Stubb was but too true to his word. It was
a beautiful, bounteous, blue day! the spangled sea calm and cool,
and flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon, like
gold-beater's skin hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up and
down in that sea, Pip's ebon head showed like a head of cloves. No
boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly astern. Stubb's
inexorable back was turned upon him; and the whale was winged. In
three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and
Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp,
curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though the
loftiest and the brightest.
  Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the
practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the
awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self
in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell
it? Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea-
mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides.
  But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate?
No; he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in
his wake, and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up
to Pip very quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such
considerations towards oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity,
is not always manifested by the hunters in all similar instances;
and such instances not unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the
fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the same ruthless
detestation peculiar to military navies and armies.
  But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly
spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and
Stubb's boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent
upon his fish, that Pip's ringed horizon began to expand around him
miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him;
but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot;
such, at least, they said he was. The sea had leeringly kept his
finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned
entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths,
where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro
before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his
hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile
eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects,
that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw
God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore
his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and
wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that
celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal
or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.
  For the rest blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that
fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what
like abandonment befell myself.
  CHAPTER 94
  A Squeeze of the Hand

  That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to
the Pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations
previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling
of the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.
  While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed
in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm;
and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully
manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon.
  It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with
several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it,
I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling
about in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps
back into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old
times sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a
sweetener! such a softener; such a delicious mollifier! After having
my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels,
and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize.
  As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the
bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship
under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my
hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, wove
almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and
discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine;
as. I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,- literally and truly, like
the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I
lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in
that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I
almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is
of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that
bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice,
of any sort whatsoever.
  Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that
sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm
till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself
unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their
hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate,
friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I
was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their
eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why
should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the
slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round;
nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze
ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
  Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now,
since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that
in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit
of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or
the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle,
the fire-side; the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am
ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the
night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a
jar of spermaceti.

  Now, while discoursing of sperm it behooves to speak of other things
akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the
try-works.
  First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the
tapering part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his
flukes. It is tough with congealed tendons- a wad of muscle- but still
contains some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse
is first cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They
look much like blocks of Berkshire marble.
  Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts
of the whale's flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of
blubber, and often participating to a considerable degree in its
unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object
to behold. As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly rich,
mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with
spots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in
pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself
from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to
try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from
the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have
been killed the first day after the venison season, and that
particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine
vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.
  There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns
up in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be very
puzzling adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an
appellation original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of
the substance. It is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most
frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing,
and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the wondrously thin,
ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing.
  Gurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen,
but sometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It
designates the dark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back
of the Greenland or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of
those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.
  Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's
vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's
nipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the
tapering part of Leviathan's tail: it averages an inch in thickness,
and for the rest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe.
Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern
squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along
with it all impurities.
  But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is
at once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with
its inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the
receptacle for the blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the
whale. When the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents,
this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night.
On one side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for
the workmen. They generally go in pairs,- a pike-and-gaffman and a
spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate's
boarding-weapon of the same name. The gaff is something like a
boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a sheet of
blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and
lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself,
perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade
is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the
thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him,
like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his
assistants', would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce
among veteran blubber-room men.
  CHAPTER 95
  The Cassock

  Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this
post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the
windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small
curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have
seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the
wondrous cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his
unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of
these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable
cone,- longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at
the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an
idol, indeed, it is; or rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such
an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in
Judea; and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her,
and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook
Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of
Kings.
  Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and
assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the
mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if
he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field.
Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically
to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa.
This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it
a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last
hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken
down; when removing some three feet of it, towards the pointed
extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes at the other
end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands
before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling.
Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately
protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.
  That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for
the pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse,
planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath
it, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a
rapt orator's desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous
pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric,
what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!*

  *Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the
mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work
into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the
business of boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its
quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps improving it in
quality.
  CHAPTER 96
  The Try-Works

  Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly
distinguished by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of
the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the
completed ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were
transported to her planks.
  The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the
most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar
strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of
brick and mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height.
The foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is
firmly secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on
all sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is
cased with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping,
battened hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots,
two in number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When not in use,
they are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with
soapstone and sand, till they shine within like silver punchbowls.
During the night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them
and coil themselves away there for a nap. While employed in
polishing them- one man in each pot, side by side- many confidential
communications are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place
also for profound mathematical meditation. It was in the left hand
try-pot of the Pequod, with the soapstone diligently circling round
me, that I was first indirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in
geometry all bodies gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for
example, will descend from any point in precisely the same time.
  Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare
masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths
of the furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted
with heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented
from communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir
extending under the entire inclosed surface of the works. By a
tunnel inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished with
water as fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they
open direct from the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment.
  It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's try-works
were first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to
oversee the business.
  "All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the
works." This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting
his shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it
said in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed
for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of
quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out,
the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still
contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters
feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a
self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own
fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own
smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must,
and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an
unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the
vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of
judgment; it is an argument for the pit.
  By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the
carcass; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean
darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce
flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and
illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek
fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to
some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the
bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with
broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish
frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.
  The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide
hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of
the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge
pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding
pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted,
curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke
rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a
pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap into
their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of
the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a
sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking
into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in
their heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and
sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of
their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious
emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other their unholy
adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their
uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames
from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers
wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as
the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and
dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further
into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed
the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all
sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with
fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of
darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac
commander's soul.
  So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours
silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for
that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness,
the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the
fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these
at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to
yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me
at a midnight helm.
  But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since
inexplicable) thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing
sleep, I was horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The
jaw-bone tiller smote my side, which leaned against it; in my ears was
the low hum of sails, just beginning to shake in the wind; I thought
my eyes were open; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to the
lids and mechanically stretching them still further apart. But,
spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to steer by;
though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the card, by
the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but
a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes of redness.
Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I
stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as rushing from
all havens astern. A stark, bewildered feeling, as of death, came over
me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy
conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted.
My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I
had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship's stern, with my
back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I faced back, just
in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, and very
probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief from this
unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of
being brought by the lee!
  Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with
thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the
first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire,
when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the
natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in
the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler,
relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp- all others
but liars!
  Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's
accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of
deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean,
which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of
this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than
sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true- not true, or
undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of
Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is
the fine hammered steel of woe. "All is vanity." ALL. This wilful
world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he
who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards,
and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young,
Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a
care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore
jolly;- not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break
the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.
  But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of
understanding shall remain" (i.e. even while living) "in the
congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it
invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom
that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a
Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the
blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in
the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that
gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the
mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even
though they soar.
  CHAPTER 97
  The Lamp

  Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the Pequod's
forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single
moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some
illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they
lay in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled
muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
  In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of
queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in
darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he
seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an
Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest
night the ship's black hull still houses an illumination.
  See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of
lamps- often but old bottles and vials, though- to the copper cooler
at the tryworks, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a
vat. He burns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and,
therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or
astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in
April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its
freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie
hunts up his own supper of game.
  CHAPTER 98
  Stowing Down and Clearing Up

  Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off
described from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery
moors, and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then
towed alongside and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled
the headsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was
killed) his great padded surtout becomes the property of his
executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and,
like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone
pass unscathed through the fire;- but now it remains to conclude the
last chapter of this part of the description by rehearsing- singing,
if I may- the romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the
casks and striking them down into the hold, where once again leviathan
returns to his native profundities, sliding along beneath the
surface :is before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow.
  While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the
six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling
this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed
round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot
across the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at last
man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops,
rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, ex
officio, every sailor is a cooper.
  At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the
great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown
open, and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done,
the hatches are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet
walled up.
  In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable
incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream
with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous
masses of the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks
lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has
besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with
unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while
on all hands the din is deafening.
  But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in
this self-same ship! and were it not for the tell-tale boats and
try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant
vessel, with a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured
sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the
reason why the decks never look so white as just after what they
call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of
the whale, a potent lye is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness
from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye
quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and
with buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness.
The soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous
implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and
put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works,
completely hiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles
are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined and, simultaneous
industry of almost the entire ship's company, the whole of this
conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew themselves
proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe;
and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow as
bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.
  Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes,
and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine
cambrics; propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top;
object not to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle.
To hint to such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were
little short of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude
to. Away, and bring us napkins!
  But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men
intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will
again soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small
grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the
severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing
straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where
they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line,-
they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy
windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be
smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and
the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have
finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a
spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just
buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry
of "There she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale, and go
through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is
man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long
toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but
valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from
its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of
the soul; hardly is this done, when- There she blows!- the ghost is
spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through
young life's old routine again.
  Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two
thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed
with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage- and, foolish as I
am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope.
  CHAPTER 99
  The Doubloon

  Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his
quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and
mainmast; but in the multiplicity of other things requiring
narration it has not been added how that sometimes in these walks,
when most plunged in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each
spot, and stand there strangely eyeing the particular object before
him. When he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on
the pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin
with the pointed intensity of his purpose; and when resuming his
walk he again paused before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted
glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the
same aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild
longing, if not hopefulness.
  But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly
attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as
though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in
some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some
certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little
worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to
sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some
morass in the Milky Way.
  Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of
the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands,
the head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst
all the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes,
yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved
its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every
hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights
shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach,
nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset last
left it. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking
end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the
mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they
talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was
to be at last, and whether he would ever live to spend it.
  Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the
sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun's
disks and stars, ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners
waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious
gold seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing
glories, by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
  It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy
example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters,
REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a
country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great
equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes,
in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you
saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on
another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a
segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their
usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point
at Libra.
  Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now
pausing.
  "There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and
all other grand and lofty things; look here,- three peaks as proud
as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab;
the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is
Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the
rounder globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man
in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small
gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve
itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye,
he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before
he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So
be it, then. Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains
and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work
on. So be it, then."
  "No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws
have left their mouldings there since yesterday," murmured Starbuck to
himself, leaning against the bulwarks. "The old man seems to read
Belshazzar's awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly.
He goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three mighty,
heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint
earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over
all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a
hope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil;
but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to
cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we
would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain!
This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. I
will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely."
  "There now's the old Mogul," soliloquized Stubb by the try-works,
"he's been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and
both with faces which I should say might be somewhere within nine
fathoms long. And all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I
have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer's Hook, I'd not look at it
very long ere spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I
regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my
voyagings; your doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your
doubloons of Chili, your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of
Popayan; with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half
joes, and quarter joes. What then should there be in this doubloon
of the Equator that is so killing wonderful? By Golconda! let me
read it once. Halloa! here's signs and wonders truly! That, now, is
what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my
almanack below calls ditto. I'll get the almanack; and as I have heard
devils can be raised with Daboll's arithmetic, I'll try my hand at
raising a meaning out of these queer curvicues here with the
Massachusetts calendar. Here's the book. Let's see now. Signs and
wonders; and the sun, he's always among 'em. Hem, hem, hem; here
they are- here they go- all alive: Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the
Bull and Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he
wheels among 'em. Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the
threshold between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you
lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do
to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the
thoughts. That's my small experience, so far as the Massachusetts
calendar, and Bowditch's navigator, and Daboll's arithmetic go.
Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs,
and significant in wonders! There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit;
hist- hark! By Jove, I have it! Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here
is the life of man in one round chapter; and now I'll read it off,
straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries,
or the Ram- lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull- he
bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins- that is, Virtue
and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab,
and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion,
lies in the path- he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with
his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love;
we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the
Scales- happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad
about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion,
stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang comes the
arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As
we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram,
Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we
are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole
deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we
sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes
through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty.
Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and so, alow
here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye! Adieu, Doubloon!
But stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round the try-works, now,
and let's hear what he'll have to say. There; he's before it; he'll
out with something presently. So, so; he's beginning."
  "I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever
raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what's
all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true;
and at two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and sixty cigars. I
won't smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here's nine
hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em out."
  "Shall I call that Wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has
a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort
of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman- the old
hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the
sea. He luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the
other side of the mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed on that side;
and now he's back again; what does that mean? Hark! he's muttering-
voice like an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!"
  "If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when
the sun stands in some one of these signs. I've studied signs, and
know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the
old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The
horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And
what's the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign- the
roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to
think of thee."
  "There's another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men
in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg- all
tattooing- looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the
Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone;
thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I
suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the black
country. And by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of
his thigh- I guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don't
know what to make of the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off
some king's trowsers. But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil,
Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of
his pumps as usual. What does he say, with that look of his? Ah,
only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a sun on
the coin- fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way
comes Pip- poor boy! would he had died, or I; he's half horrible to
me. He too has been watching all of these interpreters myself
included- and look now, he comes to read, with that unearthly idiot
face. Stand away again and hear him. Hark!"
  "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
  "Upon my soul, he's been studying Murray's Grammar! Improving his
mind, poor fellow! But what's that he says now- hist!"
  "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
  "Why, he's getting it by heart- hist! again."
  "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look."
  "Well, that's funny."
  "And I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a
crow, especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw!
caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And where's the scare-crow?
There he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and
two more poked into the sleeves of an old jacket."
  "Wonder if he means me?- complimentary- poor lad!- I could go hang
myself. Any way, for the present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity. I can
stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but he's too crazy-witty for
my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering."
  "Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon here, and they are all one
fire to unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what's the
consequence? Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when
aught's nailed to the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate. Ha!
ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he'll nail ye! This is a pine tree.
My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found
a silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey's wedding ring. How
did it get there? And so they'll say in the resurrection, when they
come to fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it,
with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious,
precious gold!- the green miser'll hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes
'mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny!
hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!"
  CHAPTER 100
  Leg and Arm
  The Pequod of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London

  "Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?"
  So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colors,
bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was
standing in his hoisted quarter-deck, his ivory leg plainly revealed
to the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own
boat's bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, goodnatured, fine-looking
man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that
hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of
his jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of a huzzar's
surcoat.
  "Hast seen the White Whale!"
  "See you this?" and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden
it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a
wooden head like a mallet.
  "Man my boat!" cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars
near him- "Stand by to lower!"
  In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his
crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the
stranger. But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the
excitement of the moment, Ahab had forgotton that since the loss of
his leg he had never once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but
his own, and then it was always by an ingenious and very handy
mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to be
rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment's warning. Now,
it is no very easy matter for anybody- except those who are almost
hourly used to it, like whalemen- to clamber up a ship's side from a
boat on the open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high up
towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it half way down
to the kelson. So, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course
being altogether unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now
found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again;
hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardly hopte
to attain.
  It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward
circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his
luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab.
And in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of
the two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the
perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards
him a pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did
not seem to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a
cripple to use their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only
lasted a minute, because the strange captain, observing at a glance
how affairs stood, cried out, "I see, I see!- avast heaving there!
Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle."
  As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day
or two previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the
massive curved blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached
to the end. This was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once
comprehending it all, slid his solitary thigh into the curve of the
hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch
of an apple tree), and then giving the word, held himself fast, and at
the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling
hand-over-hand upon one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon he
was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon
the capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in
welcome, the other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory
leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out
in his walrus way, "Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones together!- an
arm and a leg!- an arm that never can shrink, d'ye see; and a leg that
never can run. Where did'st thou see the White Whale?- how long ago?"
  "The White Whale," said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm
towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had
been a telescope; "there I saw him, on the Line, last season."
  "And he took that arm off, did he?" asked Ahab, now sliding down
from the capstan, and resting on the Englishman's shoulder, as he
did so.
  "Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?"
  "Spin me the yarn," said Ahab; "how was it?"
  "It was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the
Line," began the Englishman. "I was ignorant of the White Whale at
that time. Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five
whales, and my boat fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he
was, too, that went milling and milling round so that my boat's crew
could only trim dish, by sitting all their sterns on the outer
gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea a bouncing
great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feet and
wrinkles."
  "It was he, it was he!" cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his
suspended breath.
  "And harpoons sticking in near his starboad fin."
  "Aye, aye- they were mine- my irons," cried Ahab, exultingly- "but
on!"
  "Give me a chance, then," said the Englishman, good-humoredly.
"Well, this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump,
runs all afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my
fast-line!
  "Aye, I see!- wanted to part it; free the fast-fish- an old trick- I
know him."
  "How it was exactly," continued the one-armed commander, "I do not
know; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there
somehow; but we didn't know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled
on the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other
whale's; that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters
stood, and what a noble great whale it was- the noblest and biggest
I ever saw, sir, in my life- I resolved to capture him, spite of the
boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line
would get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have
a devil of a boat's crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this,
I say, I jumped into my first mate's boat- Mr. Mounttop's here (by the
way, Captain- Mounttop; Mounttop- the captain);- as I was saying, I
jumped into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and
gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old
great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir- hearts and
souls alive, man- the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat-
both eyes out- all befogged and bedeadened with black foam- the
whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the
air, like a marble steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was
groping at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was
groping, I say, after the second iron, to toss it overboard- down
comes the tail like a Lima tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each
half in splinters; and, flukes first, the white hump backed through
the wreck, as though it was all chips. We all struck out. To escape
his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in
him, and for a moment clung to that like a sucking fish. But a combing
sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the fish, taking one
good dart forwards, went down like a flash; and the barb of that
cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here" (clapping
his hand just below his shoulder); "yes, caught me just here, I say,
and bore me down to Hell's flames, I was thinking; when, when, all
of a sudden, thank the good God, the barb ript its way along the
flesh- clear along the whole length of my arm- came out nigh my wrist,
and up I floated;- and that gentleman there will tell you the rest (by
the way, captain- Dr. Bunger, ship's surgeon: Bunger, my lad,- the
captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the yarn."
  The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all
the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to
denote his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly
round but sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woolen frock or
shirt, and patched trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his
attention between a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box
held in the other, occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory
limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at his superior's
introduction of him to Ahab, he politely bowed, and straightway went
on to do his captain's bidding.
  "It was a shocking bad wound," began the whale-surgeon; "and, taking
my advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy-"
  "Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship," interrupted the one-armed
captain, addressing Ahab; "go on, boy."
  "Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing
hot weather there on the Line. But it was no use- I did all I could;
sat up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of
diet-"
  "Oh, very severe!" chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly
altering his voice, "Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night,
till he couldn't see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed,
half seas over, about three o'clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars! he
sat up with me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great
watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you
dog, laugh out! why don't ye? You know you're a precious jolly
rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I'd rather be killed by you than
kept alive by any other man."
  "My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir"-
said the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to
Ahab- "is apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things
of that sort. But I may as well say- en passant, as the French remark-
that I myself- that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend
clergy- am a strict total abstinence man; I never drink-"
  "Water!" cried the captain; "he never drinks it; it's a sort of fits
to him; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on- go
on with the arm story."
  "Yes, I may as well," said the surgeon, coolly. "I was about
observing, sir, before Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that
spite of my best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting
worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as
surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several inches long. I
measured it with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I knew what
was threatened, and off it came. But I had no hand in shipping that
ivory arm there; that thing is against all rule"- pointing at it
with the marlingspike- "that is the captain's work, not mine; he
ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to
the end, to knock some one's brains out with, I suppose, as he tried
mine once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this
dent, sir"- removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and
exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the
slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever having been a wound-
"Well, the captain there will tell you how that came there; he knows."
  "No, I don't," said the captain, "but his mother did; he was born
with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you- you Bunger! was there ever such
another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to
die in pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you
rascal."
  "What became of the White Whale?" now cried Ahab, who thus far had
been impatiently listening to this byeplay between the two Englishmen.
  "Oh!" cried the one-armed captain, "oh, yes! Well; after he sounded,
we didn't see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted,
I didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a
trick, till some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we
heard about Moby Dick- as some call him- and then I knew it was he."
  "Did'st thou cross his wake again?"
  "Twice."
  "But could not fasten?"
  "Didn't want to try to; ain't one limb enough? What should I do
without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so
much as he swallows."
  "Well, then," interrupted Bunger, "give him your left arm for bait
to get the right. Do you know, gentlemen"- very gravely and
mathematically bowing to each Captain in succession- "Do you know,
gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably
constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for
him to completely digest even a man's arm? And he knows it too. So
that what you take for the White Whale's malice is only his
awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only
thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old juggling
fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe
swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in good
earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave
him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d'ye see? No
possible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully
incorporate it into his general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if
you are quick enough about it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for the
sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to the other, why, in
that case the arm is yours; only let the whale have another chance
at you shortly, that's all."
  "No, thank you, Bunger," said the English Captain, "he's welcome
to the arm he has, since I can't help it, and didn't know him then;
but not to another one. No more White Whales for me; I've lowered
for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in
killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm
in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think so,
Captain?"- glancing at the ivory leg.
  "He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best
let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures.
He's all a magnet! How long since thou sawist him last? Which way
heading?"
  "Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend's," cried Bunger,
stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing;
"this man's blood- bring the thermometer!- it's at the boiling point!-
his pulse makes these planks beat!- sir!"- taking a lancet from his
pocket, and drawing near to Ahab's arm.
  "Avast!" roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks- "Man the
boat! Which way heading?"
  "Good God!" cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put.
"What's the matter? He was heading east, I think.- Is your Captain
crazy?" whispering Fedallah.
  But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to
take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle
towards him commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower.
  In a moment he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men
were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed
him. With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to
his own, Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.
  CHAPTER 101
  The Decanter

  Ere the English ship fades from sight be it set down here, that
she hailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby,
merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of
Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman's opinion, comes not
far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in
point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of
our Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my
numerous fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775)
it fitted out the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the
Sperm Whale; though for some score of years previous (ever since 1726)
our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in
large fleets pursued the Leviathan, but only in the North and South
Atlantic: not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the
Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized
steel the great Sperm Whale; and that for half a century they were the
only people of the whole globe who so harpooned him.
  In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express
purpose, and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly
rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a
whale-boat of any sort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a
skilful and lucky one; and returning to her berth with her hold full
of the precious sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed by other
ships, English and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds
of the Pacific were thrown open. But not content with this good
deed, the indefatigable house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all
his Sons- how many, their mother only knows- and under their immediate
auspices, and partly, I think, at their expense, the British
government was induced to send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling
voyage of discovery into the South Sea. Commanded by a naval
Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, and did some
service; how much does not appear. But this is not all. In 1819, the
same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on
a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship- well called
the "Syren"- made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that
the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The
Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a
Nantucketer.
  All honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think,
exists to the present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must
long ago have slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other
world.
  The ship named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very
fast sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at
midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip
down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all
trumps- every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly
death. And that fine gam I had- long, very long after old Ahab touched
her planks with his ivory heel- it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon
hospitality of that ship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil
remember me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had
flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour;
and when the squall came (for it's squally off there by Patagonia),
and all hands- visitors and all- were called to reef topsails, we were
so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines; and we
ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that we
hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning example to
all drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard; and by
and by we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip
again, though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle
scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it for my taste.
  The beef was fine- tough, but with body in it. They said it was
bullbeef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for
certain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial,
symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that
you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were
swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their
pitching out of you like billiard-balls. The bread- but that
couldn't be helped; besides, it was an anti-scorbutic, in short, the
bread contained the only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was
not very light, and it was very easy to step over into a dark corner
when you ate it. But all in all, taking her from truck to helm,
considering the dimensions of the cook's boilers, including his own
live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was
a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack
fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hat-band.
  But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other
English whalers I know of- not all though- were such famous,
hospitable ships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the
can, and the joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking,
and laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these
English whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have I been
at all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed
needed.
  The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders,
Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still
extant in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions,
touching plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English
merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler.
Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not
normal and natural, but incidental and particular; and, therefore,
must have some special origin, which is here pointed out, and will
be still further elucidated.
  During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon
an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I
knew must be about whalers. The title was, "Dan Coopman," wherefore
I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam
cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I
was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of
one "Fitz Swackhammer." But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned
man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa
Claus and St. Potts, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving
him a box of sperm candles for his trouble- this same Dr. Snodhead, so
soon as he spied the book, assured me that "Dan Coopman" did not
mean "The Cooper," but "The Merchant." In short, this ancient and
learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and,
among other subjects, contained a very interesting account of its
whale fishery. And in this chapter it was, headed, "Smeer," or
"Fat," that I found a long detailed list of the outfits for the
larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from which list, as
translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribe the following:

     400,000 lbs. of beef.
      60,000 lbs. Friesland pork.
     150,000 lbs. of stock fish.
     550,000 lbs. of biscuit.
      72,000 lbs. of soft bread.
       2,800 firkins of butter.
      20,000 lbs. of Texel Leyden cheese.
     144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article).
         550 ankers of Geneva.
      10,800 barrels of beer.
  Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in
the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole
pipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.
  At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all
this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were
incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic
application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my
own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, &c., consumed by
every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen
whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and
Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their
naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by
the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their
game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that
Esquimaux country where the convivial natives pledge each other in
bumpers of train oil.
  The quantity of the beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now,
as those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short
summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch
whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen
sea, did not much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to
each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in
all; therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per
man, for a twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion
of that ankers of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so
fuddled as one might fancy them to have been, were the right sort of
men to stand up in a boat's head, and take good aim at flying
whales; this would seem somewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them,
and hit them too. But this was very far North, be it remembered, where
beer agrees well with the constitution; upon the Equator, in our
southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at
the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss might ensue
to Nantucket and New Bedford.
  But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers
of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English
whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they,
when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of
the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the
decanter.
  CHAPTER 102
  A Bower in the Arsacides

  Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have
chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately
and in detail upon some few interior structural features. But to a
large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now
to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his hose,
unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of
the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his
ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.
  But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the
fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the
whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver
lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass,
hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can
you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook
dishes a roast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you
hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of
Jonah alone; the privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams;
the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the
frame-work of leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms,
butteries, and cheeseries in his bowels.
  I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far
beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed
with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I
belonged to, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the
deck for his poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the
harpoons, and for the heads of the lances. Think you I let the
chance go, without using my boat-hatchet and jack-knife, and
breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young cub?
  And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their
gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am
indebted to my late royal friend Tranque, king of Tranque, one of
the Arsacides. For being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the
trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the
Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at his retired palm
villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distant from what our
sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital.
  Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being
gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had
brought together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of
his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices,
chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes;
and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the
wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.
  Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an
unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his
head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings
seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped
of its fathomdeep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the
sun, then the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella
glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.
  The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae were carved with
Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests
kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head
again sent forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough,
the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the
hair-hung sword that so affrighted Damocles.
  It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy
Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap;
the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a
gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the
warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with
all their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses;
the message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through
the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle
weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!-
pause!- one word!- whither flows the fabric? what palace may it
deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!- stay thy
hand!- but one single word with thee! Nay- the shuttle flies- the
figures float from forth the loom; the fresher-rushing carpet for ever
slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he
deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too,
who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we
hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in
all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among
the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the
walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies
been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din
of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard
afar.
  Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the
great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging- a gigantic idler! Yet,
as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around
him, the mighty idler seemed the sunning weaver; himself all woven
over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure;
but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the
grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.
  Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and
saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from
where the real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard
a chapel as an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled
that the priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To
and fro I paced before this skeleton- brushed the vine aside- broke
through the ribs- and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered,
eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbors. But
soon my line was out; and following back, I emerged from the opening
where I entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was there but
bones.
  Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the
skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me
taking the altitude of the final rib, "How now!" they shouted; "Dar'st
thou measure this our god! That's for us." "Aye, priests- well, how
long do ye make him, then?" But hereupon a fierce contest rose among
them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each other's sconces
with their yard-sticks- the great skull echoed- and seizing that lucky
chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements.
  These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first,
be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any
fancied measurements I please. Because there are skeleton
authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a
Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling
ports of that country, where they have some fine specimens of
fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, have heard that in the museum of
Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call "the
only perfect specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in the United
States." Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton
Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable has in his
possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by
no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's.
  In both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons
belonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar
grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir
Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir
Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a
great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony
cavities- spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan- and swing all day
upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors
and shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a
bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence
for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column;
threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and
sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead.
  The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied
verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild
wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving
such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished
the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was
then composing- at least, what untattooed parts might remain- I did
not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches
at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.
  CHAPTER 103
  Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton

  In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain
statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose
skeleton we are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove
useful here.
  According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly
base upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of seventy tons for the largest
sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful
calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between
eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty
feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least
ninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would
considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of
one thousand one hundred inhabitants.
  Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put
to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman's
imagination?
  Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole,
jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall
now simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of
his unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very
large a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by
far the most complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated
concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your
mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain
a complete notion of the general structure we are about to view.
  In length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque measured
seventy-two feet: so that when fully invested and extended in life, he
must have been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton
loses about one fifth in length compared with the living body. Of this
seventy-two feet, his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet,
leaving some fifty feet of plain backbone. Attached to this back-bone,
for something less than a third of its length, was the mighty circular
basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals.
  To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine,
extending far away from it in a straight line, not a little
resembled the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only
some twenty of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is
otherwise, for the time, but a long, disconnected timber.
  The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck,
was nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each
successively longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or
one of the middle ribs, which measured eight feet and some inches.
From that part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last
only spanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness, they all
bore a seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribs were the
most arched. In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams
whereon to lay footpath bridges over small streams.
  In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the
circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of
the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest
of the Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the
fish which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest depth
of the invested body of this particular whale must have been at
least sixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured but little
more than eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the
true notion of the living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some
way, where I now saw but a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped
round with tons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels.
Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered
joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes,
an utter blank!
  How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man
to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely pouring
over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood.
No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the
eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea,
can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.
  But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with
a crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But
now it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar.
  There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton
are not locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks
on a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The
largest, a middle one, is in width something less than three feet, and
in depth more than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away
into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a
white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones,
but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's
children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how
that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at
last into simple child's play.
  CHAPTER 104
  The Fossil Whale

  From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme
whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you
could not compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in
imperial folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to
tail, and the yards he measured about the waist; only think of the
gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like
great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of
a line-of-battle-ship.
  Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves
me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not
overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning
him out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already
described him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical
peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological,
fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other
creature than the Leviathan- to an ant or a flea- such portly terms
might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan
is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this
enterprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be
it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the
course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto
edition of Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose; because that
famous lexicographer's uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to
compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author like me.
  One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,
though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of
this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard
capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an
inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my
thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with
their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the
whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and
men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving
panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not
excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a
large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty
book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can
ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.
  Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my
credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I
have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals
and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts.
Likewise, by way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that
while in the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils
of monsters now almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics
discovered in what are called the Tertiary formations seem the
connecting, or at any rate intercepted links, between the
antichronical creatures, and those whose remote posterity are said
to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil Whales hitherto discovered
belong to the Tertiary period, which is the last preceding the
superficial formations. And though none of them precisely answer to
any known species of the present time, they are yet sufficiently
akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking rank as
Cetacean fossils.
  Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their
bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various
intervals, been found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France,
in England, in Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Alabama. Among the more curious of such remains is
part of a skull, which in the year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue
Dauphine in Paris, a short street opening almost directly upon the
palace of the Tuileries; and bones disinterred in excavating the great
docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's time. Cuvier pronounced these
fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknown Leviathanic
species.
  But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the
almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year
1842, on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The
awe-stricken credulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of
one of the fallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge
reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some
specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen, the English
Anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though
of a departed species. A significant illustration of the fact, again
and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale
furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body.
So Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read
before the London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one
of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe
have blotted out of existence.
  When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls,
tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial
resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same
time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated
antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a
flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said
to have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls
over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar
eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now
the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world's
circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of land was
visible. Then the whole world was the whale's; and, king of
creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the Andes and
the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab's
harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems a
schoolboy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck
at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors
of the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs exist
after all humane ages are over.
  But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in
the stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl
bequeathed his ancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose
antiquity seems to claim for them an almost fossiliferous character,
we find the unmistakable print of his fin. In an apartment of the
great temple of Denderah, some fifty years ago, there was discovered
upon the granite ceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere, similar
to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the moderns.
Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was there
swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled.
  Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the
antiquity of the whale, in his own osseous postdiluvian reality, as
set down by the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.
  "Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and
Beams of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size
are oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People
imagine, that by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no
Whale can pass it without immediate death. But the truth of the matter
is, that on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot
two Miles into the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon 'em.
They keep a Whale's Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which
lying upon the Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch,
the Head of which cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back. This
Rib (says John Leo) is said to have layn there a hundred Years
before I saw it. Their Historians affirm, that a Prophet who
prophesy'd of Mahomet, came from this Temple, and some do not stand to
assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at the Base
of the Temple."
  In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be
a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.
  CHAPTER 105
  Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? - Will He Perish?

  Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us
from the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired,
whether, in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated
from the original bulk of his sires.
  But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of
the present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains
are found in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological
period prior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system,
those belonging to its latter formations exceed in size those of its
earlier ones.
  Of all the pre-adamite whale yet exhumed, by far the largest is
the Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less
than seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have
already seen, that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the
skeleton of a large sized modern whale. And I have heard, on
whalemen's authority, that Sperm Whales have been captured near a
hundred feet long at the time of capture.
  But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are
an advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods;
may it not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated?
  Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts
of such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For
Pliny tells us of Whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and
Aldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in length-
Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of Banks
and Solander, Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish member of the
Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales
(reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty
yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet. And Lacepede, the
French naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales, in the very
beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at one
hundred metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet. And this work was
published so late as A.D. 1825.
  But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day
is as big as his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where
Pliny is, I, a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell him
so. Because I cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian
mummies that were buried thousands of years before even Pliny was
born, do not measure so much in their coffins as a modern Kentuckian
in his socks; and while the cattle and other animals sculptured on the
oldest Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the relative proportions in
which they are drawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred,
stall-fed, prize cattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far
exceed in magnitude the fattest of Pharaoh's fat kine; in the face
of all this, I will not admit that of all animals the whale alone
should have degenerated.
  But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more
recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient
look-outs at the mast-heads of the whaleships, now penetrating even
through Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and
lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted
along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can
long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he
must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last
whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself
evaporate in the final puff.
  Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of
buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands
the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes
and scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of
populous river-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at
a dollar an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument
would seem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now
escape speedy extinction.
  But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a
period ago- not a good lifetime- the census of the buffalo in Illinois
exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present
day not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region; and
though the cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of
man; yet the far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily
forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship
hunting the Sperm Whales for forty-eight months think they have done
extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of
forty fish. Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian
hunters and trappers of the West, when the far west (in whose sunset
suns still rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of
moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted on horse
instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but forty
thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be
statistically stated.
  Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favor of the
gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former
years (the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans,
in small pods, were encountered much oftener than at present, and,
in consequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also
much more remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed,
those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in
immense caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered
solitaries, yokes, and pods, and schools of other days are now
aggregated into vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies. That
is all. And equally fallacious seems the conceit, that because the
so-called whale-bone whales no longer haunt many grounds in former
years abounding with them, hence that species also is declining. For
they are only being driven from promontory to cape; and if one coast
is no longer enlivened with their jets, then, be sure, some other
and remoter strand has been very recently startled by the unfamiliar
spectacle.
  Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have
two firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever
remain impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the
frosty Swiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the
savannas and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at
last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate
glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes!
and in a charmed circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all
pursuit from man.
  But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for
one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded
that this positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their
battalions. But though for some time past a number of these whales,
not less than 13,000, have been annually slain on the nor'west coast
by the Americans alone; yet there are considerations which render even
this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing argument in
this matter.
  Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the
populousness of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what
shall we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that
at one hunting the King of Siam took 4,000 elephants; that in those
regions elephants are numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate
climes. And there seems no reason to doubt that if these elephants,
which have now been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by
Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East- if
they still survive there in great numbers, much more may the great
whale outlast all hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in,
which is precisely twice as large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe
and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea combined.
  Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity
of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more,
therefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult
generations must be contemporary. And what this is, we may soon gain
some idea of, by imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and family
vaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men,
women, and children who were alive seventy-five years ago; and
adding this countless host to the present human population of the
globe.
  Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in
his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas
before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the
Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he
despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded,
like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale
will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the
equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.
  CHAPTER 106
  Ahab's Leg

  The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the
Samuel Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small
violence to his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a
thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had received a
half-splintering shock. And when after gaining his own deck, and his
own pivot-hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent
command to the steersman (it was, as ever, something about his not
steering inflexibly enough); then, the already shaken ivory received
such an additional twist and wrench, that though it still remained
entire, and to all appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it
entirely trustworthy.
  And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his
pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab, did at times give careful heed to
the condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had
not been very long prior to the Pequod's sailing from Nantucket,
that he had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and
insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable,
unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently
displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his
groin; nor was it without extreme difficulty that the agonizing
wound was entirely cured.
  Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that
all the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct
issue of former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the
most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably
as the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every
felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea,
more than equally, thought Ahab; since both tie ancestry and posterity
of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not
to hint of this: that it is an inference from certain canonic
teachings, that while some natural enjoyments here shall have no
children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall
be followed by the joy-childlessness of all hell's despair; whereas,
some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to
themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the
grave; not at all to hint of this, there still seems an inequality
in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the
highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying
pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic
significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their
diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the
genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among
the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all
the glad, hay-making suns, and softcymballing, round harvest-moons, we
must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for
ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but
the stamp of sorrow in the signers.
  Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might
more properly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other
particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some,
why it was, that for a certain period, both before and after the
sailing of the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such
Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought
speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead.
Captain Peleg's bruited reason for this thing appeared by no means
adequate; though, indeed, as touching all Ahab's deeper part, every
revelation partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory
light. But, in the end, it all came out; this one matter did, at
least. That direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary
recluseness. And not only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping
circle ashore, who for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less
banned approach to him; to that timid circle the above hinted
casualty- remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab-
invested itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the land
of spirits and of wails. So that, through their zeal for him, they had
all conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up the knowledge of
this thing from others; and hence it was, that not till a considerable
interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the Pequod's decks.
  But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the
air, or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or
not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took
plain practical procedures;- he called the carpenter.
  And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without
delay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him
supplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale)
which had thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a
careful selection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be
secured. This done, the carpenter received orders to have the leg
completed that night; and to provide all the fittings for it,
independent of those pertaining to the distrusted one in use.
Moreover, the ship's forge was ordered to be hoisted out of its
temporary idleness in the hold; and, to accelerate the affair, the
blacksmith was commanded to proceed at once to the forging of whatever
iron contrivances might be needed.
  CHAPTER 107
  The Carpenter

  Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high
abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe.
But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most
part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and
hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing
an example of the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod's carpenter was
no duplicate; hence, he now comes in person on this stage.
  Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those
belonging to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-hand, practical
extent, alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral
to his own; the carpenter's pursuit being the ancient and outbranching
trunk of all those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to
do with wood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the application to
him of the generic remark above, this carpenter of the Pequod was
singularly efficient in those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies
continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three or four years'
voyage, in uncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his
readiness in ordinary duties:- repairing stove boats, sprung spars,
reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull's eyes in
the deck, or new tree-nails in the side planks, and other
miscellaneous matters more directly pertaining to his special
business; he was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all manner of
conflicting aptitudes, both useful and capricious.
  The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so
manifold, was his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished
with several vices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of
wood. At all times except when whales were alongside, this bench was
securely lashed athwartships against the rear of the Try-works.
  A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its
hole: the carpenter claps it into one of his ever ready vices, and
straightway files it smaller. A lost landbird of strange plumage
strays on board, and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of
right-whale bone, and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the
carpenter makes a pagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsmen sprains his
wrist: the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for
vermillion stars to be painted upon the blade of his every oar;
screwing each oar in his big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically
supplies the constellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear
shark-bone ear-rings: the carpenter drills his ears. Another has the
toothache: the carpenter out pincers, and clapping one hand upon his
bench bids him be seated there; but the poor fellow unmanageably
winces under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the handle of
his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that, if
he would have him draw the tooth.
  Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike
indifferent and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of
ivory; heads he deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly
held for capstans. But while now upon so wide a field thus variously
accomplished and with such liveliness of expertness in him, too; all
this would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But
not precisely so. For nothing was this man more remarkable, than for a
certain impersonal stolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it
so shaded off into the surrounding infinite of things, that it
seemed one with the general stolidity discernible in the whole visible
world; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still
eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, though you dig foundations
for cathedrals. Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him,
involving, too, as it appeared, an all-ramifying heartlessness;- yet
was it oddly dashed at times, with an old, crutch-like,
antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked now and then
with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have served to pass
the time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah's
ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long wanderer,
whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss; but
what is more, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings might
have originally pertained to him? He was a stript abstract; an
unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born babe; living
without premeditated reference to this world or the next. You might
almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort
of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work
so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been
tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven;
but merely by kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He
was a pure manipulater; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have
early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one
of those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo,
Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior- though a little
swelled- of a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades
of various sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls,
pens, rulers, nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted
to use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do was to
open that part of him, and the screw was fast: or if for tweezers,
take him up by the legs, and there they were.
  Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,
was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have
a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow
anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of
quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But
there it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years or
more. And this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle
in him; this it was, that kept him a great part of the time
soliloquizing; but only like an unreasoning wheel, which also
hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was a sentry-box and
this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to keep
himself awake.
  CHAPTER 108
  Ahab and the Carpenter
  The Deck - First Night Watch

  (Carpenter standing before vice-bench, and by the light of two
lanterns busily filing the ivory joist for the leg, which joist is
firmly fixed in the vice. Slabs of ivory, leather straps, pads,
screws, and various tools of all sorts lying about the bench. Forward,
the red flame of the forge is seen, where the blacksmith is at work.)

  Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should be soft,
and that is soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and
shin bones. Let's try another. Aye, now, this works better
(sneezes). Halloa, this bone dust is (sneezes)- why it's (sneezes)-
yes it's (sneezes)- bless my soul, it won't let me speak! This is what
an old fellow gets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree,
and you don't get this dust; amputate a live bone, and you don't get
it (sneezes). Come, come, you old Smut, there, bear a hand, and
let's have that ferrule and buckle-screw; I'll be ready for them
presently. Lucky now (sneezes) there's no knee-joint to make; that
might puzzle a little; but a mere shin-bone- why it's easy as making
hop-poles; only I should like to put a good finish on. Time, time;
if I but only had the time, I could turn him out as neat a leg now
as ever (sneezes) scraped to a lady in a parlor. Those buckskin legs
and calves of legs I've seen in shop windows wouldn't compare at
all. They soak water, they do; and of course get rheumatic, and have
to be doctored (sneezes) with washes and lotions, just like live legs.
There; before I saw it off, I must call his old Mogulship, and see
whether the length will be all right; too short, if anything, I guess.
Ha! that's the heel; we are in luck; here he comes, or it's somebody
else, that's certain.
                   AHAB (advancing)
  (During the ensuing scene, the carpenter continues sneezing at
times)

  Well, manmaker!
  Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the
length. Let me measure, sir.
  Measured for a leg! good. Well, it's not the first time. About it!
There; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast here,
carpenter; let me feel its grip once. So, so; it does pinch some.
  Oh, sir, it will break bones- beware, beware!
  No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this
slippery world that can hold, man. What's Prometheus about there?- the
blacksmith, I mean- what's he about?
  He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.
  Right. It's a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He makes a
fierce red flame there!
  Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for his kind of fine work.
  Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that
old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a
blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what's made in fire
must properly belong to fire; and so hell's probable. How the soot
flies! This must be the remainder the Greek made the Africans of.
Carpenter, when he's through with that buckle, tell him to forge a
pair of steel shoulder-blades; there's a pedlar aboard with a crushing
pack.
  Sir?
  Hold; while Prometheus is about it, I'll order a complete man
after a desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks;
then, chest modelled after the Thames Tunnel then, legs with roots
to 'em, to stay in one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist;
no heart at all, brass forehead, and about a quarter of an acre of
fine brains; and let me see- shall I order eyes to see outwards? No,
but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards. There,
take the order, and away.
  Now, what's he speaking about, and who's he speaking to, I should
like know? Shall I keep standing here? (aside.)
  'Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here's
one. No, no, no; I must have a lantern.
  Ho, ho! That's it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my turn.
  What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man?
Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols.
  I thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter.

  Carpenter? why that's- but no;- a very tidy, and, I may say, an
extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here, carpenter;-
or would'st thou rather work in clay?
  Sir?- Clay? clay, sir? That's mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir.
  The fellow's impious! What art thou sneezing about?
  Bone is rather dusty, sir.
  Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury thyself
under living people's noses.
  Sir?- oh! ah!- I guess so;- yes- dear!
  Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good
workmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for
thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall
nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it;
that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I
mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away?
  Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard
something curious on that score; how that a dismasted man never
entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still
pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?
  It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine was;
so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the
soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to
a hair, do I. Is't a riddle?
  I should humbly call it a poser, sir.
  Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking
thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely
where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In
thy most solitary hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers? Hold,
don't speak! And if I still feel the smart of my crushed leg, though
it be now so long dissolved; then, why mayst not thou, carpenter, feel
the fiery pains of hell for ever, and without a body? Hah!
  Good Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculate over
again; I think I didn't carry a small figure, sir.
  Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises.- How long before
the leg is done?
  Perhaps an hour, sir.
  Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (turns to go). Oh,
Life. Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this
blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal
inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be
free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich,
I could have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at
the auction of the Roman empire (which was the world's); and yet I owe
for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens! I'll get a
crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down to one small,
compendious vertebra. So.

                CARPENTER (resuming work).

  Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb always says
he's queer; says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer;
he's queer, says Stubb; he's queer- queer, queer; and keeps dinning it
into Mr. Starbuck all the time- queer- sir- queer, queer, very
queer. And here's his leg. Yes, now that I think of it, here's his
bed-fellow! has a stick of whale's jaw-bone for a wife! And this is
his leg; he'll stand on this. What was that now about one leg standing
in three places, and all three places standing in one hell- how was
that? Oh! I don't wonder he looked so scornful at me! I'm a sort of
strange-thoughted sometimes, they say; but that's only haphazard-like.
Then, a short, little old body like me, should never undertake to wade
out into deep water with tall, heron-built captains; the water
chucks you under the chin pretty quick, and there's a great cry for
life-boats. And here's the heron's leg! long and slim, sure enough!
Now, for most folks one pair of legs lasts a lifetime, and that must
be because they use them mercifully, as a tender-hearted old lady uses
her roly-poly old coach-horses. But Ahab; oh he's a hard driver. Look,
driven one leg to death, and spavined the other for life, and now
wears out bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there, you Smut! bear a
hand there with those screws, and let's finish it before the
resurrection fellow comes a-calling with his horn for all legs, true
or false, as brewery men go round collecting old beer barrels, to fill
'em up again. What a leg this is! It looks like a real live leg, filed
down to nothing but the core; he'll be standing on this to-morrow;
he'll be taking altitudes on it. Halloa! I almost forgot the little
oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude. So,
so; chisel, file, and sand-paper, now!
  CHAPTER 109
  Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin

  According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and
lo! no inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must
have sprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck went down
into the cabin to report this unfavorable affair.*

  *In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board,
it is a regular semiweekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and
drench the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying
intervals, is removed by the ship's pumps. Hereby the casks are sought
to be kept damply tight; while by the changed character of the
withdrawn water, the mariners readily detect any serious leakage in
the precious cargo.

  Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing nigh to
Formosa and the Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical
outlets from the China waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck
found Ahab with a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread
before him; and another separate one representing the long eastern
coasts of the Japanese islands- Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke. With
his snow-white new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his
table, and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the
wondrous old man, with his back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his
brow, and tracing his old courses again.
  "Who's there?" hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning
round to it. "On deck! Begone!"
  "Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking,
sir. We must up Burtons and break out."
  "Up Burtons and break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to
here for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops?"
  "Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may
make good in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is
worth saving, sir."
  "So it is, so it is; if we get it."
  "I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir."
  "And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it
leak! I'm all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of
leaky casks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that's a
far worse plight than the Pequod's, man. Yet I don't stop to plug my
leak; for who can find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug
it, even if found, in this life's howling ale? Starbuck! I'll not have
the Burtons hoisted."
  "What will the owners say, sir?"
  "Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons.
What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me,
Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my
conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its
commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship's keel.- On
deck!"
  "Captain Ahab," said the reddening mate, moving further into the
cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it
almost seemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest
outward manifestation of itself, but within also seemed more than half
distrustful of itself; "A better man than I might well pass over in
thee what he would quickly enough resent in a younger man; aye, and in
a happier, Captain Ahab."
  "Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of
me?- On deck!"
  "Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir- to be
forbearing! Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto,
Captain Ahab?"
  Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most
South-Sea-men's cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck,
exclaimed: "There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one
Captain that is lord over the Pequod.- On deck!"
  For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery
cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really received
the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half
calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and
said: "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask
thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab
beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man."
  "He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!"
murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. "What's that he said- Ahab
beware of Ahab- there's something there!" Then unconsciously using the
musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the
little cabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead
relaxed, and returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.
  "Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck," he said lowly to the
mate; then raising his voice to the crew: "Furl the t'gallant-sails,
and close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up
Burtons, and break out in the main-hold."
  It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as
respecting Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of
honesty in him; or mere prudential policy which, under the
circumstance, imperiously forbade the slightest symptom of open
disaffection, however transient, in the important chief officer of his
ship. However it was, his orders were executed; and the Burtons were
hoisted.
  CHAPTER 110
  Queequeg in His Coffin

  Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the
hold were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off.
So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper,
disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that
black midnight sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above.
So deep did they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the
aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for
some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with
copies of the posted placards, vainly warning the infatuated old world
from the flood. Tierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and
beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoop, were hoisted
out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the
hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty
catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted
demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all
Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit
them then.
  Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast
bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him
nigh to his endless end.
  Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;
dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the
higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as
harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale,
but- as we have elsewhere seen- mount his dead back in a rolling
sea; and finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly
sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely
manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short,
among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called.
 Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should
have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where,
stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling
about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the
bottom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to
him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his
sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and
at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to
the very sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in
those few long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of
him but his frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and
his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing
fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and
mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a
wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die,
or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow
fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the
rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as
you sat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things
in his face, as any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died.
For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put
into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels
all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an
author from the dead could adequately tell. So that- let us say it
again- no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than
those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of
poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the
rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the
ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towards
his destined heaven.
  Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself,
what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favor he
asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day
was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket
he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the
rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned
that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those dark
canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him;
for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming
a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to
be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they
believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible
horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the
blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He
added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his
hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile
to the death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of
Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that
like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that
involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages.
  Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the
carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever
it might include. There was some heathenish, coffin-colored old lumber
aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the
aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark
planks the coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the
carpenter apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith
with all the indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded
into the forecastle and took Queequeg's measure with great accuracy,
regularly chalking Queequeg's person as he shifted the rule.
  "Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated the Long Island
sailor.
  Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and
general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact
length the coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by
cutting two notches at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the
planks and his tools, and to work.
  When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted,
he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring
whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.
  Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the
people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every
one's consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly
brought to him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all
mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly,
since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor
fellows ought to be indulged.
  Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin
with an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the
wooden stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the
coffin along with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own
request, also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides within; a
flask of fresh water was placed at the head, and a small bag of
woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of
sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to
be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of its
comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then
told one to go to his bed and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then
crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the
coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him. The head part
turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin
with little but his composed countenance in view. "Rarmai" (it will
do; it is easy) he murmured at last, and signed to be replaced in
his hammock.
  But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by
all the while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft
sobbings, took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.
  "Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving?
where go ye now? But if the current carry ye to those sweet Antilles
where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one
little errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's now been missing long: I
think he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him;
for he must be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;- I
found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I'll beat ye
your dying march."
  "I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that in
violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues;
and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their
wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really
spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond
faith, poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings
heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that,
but there?- Hark! he speaks again; but more wildly now."
  "Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where's his
harpoon? Lay it across here.- Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a
game cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!- mind
ye that; Queequeg dies game!- take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies
game! I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a
coward; died all a'shiver;- out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip,
tell all the Antilles he's a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward!
Tell them he jumped from a whale-boat! I'd never beat my tambourine
over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once more dying
here. No, no! shame upon all cowards- shame upon them! Let'em go drown
like Pip, that jumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!"
  During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream.
Pip was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.
  But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now
that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon
there seemed no need of the carpenter's box; and thereupon, when
some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said,
that the cause of his sudden convalescence was this;- at a critical
moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was
leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he
could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live
or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He
answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a
man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him:
nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable,
unintelligent destroyer of that sort.
  Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and
civilized; that while a sick, civilized man may be six months
convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well
again in a day. So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at
length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but
eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw
out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little
bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising
a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight.
  With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest;
and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order
there. Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner
of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was
striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on
his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet
and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had
written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the
earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so
that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a
wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself
could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these
mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with
the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved
to the last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to
Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away
from surveying poor Queequeg- "Oh, devilish tantalization of the
gods!"
  CHAPTER 111
  The Pacific

  When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great
South Sea; were it not for other things I could have greeted my dear
Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my
youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a
thousand leagues of blue.
  There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose
gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath;
like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried
Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures,
wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four
continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow
unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned
dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie
dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds;
the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
  To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld,
must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost
waters of the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms.
The same waves wash the moles of the new-built California towns, but
yesterday planted by the recentest race of men and lave the faded
but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham;
while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying,
endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this
mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes
all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth.
Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive
god, bowing your head to Pan.
  But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing, like an
iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one
nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee
isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the
other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that
sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming.
Launched at length upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards
the Japanese cruising-ground, the old man's purpose intensified
itself. His firm lips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his
forehead's veins swelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his
ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, "Stern all! the White
Whale spouts thick blood!"
  CHAPTER 112
  The Blacksmith

  Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned
in these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active
pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old
blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again,
after concluding his contributory work for Ahab's leg, but still
retained it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being
now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and
bowsmen to do some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new
shaping their various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be
surrounded by an eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding
boat-spades, pikeheads, harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching
his every sooty movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man's
was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no
impatience, no petulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and
solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he
toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his
hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so it was.- Most miserable!
  A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful
appearing yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage
excited the curiosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their
persisted questionings he had finally given in; and so it came to pass
that every one now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate.
  Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter's midnight, on the
road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly
felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a
leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the
extremities of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at
last came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and
as yet uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his life's drama.
  He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had
postponedly encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals called ruin.
He had been an artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do;
owned a house and garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving
wife, and three blithe, ruddy children; every Sunday went to a
cheerful-looking church, planted in a grove. But one night, under
cover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning
disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and robbed
them all of everything. And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself
did ignorantly conduct this burglar into his family's heart. It was
the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of that fatal cork, forth flew
the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for prudent, most wise,
and economic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was in the basement of his
dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so that always had the
young and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness,
but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her young-armed
old husband's hammer; whose reverberations, muffled by passing through
the floors and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery;
and so, to stout Labor's iron lullaby, the blacksmith's infants were
rocked to slumber.
  Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely?
Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came
upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her
orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after
years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked
down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely
hung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse
than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should
make him easier to harvest.
  Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day
grew more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter
than the last; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless
eyes, glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children;
the bellows fell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was
sold; the mother dived down into the long church-yard grass; her
children twice followed her thither; and the houseless, familyless old
man staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his
grey head a scorn to flaxen curls!
  Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but
Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it
is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense
Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the
death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them some
interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and
all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of
unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures;
and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing
to them- "Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without
the guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural,
without dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life which,
to your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more
oblivious than death. dome hither! put up thy grave-stone, too, within
the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee!"
  Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and
by fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come! And so
Perth went a-whaling.
  CHAPTER 113
  The Forge

  With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron,
about mid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the
latter placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head
in the coals, and with the other at his forge's lungs, when Captain
Ahab came along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern
bag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused;
till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began
hammering it upon the anvil- the red mass sending off the sparks in
thick hovering flights, some of which flew close to Ahab.
  "Are these thy Mother Carey's chickens, Perth? they are always
flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;- look
here, they burn; but thou- thou liv'st among them without a scorch."
  "Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab," answered Perth,
resting for a moment on his hammer; "I am past scorching-, not
easily can'st thou scorch a scar."
  "Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely
woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in
others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why
dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the
heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?- What wert thou
making there?"
  "Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it."
  "And can'st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such
hard usage as it had?"
  "I think so, sir."
  "And I suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never
mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?"
  "Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one."
  "Look ye here then," cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning
with both hands on Perth's shoulders; "look ye here- here- can ye
smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith," sweeping one hand across
his ribbed brow; "if thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I
lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my
eyes. Answer! Can'st thou smoothe this seam?"
  "Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?"
  "Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for
though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into
the bone of my skull- that is all wrinkles! But, away with child's
play; no more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here!" jingling the
leathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. "I, too, want a
harpoon made; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part,
Perth; something that will stick in a whale like his own fin-bone.
There's the stuff," flinging the pouch upon the anvil. "Look ye,
blacksmith, these are the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of
racing horses."
  "Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then,
the best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work."
  "I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue
from the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And
forge me first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and
hammer these twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line.
Quick! I'll blow the fire."
  When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one,
by spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron
bolt. "A flaw!" rejecting the last one. "Work that over again, Perth."
  This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one,
when Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As,
then, regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing
to him the glowing rods, after the other, and the hard pressed forge
shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed silently,
and bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking some
curse or some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid
aside.
  "What's that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?" muttered
Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. "That Parsee smells fire like a
fusee; and smells of it himself, like a hot musket's powder-pan."
  At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and
as Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of
water near by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent face.
  "Would'st thou brand me, Perth?" wincing for a moment with the pain;
"have I been but forging my own branding-iron, then?"
  "Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this
harpoon for the White Whale?"
  "For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them
thyself, man. Here are my razors- the best of steel; here, and make
the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea."
  For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he
would fain not use them.
  "Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave,
sup, nor pray till- but here- to work!"
  Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the
shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the
blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to
tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.
  "No, no- no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper.
Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will
ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?" holding it high up.
A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in
the heathen flesh, and the White Whale's barbs were then tempered.
  "Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!"
deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured
the baptismal blood.
  Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of
hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to
the socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and
some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great
tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a
harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings,
Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and now for the seizings."
  At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread
yarns were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon;
the pole was then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end
the rope was traced halfway along the pole's length, and firmly
secured so, with inter-twistings of twine. This done, pole, iron,
and rope- like the Three Fates- remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily
stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the
sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank.
But ere he entered his cabin, light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet
most piteous sound was heard. Oh! Pip, thy wretched laugh, thy idle
but unresting eye; all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended
with the black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and mocked it!
  CHAPTER 114
  The Gilder

  Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese
cruising ground the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often,
in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty
hours on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily
pulling, or sailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude
of sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though
with but small success for their pains.
  At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow
heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so
sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone
cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy
quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the
ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and
would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a
remorseless fang.
  These are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a
certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that
he regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing
only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high
rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as
when the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears, while
their hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.
  The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these
there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied
children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time,
when the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with
your most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting,
interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.
  Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as
temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did
seem to open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his
breath upon them prove but tarnishing.
  Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in
ye,- though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,-
in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover;
and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life
immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the
mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms
crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady
unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed
gradations, and at the last one pause:- through infancy's
unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt
(the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in
manhood's pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace
the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally.
Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt
ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where
is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans
whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our
paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
  And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side into
that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:-
  "Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride's
eyes!- Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping
cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep
down and do believe."
  And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scale, leaped up in that same
golden light:-
  "I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths
that he has always been jolly!"
  CHAPTER 115
  The Pequod Meets The Bachelor

  And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing
down before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been
welded.
  It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in
her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now,
in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat
vain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the
ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.
  The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red
bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended,
bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long
lower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and
jacks of all colors were flying from her rigging, on every side.
Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of
sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender
breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck
was a brazen lamp.
  As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most
surprising success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in
the same seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without
securing a single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been
given away to make room for the far more valuable sperm, but
additional supplemental casks had been bartered for, from the ships
she had met; and these were stowed along the deck, and in the
captain's and officers' state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had
been knocked into kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the
broad head of an oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a centerpiece.
In the forecastle, the sailors had actually caulked and pitched
their chests, and filled them; it was humorously added, that the
cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and filled it; that the
steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it; that the
harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled them;
that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain's
pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in
self-complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction.
  As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod,
the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and
drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round
her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like poke or
stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke
of the clenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates
and harpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had
eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an
ornamental boat, firmly secured aloft between the foremast and
mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of
whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile,
others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy at the masonry
of the try-works, from which the huge pots had been removed. You would
have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastille, such
wild cries they raised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being
hurled into the sea.
  Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on
the ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama
was full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own
individual diversion.
  And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black,
with a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other's
wakes- one all jubilations for things passed, the other all
forebodings as to things to come- their two captains in themselves
impersonated the whole striking contrast of the scene.
  "Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's commander,
lifting a glass and a bottle in the air.
  "Hast seen the White Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply.
  "No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all," said the
other good-humoredly. "Come aboard!"
  "Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?"
  "Not enough to speak of- two islanders, that's all;- but come
aboard, old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your
brow. Come along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and
homeward-bound."
  "How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud,
"Thou art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call
me an empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will
mine. Forward there! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!"
  And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the
other stubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted; the
crew of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the
receding Bachelor; but the Bachelor's men never heeding their gaze for
the lively revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the
taffrail, eyed the homewardbound craft, he took from his pocket a
small vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed
thereby bringing two remote associations together, for that vial was
filled with Nantucket soundings.
  CHAPTER 116
  The Dying Whale

  Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's
favorites sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch
somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails
fill out. So seemed it with the Pequod. For next day after
encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were seen and four were slain;
and one of them by Ahab.
  It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the
crimson fight were done; and floating in the lovely sunset sea and
sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness
and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that
rosy air, that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green
convent valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze,
wantonly turned sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper
hymns.
  Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had
sterned off from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings
from the now tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in
all sperm whales dying- the turning sunwards of the head, and so
expiring- that strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening,
somehow to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before.
  "He turns and turns him to it,- how slowly, but how steadfastly, his
homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He
too worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the
sun!- Oh that these too-favoring eyes should see these too-favoring
sights. Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal
or woe; in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions
no rocks furnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows
have still rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine
upon the Niger's unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of
faith, but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse,
and it heads some other way.
  "Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast
builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured
seas; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in
the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after
calm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and
then gone round again, without a lesson to me.
  "Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring,
rainbowed jet!- that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In
vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening
sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou
darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy
unnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of
once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.
  "Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild
fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea;
though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my
foster-brothers!"
  CHAPTER 117
  The Whale Watch

  The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far
to windward; one less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern.
These last three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the
windward one could not be reached till morning; and the boat that
had killed it lay by its side all night; and that boat was Ahab's.
  The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale's spout-hole;
and the lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare
upon the black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves,
which gently chafed the whale's broad flank, like soft surf upon a
beach.
  Ahab and all his boat's crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who
crouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally
played round the whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their
tails. A sound like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of
unforgiven ghosts of Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.
  Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee; and
hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a
flooded world. "I have dreamed it again," said he.
  "Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor
coffin can be thine?"
  "And who are hearsed that die on the sea?"
  "But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage,
two hearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made
by mortal hands; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in
America."
  "Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee!- a hearse and its plumes
floating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha!
Such a sight we shall not soon see."
  "Believe it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man."
  "And what was that saying about thyself?"
  "Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy
pilot."
  "And when thou art so gone before- if that ever befall- then ere I
can follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?- Was it
not so? Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here
two pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it."
  "Take another pledge, old man," said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted
up like fire-flies in the gloom- "Hemp only can kill thee."
  "The gallows, ye mean.- I am immortal then, on land and on sea,"
cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;- "Immortal on land and on sea!"
  Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came on, and the
slumbering crew arose from the boat's bottom, and ere noon the dead
whale was brought to the ship.
  CHAPTER 118
  The Quadrant

  The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when
Ahab, coming from his cabin cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman
would ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly
run to the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally
fixed on the nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point the
ship's prow for the equator. In good time the order came. It was
hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows of his
high-hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted daily observation of
the sun to determine his latitude.
  Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of
effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing
focus of the glassy ocean's immeasurable burning-glass. The sky
looks lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this
nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of
God's throne. Well that Ahab's quadrant was furnished with colored
glasses, through which to take sight of that solar fire. So,
swinging his seated form to the roll of the ship, and with his
astrological-looking instrument placed to his eye, he remained in that
posture for some moments to catch the precise instant when the sun
should gain its precise meridian. Meantime while his whole attention
was absorbed, the Parsee was kneeling beneath him on the ship's
deck, and with face thrown up like Ahab's, was eyeing the same sun
with him; only the lids of his eyes half hooded their orbs, and his
wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness. At length the
desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory leg,
Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise
instant. Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked up
towards the sun and murmured to himself: "Thou seamark! thou high
and mighty Pilot! thou tellest me truly where I am- but canst thou
cast the least hint where I shall be? Or canst thou tell where some
other thing besides me is this moment living? Where is Moby Dick? This
instant thou must be eyeing him. These eyes of mine look into the very
eye that is even now beholding him; aye, and into the eye that is even
now equally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither side of
thee, thou sun!"
  Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other,
its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and
muttered: "Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and
Commodores, and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning
and might; but what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor,
pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet,
and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not
tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow
noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science!
Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast
man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches
him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun!
Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes;
not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze
on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!" dashing it to the
deck, "no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship's
compass, and the level deadreckoning, by log and by line; these
shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye," lighting from
the boat to the deck, "thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing
that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!"
  As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live
and dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and a
fatalistic despair that seemed meant for himself- these passed over
the mute, motionless Parsee's face. Unobserved he rose and glided
away; while, awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the seamen
clustered together on the forecastle, till Ahab, troubledly pacing the
deck, shouted out- "To the braces! Up helm!- square in!"
  In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled
upon her heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised
upon her long, ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on
one sufficient steed.
  Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Pequod's
tumultuous way, and Ahab's also, as he went lurching along the deck.
  "I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow,
full of its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last,
down, down, to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life
of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!"
  "Aye," cried Stubb, "but sea-coal ashes- mind ye that, Mr. Starbuck-
sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well! I heard Ahab mutter,
'Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine;
swears that I must play them, and no others.' And damn me, Ahab, but
thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!"
  CHAPTER 119
  The Candles

  Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal
crouches in spaced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most
effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows
tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that
in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst
of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that
cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
  Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas,
and bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her
directly ahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split
with the thunder, and blazed with the lightning, that showed the
disabled mast fluttering here and there with the rags which the
first fury of the tempest had left for its after sport.
  Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at
every flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional
disaster might have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb
and Flask were directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer
lashing of the boats. But all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted
to the very top of the cranes, the windward quarter boat (Ahab's)
did not escape. A great rolling sea, dashing high up against the
reeling ship's high teetering side, stove in the boat's bottom at
the stern, and left it again, all dripping through like a sieve.
  "Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck," said Stubb, regarding the wreck,
"but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can't fight it. You
see, Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it leaps,
all round the world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as for me,
all the start I have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But
never mind; it's all in fun: so the old song says;"- (sings.)

                     Oh! jolly is the gale,
                     And a joker is the whale,
                     A' flourishin' his tail,-
        Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
          lad, is the Ocean, oh!
                     The scud all a flyin',
                     That's his flip only foamin';
                     When he stirs in the spicin',-
        Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
          lad, is the Ocean, oh!
                     Thunder splits the ships,
                     But he only smacks his lips,
                     A tastin' of this flip,-
        Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky
          lad, is the Ocean, oh!

  "Avast Stubb," cried Starbuck, "let the Typhoon sing, and strike his
harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold
thy peace."
  "But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a
coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is,
Mr. Starbuck, there's no way to stop my singing in this world but to
cut my throat. And when that's done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology
for a wind-up."
  "Madman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own."
  "What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else,
never mind how foolish?"
  "Here!" cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, and
pointing his hand towards the weather bow, "markest thou not that
the gale comes from the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for
Moby Dick? the very course he swung to this day noon? now mark his
boat there; where is that stove? In the stern-sheets, man; where he is
wont to stand- his stand-point is stove, man! Now jump overboard,
and sing away, if thou must!
  "I don't half understand ye: what's in the wind?"
  "Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to
Nantucket," soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb's
question. "The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it
into a fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward,
all is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward- I see it
lightens up there; but not with the lightning."
  At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness,
following the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at
the same instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.
  "Who's there?"
  "Old Thunder!" said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to
his pivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by
elbowed lances of fire.
  Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry
off the perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at
sea some ships carry to each mast, is intended to conduct it into
the water. But as this conductor must descend to considerable depth,
that its end may avoid all contact with the hull; and as moreover,
if kept constantly towing there, it would be liable to many mishaps,
besides interfering not a little with some of the rigging, and more or
less impeding the vessel's way in the water; because of all this,
the lower parts of a ship's lightning-rods are not always overboard;
but are generally made in long slender links, so as to be the more
readily hauled up into the chains outside, or thrown down into the
sea, as occasion may require.
  "The rods! the rods!" cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly
admonished to vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been
darting flambeaux, to light Ahab to his post. "Are they overboard?
drop them over, fore and aft. Quick!"
  "Avast!" cried Ahab; "let's have fair play here, though we be the
weaker side. Yet I'll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and
Andes, that all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let
them be, sir."
  "Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The corpusants! the corpusants!
  All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at
each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames,
each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous
air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.
  "Blast the boat! let it go!" cried Stubb at this instant, as a
swashing sea heaved up under his own little craft so that its
gunwale violently jammed his hand, as he was passing a lashing. "Blast
it!"- but slipping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught
the flames; and immediately shifting his tone he cried- "The
corpusants have mercy on us all!"
  To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance
of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate
curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a
seething sea; but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common
oath when God's burning finger has been laid on the ship; when His
"Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin" has been woven into the shrouds and the
cordage.
  While this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from
the enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the
forecastle, all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like
a faraway constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly
light, the gigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real
stature, and seemed the black cloud from which the thunder had come.
The parted mouth of Tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth, which
strangely gleamed as if they too had been tipped by corpusants;
while lit up by the preternatural light, Queequeg's tattooing burned
like Satanic blue flames on his body.
  The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once
more the Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall.
A moment or two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed against
some one. It was Stubb. "What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry;
it was not the same in the song."
  "No, no, it wasn't; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all;
and I hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long
faces?- have they no bowels for a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck-
but it's too dark to look. Hear me, then; I take that mast-head
flame we saw for a sign of good luck; for those masts are rooted in
a hold that is going to be chock a' block with sperm-oil, d'ye see;
and so, all that sperm will work up into the masts, like sap in a
tree. Yes, our three masts will yet be as three spermaceti candles-
that's the good promise we saw."
  At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb's face slowly
beginning to glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: "See!
see!" and once more the high tapering flames were beheld with what
seemed redoubled supernaturalness in their pallor.
  "The corpusants have mercy on us all," cried Stubb, again.
  At the base of the main-mast, full beneath the doubloon and the
flame, the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab's front, but with his head
bowed away from him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging
rigging, where they had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of
the seamen, arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung
pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard
twig. In various enchanted attitudes like the standing, or stepping,
or running skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the
deck; but all their eyes upcast.
  "Aye, aye, men!" cried Ahab. "Look up at it; mark it well; the white
flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast
links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against
it; blood against fire! So."
  Then turning- the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his
foot upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eve, and high-flung
right arm, he stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of
flames.
  "Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as
Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by
thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear
spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To
neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou
canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts
thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of
my earthquake life will dispute unconditional, unintegral mastery in
me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands
here. Though but a point at best; whenceso'er I came; whereso'er I go;
yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and
feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in
thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy
highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest navies
of full-freighted worlds, there's that in here that still remains
indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and
like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee."
  [Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap
lengthwise to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest,
closes his eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them.]
  "I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it
wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but
I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take
the homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it.
The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache;
my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling in some
stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light
though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness
leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open
eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now
I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet
mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There
lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye,
hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning,
hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest
not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing
beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but
time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self,
my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit
immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy
unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire.
Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee;
would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!"
  "The boat! the boat!" cried Starbuck, "look at thy boat, old man!"
  Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly
lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his
whale-boat's bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the
loose leather sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there
now came a levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent
harpoon burned there like a serpent's tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by
the arm- "God, God is against thee, old man; forbear! 't is an ill
voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we
may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a
better voyage than this."
  Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the
braces- though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the
aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry.
But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching
the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing
to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end.
Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery
dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:-
  "All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine;
and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that
ye may know to what tune this heart beats: look ye here; thus I blow
out the last fear!" And with one blast of his breath he extinguished
the flame.
  As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the
neighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and
strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because so much the
more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab's many of
the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay.
  CHAPTER 120
  The Deck Toward the End of the First Night Watch

     Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him.

  We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working
loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?"
  "Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I'd sway them
up now."
  "Sir!- in God's name!- sir?"
  "Well."
  "The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?"
  "Strike nothing, and stir nothing but lash everything. The wind
rises, but it has not got up to my table-hands yet. Quick, and see
to it.- By masts and keels! he takes me for the hunchbacked skipper of
some coasting smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots!
Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of
mine now sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none
but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a
hooroosh aloft there! I would e'en take it for sublime, did I not know
that the colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!"
  CHAPTER 121
  Midnight - The Forecastle Bulwarks

  Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings
over the anchors there hanging.

  No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please,
but you will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And
how long ago is it since you said the very contrary? Didn't you once
say that whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something
extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with
powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didn't
you say so?"
  "Well, suppose I did? What then! I've part changed my flesh since
that time, why not my mind? Besides, supposing we are loaded with
powder barrels aft and lucifers forward; how the devil could the
lucifers get afire in this drenching spray here? Why, my little man,
you have pretty red hair, but you couldn't get afire now. Shake
yourself; you're Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask; might fill
pitchers at your coat collar. Don't you see, then, that for these
extra risks the Marine Insurance companies have extra guarantees? Here
are hydrants, Flask. But hark, again, and I'll answer ye the other
thing. First take your leg of from the crown of the anchor here,
though, so I can pass the rope; now listen. What's the mighty
difference between holding a mast's lightning-rod in the storm, and
standing close by a mast that hasn't got any lightning-rod at all in a
storm? Don't you see, you timber-head, that no harm can come to the
holder of the rod, unless the mast is first struck? What are you
talking about, then? Not one ship in a hundred carries rods, and
Ahab,- aye, man, and all of us,- were in no more danger then, in my
poor opinion, than all the crews in ten thousand ships now sailing the
seas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose you would have every man in
the world go about with a small lightning-rod running up the corner of
his hat, like a militia officer's skewered feather, and trailing
behind like his sash. Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's easy to be
sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be
sensible."
  "I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard."
  "Yes, when a fellow's soaked through, it's hard to be sensible,
that's a fact. And I am about drenched with this spray. Never mind;
catch the turn there, and pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down
these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again.
Tying these two anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man's hands
behind him. And what big generous hands they are, to be sure. These
are your iron fists, hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder, Flask,
whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with
an uncommon long cable, though. There, hammer that knot down, and
we've done. So; next to touching land, lighting on deck is the most
satisfactory. I say, just wring out my jacket skirts, will ye? Thank
ye. They laugh at long-togs so, Flask; but seems to me, a
long-tailed coat ought always to be worn in all storms afloat. The
tails tapering down that way, serve to carry off the water, d'ye
see. Same with cocked hats; the cocks form gable-end eave-troughs,
Flask. No more monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me; I must mount a
swallow-tail, and drive down a beaver; so. Halloa! whew! there goes my
tarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from
heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad."
  CHAPTER 122
  Midnight Aloft.- Thunder and Lightning

  The Main-top-sail yard - Tashtego passing new lashings around it.

  "Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here.
What's the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don't want thunder; we
want rum; give us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!"
  CHAPTER 123
  The Musket

  During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the
Pequod's jaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to
the deck by its spasmodic motions even though preventer tackles had
been attached to it- for they were slack- because some play to the
tiller was indispensable.
  In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed
shuttlecock to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the
needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was
thus with the Pequod's; at almost every shock the helmsman had not
failed to notice the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon
the cards; it is a sight that hardly anyone can behold without some
sort of unwonted emotion.
  Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that
through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb- one engaged
forward and the other aft- the shivered remnants of the jib and fore
and main-top-sails were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying
away to leeward, like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes
are cast to the winds when that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.
  The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and a
storm-trysail was set further aft; so that the ship soon went
through the water with some precision again; and the course- for the
present, East-south-east- which he was to steer, if practicable, was
once more given to the helmsman. For during the violence of the
gale, he had only steered according to its vicissitudes. But as he was
now bringing the ship as near her course as possible, watching the
compass meanwhile, lo! a good sign! the wind seemed coming round
astern; aye, the foul breeze became fair!
  Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of "Ho! the
fair wind! oh-ye-ho cheerly, men!" the crew singing for joy, that so
promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portends
preceding it.
  In compliance with the standing order of his commander- to report
immediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided
change in the affairs of the deck,- Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the
yards to the breeze- however reluctantly and gloomily,- that he
mechanically went below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance.
  Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it
a moment. The cabin lamp- taking long swings this way and that- was
burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man's bolted
door,- a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper
panels. The isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain
humming silence to reign there, though it was hooped round by all
the roar of the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were
shiningly revealed, as they stood upright against the forward
bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright man; but out of Starbuck's
heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets, there strangely
evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good
accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself.
  "He would have shot me once," he murmured, "yes, there's the very
musket that he pointed at me;- that one with the studded lock; let
me touch it- lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly
lances, strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded? I must see.
Aye, aye; and powder in the pan;- that's not good. Best spill it?-
wait. I'll cure myself of this. I'll hold the musket boldly while I
think.- I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for
death and doom,- that's fair for Moby Dick. It's a fair wind that's
only fair for that accursed fish.- The very tube he pointed at me!-
the very one; this one- I hold it here; he would have killed me with
the very thing I handle now.- Aye and he would fain kill all his crew.
Does he not say he will not strike his spars to any gale? Has he not
dashed his heavenly quadrant? and in these same perilous seas,
gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding
log? and in this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he would have
no lightning-rods? But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to
drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?- Yes, it would make
him the wilful murderer of thirty men and more, if this ship come to
any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship
will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this instant- put aside,
that crime would not be his. Ha! is he muttering in his sleep? Yes,
just there,- in there, he's sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still
alive, and soon awake again. I can't withstand thee, then, old man.
Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to;
all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands,
this is all thou breathest. Aye, and say'st the men have vow'd thy
vow; say'st all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!- But is there no
other way? no lawful way?- Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What!
hope to wrest this old man's living power from his own living hands?
Only a fool would try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted all
over with ropes and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this
cabin floor; he would be more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I
could not endure the sight; could not possibly fly his howlings; all
comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason would leave me on the long
intolerable voyage. What, then, remains? The land is hundreds of
leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone here upon an
open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between me and law.-
Aye, aye, 'tis so.- Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes
a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together?-
And would I be a murderer, then, if"- and slowly, stealthily, and half
sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's end against the door.
  "On this level, Ahab's hammock swings within; his head this way. A
touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.- Oh
Mary! Mary!- boy! boy! boy!- But if I wake thee not to death, old man,
who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck's body this day week may
sink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall I?-
The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails
are reefed and set! she heads her course."
  "Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!"
  Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's
tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream
to speak.
  The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the
panel; Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel, but turning from the
door, he placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.
  "He's too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and
tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say."
  CHAPTER 124
  The Needle

  Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of
mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her
on like giants' palms outspread. The strong unstaggering breeze
abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole
world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the
invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place;
where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned
Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a
crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
  Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every
time the teetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he
turned to eye the bright sun's rays produced ahead; and when she
profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun's
rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his
undeviating wake.
  "Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the
sea-chariot of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring
the sun to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive
the sea!"
  But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards
the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
  "East-sou-east, sir," said the frightened steersman.
  "Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched fist. "Heading East at
this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?"
  Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then
observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its
very blinding palpableness must have been the cause.
  Thrusting his head half-way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one
glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment
he almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked,
and lo! the two compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as
infallibly going West.
  But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew,
the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, "I have it! It has
happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our
compasses- that's all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I
take it."
  "Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said the pale
mate, gloomily.
  Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more
than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic
energy, as developed in the mariner's needle, is, as all know,
essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not
to be much marvelled at, that such things should be. Instances where
the lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some
of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been
still more fatal; all its loathsome virtue being annihilated, so
that the before magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife's
knitting needle. But in either case, the needle never again, of
itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the
binnacle compasses be affected, the same fate reaches all the others
that may be in the ship; even were the lowermost one inserted into the
kelson.
  Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the
transpointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended
hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that
the needles were exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the
ship's course to be changed accordingly. The yards were hard up; and
once more the Pequod thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind,
for the supposed fair one had only been juggling her.
  Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said
nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and
Flask- who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his
feelings- likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though
some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than
their fear of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained
almost wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a certain
magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab's.
  For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But
chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper
sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.
  "Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I
wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So,
so. But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck- a
lance without the pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the
sail-maker's needles. Quick!"
  Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now
about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might
have been to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile
skill, in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses.
Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed
needles, though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed
over by superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil
portents.
  "Men," said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed
him the things he had demanded, "my men, the thunder turned old Ahab's
needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own,
that will point as true as any."
  Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors,
as this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic
might follow. But Starbuck looked away.
  With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the
lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining,
bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with
the maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod,
he placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less
strongly hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the
rod as before. Then going through some small strange motions with
it- whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely
intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain- he called for
linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed
needles there, and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its
middle, over one of the compass cards. At first, the steel went
round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last it
settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching for
this result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing
his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,- "Look ye, for yourselves, if
Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and that
compass swears it!"
  One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes
could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they
slunk away.
  In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his
fatal pride.
  CHAPTER 125
  The Log and Line

  While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage,
the log and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident
reliance upon other means of determining the vessel's place, some
merchantmen, and many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly
neglect to heave the log; though at the same time, and frequently more
for form's sake than anything else, regularly putting down upon the
customary slate the course steered by the ship, as well as the
presumed average of progression every hour. It had been thus with
the Pequod. The wooden reel and angular log attached hung, long
untouched, just beneath the railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and
spray had damped it; sun and wind had warped it; all the elements
had combined to rot a thing that hung so idly. But heedless of all
this, his mood seized Ahab, as he happened to glance upon the reel,
not many hours after the magnet scene, and he remembered how his
quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic oath about the level
log and line. The ship was sailing plungingly; astern the billows
rolled in riots.
  "Forward, there! Heave the log!"
  Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman.
"Take the reel, one of ye, I'll heave."
  They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship's lee side, where
the deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost
dipping into the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.
  The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting
handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved, so
stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to
him.
  Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or
forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when
the old Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made
bold to speak.
  "Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet
have spoiled it."
  "'Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled
thee? Thou seem'st to hold. Oh, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not
thou it."
  "I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these grey
hairs of mine 'tis not worth while disputing, 'specially with a
superior, who'll ne'er confess."
  "What's that? there now's a patched professor in Queen Nature's
granite-founded College; but methinks he's too subservient. Where wert
thou born?"
  "In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir."
  "Excellent! Thou'st hit the world by that."
  "I know not, sir, but I was born there."
  "In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it's good. Here's a
man from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned
of Man; which is sucked in- by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind
wall butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So."
  The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a
long dragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to
whirl. In turn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows,
the towing resistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger
strangely.
  "Hold hard!"
  Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the
tugging log was gone.
  "I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the
mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here,
Tahitian; reel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make
another log, and mend thou the line. See to it."
  "There he goes now; to him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer
seems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in,
Tahitian! These lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken, and
dragging slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?"
  "Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whaleboat. Pip's
missing. Let's see now if ye haven't fished him up here, fisherman. It
drags hard; I guess he's holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off we
haul in no cowards here. Ho! there's his arm just breaking water. A
hatchet! a hatchet! cut it off- we haul in no cowards here. Captain
Ahab! sir, sir! here's Pip, trying to get on board again."
  "Peace, thou crazy loon," cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm.
"Away from the quarter-deck!"
  "The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser," muttered Ahab,
advancing. "Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was,
boy?
  "Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!"
  "And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils
of thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls
to sieve through! Who art thou, boy?"
  "Bell-boy, sir; ship's-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! One
hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high- looks cowardly-
quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip the coward?"
  "There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen
heavens! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have
abandoned him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall
be Pip's home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost
centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven by my heart-strings.
Come, let's down."
  "What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's
hand, and feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a
thing as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me,
sir, as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir,
let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black
one with the white, for I will not let this go."
  "Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to
worse horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers
in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient
gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and
knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and
gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than
though I grasped an Emperor's!"
  "There go two daft ones now," muttered the old Manxman. "One daft
with strength, the other daft with weakness. But here's the end of the
rotten line- all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best
have a new line altogether. I'll see Mr. Stubb about it."
  CHAPTER 126
  The Life-Buoy

  Steering now south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, and her
progress solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod
held on her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through
such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways
impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all
these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and
desperate scene.
  At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of
the Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes
before the dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the
watch- then headed by Flask- was startled by a cry so plaintively wild
and unearthly- like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all
Herod's murdered Innocents- that one and all, they started from
their reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or
leaned all transfixed by listening, like the carved Roman slave, while
that wild cry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part
of the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan
harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman- the oldest
mariner of all- declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were
heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea.
  Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when
he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not
unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus
explained the wonder.
  Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great
numbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or
some dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship
and kept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of
wall. But this only the more affected some of them, because most
mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not
only from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the
human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen
peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain
circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men.
  But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most
plausible confirmation in the fate of one of their number that
morning. At sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head
at the fore; and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from
his sleep (for sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state),
whether it was thus with the man, there is now no telling; but, be
that as it may, he had not been long at his perch, when a cry was
heard- a cry and a rushing- and looking up, they saw a falling phantom
in the air; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in
the blue of the sea.
  The life-buoy- a long slender cask- was dropped from the stern,
where it always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to
seize it, and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken,
so that it slowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its
every pore; and the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the
bottom, as if to yield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.
  And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look
out for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground;
that man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of
that at the time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at
this event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a
fore-shadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil
already presaged. They declared that now they knew the reason of those
wild shrieks they had heard the night before. But again the old
Manxman said nay.
  The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed
to see to it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found,
and as in the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis
of the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was
directly connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to
be; therefore, they were going to leave the ship's stern unprovided
with a buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg
hinted a hint concerning his coffin.
  "A life-buoy of a coffin!" cried Starbuck, starting.
  "Rather queer, that, I should say," said Stubb.
  "It will make a good enough one," said Flask, "the carpenter here
can arrange it easily."
  "Bring it up; there's nothing else for it," said Starbuck, after a
melancholy pause. "Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so- the
coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it."
  "And shall I nail down the lid, sir?" moving his hand as with a
hammer.
  "Aye."
  "And shall I caulk the seams, sir?" moving his hand as with a
caulking-iron.
  "Aye."
  "And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?" moving his
hand as with a pitch-pot.
  "Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the
coffin, and no more.- Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me."
  "He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he
baulks. Now I don't like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he
wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he
won't put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with
that coffin? And now I'm ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It's
like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side
now. I don't like this cobbling sort of business- I don't like it at
all; it's undignified; it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats do
tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but
clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that
regularly begins at the beginning, and is at the middle when midway,
and comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler's job, that's
at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end. It's the old
woman's tricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection all
old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who
ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that's the reason I
never would work for lonely widow old women ashore when I kept my
job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken into their lonely
old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea
but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay
over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the
snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before
with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied
up in rigging, ere they would do the job. But I'm made of knotty
Aroostook hemlock; I don't budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing
about with a grave-yard tray! But never mind. We workers in woods make
bridal bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We
work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to
ask the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too confounded
cobbling, and then we stash it if we can. Hem! I'll do the job, now,
tenderly. I'll have me- let's see- how many in the ship's company, all
told? But I've forgotten. Any way, I'll have me thirty separate,
Turk's-headed life-lines, each three feet long hanging all round to
the coffin. Then, if the hull go down, there'll be thirty lively
fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often
beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and
marling-spike! Let's to it."
  CHAPTER 127
  The Deck

  The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the
open hatchway; the Carpenter caulking its seams; the string of twisted
oakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom
of his frock.- Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip
following him.

  Back lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this
hand complies with my humor more genially than that boy.- Middle aisle
of a church! What's here?"
  "Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the
hatchway!"
  "Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault."
  "Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does."
  "Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from
thy shop?"
  "I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?"
  "Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?"
  "Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg;
but they've set me now to turning it into something else."
  "Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping,
intermeddling, monopolizing, heathenish old scamp, to be one day
making legs, and the next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again
life-buoys out of those same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as
the gods, and as much of a jack-of-all-trades."
  "But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do."
  "The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a
coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the
craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade
in hand. Dost thou never?"
  "Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I'm indifferent enough, sir, for that;
but the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been
because there was none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is
full of it. Hark to it."
  "Aye, and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board; and
what in all things makes the sounding-board is this- there's naught
beneath. And yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the
same, Carpenter. Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the
coffin knock against the churchyard gate, going in?
  "Faith, sir, I've-"
  "Faith? What's that?"
  "Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamation-like- that's
all, sir."
  "Um, um; go on."
  "I was about to say, sir, that-"
  "Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight."
  "He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes. I've heard that the Isle of Albermarle, one of the
Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me
some sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle.
He's always under the Line- fiery hot, I tell ye! He's looking this
way- come, oakum; quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the
cork, and I'm the professor of musical glasses- tap, tap!"

                       (Ahab to himself)
  "There's a sight! There's a sound! The greyheaded wood-pecker
tapping the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See!
that thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious
wag, that fellow. Rat-tat! So man's seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial
are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable
thoughts? Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a
mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most
endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it
be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an
immortality-preserver! I'll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in
the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one,
seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will ye never have done,
Carpenter, with that accursed sound? I go below; let me not see that
thing here when I return again. Now, then, Pip, we'll talk this
over; I do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown
worlds must empty into thee!"
  CHAPTER 128
  The Pequod Meets The Rachel

  Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly
down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At
the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as
the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful
sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life
fled from the smitten hull.
  "Bad news; she brings bad news," muttered the old Manxman. But ere
her commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere
he could hopefully hail, Ahab's voice was heard.
  "Hast seen the White Whale?"
  "Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?"
  Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected
question; and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the
stranger captain himself, having stopped his vessel's way, was seen
descending her side. A few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched
the Pequod's main-chains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he
was recognized by Ahab for a Nantucketer he knew. But no formal
salutation was exchanged.
  "Where was he?- not killed!- not killed!" cried Ahab, closely
advancing. "How was it?"
  It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous,
while three of the stranger's boats were engaged with a shoal of
whales, which had led them some four or five miles from the ship;
and while they were yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and
head of Moby Dick had suddenly loomed up out of the water, not very
far to leeward; whereupon, the fourth rigged boat- a reserved one- had
been instantly lowered in chase. After a keen sail before the wind,
this fourth boat- the swiftest keeled of all- seemed to have succeeded
in fastening- at least, as well as the man at the mast-head could tell
anything about it. In the distance he saw the diminished dotted
boat; and then a swift gleam of bubbling white water; and after that
nothing more; whence it was concluded that the stricken whale must
have indefinitely run away with his pursuers, as often happens.
There was some apprehension, but no positive alarm, as yet. The recall
signals were placed in the rigging; darkness came on; and forced to
pick up her three far to windward boats- ere going in quest of the
fourth one in the precisely opposite direction- the ship had not
only been necessitated to leave that boat to its fate till near
midnight, but, for the time, to increase her distance from it. But the
rest of her crew being at last safe aboard, she crowded all sail-
stunsail on stunsail- after the missing boat; kindling a fire in her
try-pots for a beacon; and every other man aloft on the look-out.
But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain
the presumed place of the absent ones when last seen; though she
then paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her; and not
finding anything, had again dashed on; again paused, and lowered her
boats; and though she had thus continued doing till daylight; yet
not the least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.
  The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal
his object in boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite
with his own in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or
five miles apart, on parallel lines, and so sweeping a double horizon,
as it were.
  "I will wager something now," whispered Stubb to Flask, "that some
one in that missing boat wore off that Captain's best coat; mayhap,
his watch- he's so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of
two pious whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the
height of the whaling season? See, Flask, only see how pale he
looks-pale in the very buttons of his eyes- look- it wasn't the
coat- it must have been the-"
  "My boy, my own boy is among them. For God's sake- I beg, I
conjure"- here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far
had but icily received his petition. "For eight-and-forty hours let me
charter your ship- I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it-
if there be no other way- for eight-and-forty hours only- only that-
you must, oh, you must, and you shall do this thing."
  "His son!" cried Stubb, "oh, it's his son he's lost! I take back the
coat and watch- what says Ahab? We must save that boy."
  "He's drowned with the rest on 'em, last night," said the old Manx
sailor standing behind them; "I heard; all of ye heard their spirits."
  Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the
Rachel's the more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only
was one of the Captain's sons among the number of the missing boat's
crew; but among the number of the other boats' crews, at the same
time, but on the other hand, separated from the ship during the dark
vicissitudes of the chase, there had been still another son; as that
for a time, the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the
cruellest perplexity; which was only solved for him by his chief
mate's instinctively adopting the ordinary procedure of a whaleship in
such emergencies, that is, when placed between jeopardized but divided
boats, always to pick up the majority first. But the captain, for some
unknown constitutional reason, had refrained from mentioning all this,
and not till forced to it by Ahab's iciness did he allude to his one
yet missing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old, whose father with
the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketer's paternal
love, had thus early sought to initiate him in the perils and
wonders of a vocation almost immemorially the destiny of all his race.
Nor does it unfrequently occur, that Nantucket captains will send a
son of such tender age away from them, for a protracted three or
four years' voyage in some other ship than their own; so that their
first knowledge of a whaleman's career shall be unenervated by any
chance display of a father's natural but untimely partiality, or undue
apprehensiveness and concern.
  Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of
Ahab; and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but
without the least quivering of his own.
  "I will not go," said the stranger, "till you say aye to me. Do to
me as you would have me do to you in the like case. For you too have a
boy, Captain Ahab- though but a child, and nestling safely at home
now- a child of your old age too- Yes, yes, you relent; I see it- run,
run, men, now, and stand by to square in the yards."
  "Avast," cried Ahab- "touch not a rope-yarn"; then in a voice that
prolongingly moulded every word- "Captain Gardiner, I will not do
it. Even now I lose time, Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and
may I forgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the
binnacle watch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn
off all strangers; then brace forward again, and let the ship sail
as before."
  Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin,
leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter
rejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment,
Gardiner silently hurried to the side; more fell than stepped into his
boat, and returned to his ship.
  Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange
vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every
dark spot, however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were
swung around; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she
beat against a head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while
all the while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as
three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs.
  But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly
saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without
comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were
not.
  CHAPTER 129
  The Cabin

  (Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him hy the hand to follow.)
  Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is
coming when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have
thee by him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too
curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady
becomes my most desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they
shall serve thee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt
sit here in my own screwed chair; another screw to it, thou must be."
  "No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me
for your one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I
remain a part of ye."
  "Oh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the
fadeless fidelity of man!- and a black! and crazy!- but methinks
like-cures-like applies to him too; he grows so sane again."
  "They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip,
whose drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his
living skin. But I will never desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I
must go with ye."
  "If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab's purpose keels up in
him. I tell thee no; it cannot be."
  "Oh good master, master, master!
  "Weep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is
mad. Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and
still know that I am there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand!- Met!
True art thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for
ever bless thee; and if it come to that,- God for ever save thee,
let what will befall."

       (Ahab goes; Pip steps one step forward.)

  "Here he this instant stood, I stand in his air,- but I'm alone. Now
were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he's missing. Pip! Pip!
Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip? He must be up here; let's try the
door. What? neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar; and yet there's no
opening it. It must be the spell; he told me to stay here: Aye, and
told me this screwed chair was mine. Here, then, I'll seat me, against
the transom, in the ship's full middle, all her keel and her three
masts before me. Here, our old sailors say, in their black
seventy-fours great admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it
over rows of captains and lieutenants. Ha! what's this? epaulets!
epaulets! the epaulets all come crowding. Pass round the decanters;
glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs! What an odd feeling, now, when a
black boy's host to white men with gold lace upon their coats!-
Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip?- a little negro lad, five feet
high, hang-dog look, and cowardly! Jumped from a whale-boat once;-
seen him? No! Well then, fill up again, captains, and let's drink
shame upon all cowards! I name no names. Shame upon them! Put one foot
upon the table. Shame upon all cowards.- Hist! above there, I hear
ivory- Oh, master! master! I am indeed down-hearted when you walk over
me. But there I'll stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they
bulge through; and oysters come to join me."
  CHAPTER 130
  The Hat

  And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide
a preliminary cruise, Ahab,- all other whaling waters swept- seemed to
have chased his foe into an oceanfold, to slay him the more securely
there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and
longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a
vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually
encountered Moby Dick;- and now that all his successive meetings
with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac
indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether
sinning or sinned against; now it was that there lurked a something in
the old man's eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to
see. As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong,
arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze;
so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant
midnight of the gloomy crew. It domineered above them so, that all
their bodings, doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath
their souls, and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf.
  In this foreshadowing interval, too, all humor, forced or natural,
vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more
strove to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed
ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped
mortar of Ahab's iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the
deck, ever conscious that the old man's despot eye was on them.
  But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours
when he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have seen
that even as Ahab's eyes so awed the crew's, the inscrutable
Parsee's glance awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at
times affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to
invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him;
that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed,
whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous
shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being's body. And that shadow
was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever
certainly been known to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for
hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan but wondrous eves did
plainly say- We two watchmen never rest.
  Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon
the deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his
pivot-hole, or exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating
limits,- the main-mast and the mizen; or else they saw him standing in
the cabin-scuttle,- his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to
step; his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however
motionless he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that
he had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching
hat, they could never tell unerringly whether, for all this, his
eyes were really closed at times; or whether he was still intently
scanning them; no matter, though he stood so in the scuttle for a
whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp gathered in
beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The clothes that the
night had wet, the next day's sunshine dried upon him; and so, day
after day, and night after night; he went no more beneath the
planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for.
  He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,- breakfast
and dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which
darkly grew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which
still grow idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper
verdure. But though his whole life was now become one watch on deck;
and though the Parsee's mystic watch was without intermission as his
own; yet these two never seemed to speak- one man to the other- unless
at long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary.
Though such a potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain;
openly, and to the awe-struck crew, they seemed pole-like asunder.
If by day they chanced to speak one word; by night, dumb men were
both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal interchange. At
times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far parted
in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the main-mast;
but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw
his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.
  And yet, somehow, did Ahab- in his own proper self, as daily,
hourly, and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,-
Ahab seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again
both seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the
lean shade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all
rib and keel was solid Ahab.
  At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was
heard from aft,- "Man the mast-heads!"- and all through the day,
till after sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at
the striking of the helmsman's bell, was heard- "What d'ye see?-
sharp! sharp!"
  But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the
children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the
monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity; at
least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt,
even, whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight
he sought. But if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously
refrained from verbally expressing them, however his actions might
seem to hint them.
  "I will have the first sight of the whale myself,"- he said. "Aye!
Ahab must have the doubloon! and with his own hands he rigged a nest
of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single
sheaved block, to secure to the mainmast head, he received the two
ends of the downwardreeved rope; and attaching one to his basket
prepared, pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail.
This done, with that end yet in his hand and standing beside the
pin, he looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other;
pausing his glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but
shunning Fedallah; and then settling his firm relying eye upon the
chief mate, said,- "Take the rope, sir- I give it into thy hands,
Starbuck." Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word
for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured
the rope at last; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one
hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for
miles and miles,- ahead astern, this side, and that,- within the
wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height.
  When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place
in the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea
is hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under
these circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in
strict charge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because
in such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different
relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is
seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are
being every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but
a natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the
hoisted sailor should by some carelessness of the crew be cast
adrift and fall all swooping to the sea. So Ahab's proceedings in this
matter were not unusual; the only strange thing about them seemed to
be, that Starbuck, almost the one only man who had ever ventured to
oppose him with anything in the slightest degree approaching to
decision- one of those too, whose faithfulness on the look-out he
had seemed to doubt somewhat; it was strange, that this was the very
man he should select for his watchman; freely giving his whole life
into such an otherwise distrusted person's hands.
  Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there
ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often
fly incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in
these latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming
round his head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it
darted a thousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralized
downwards, and went eddying again round his head.
  But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab
seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else
have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now
almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning
meaning in almost every sight.
  "Your hat, your hat, sir!" suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who
being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab,
though somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air
dividing them.
  But already the sable wing was before the old man's eyes; the long
hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away
with his prize.
  An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to
replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin
would be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that
omen accounted good. Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew
on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared;
while from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was
dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.
  CHAPTER 131
  The Pequod Meets The Delight

  The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by;
the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most
miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all
eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some
whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine
feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.
  Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs,
and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat;
but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through
the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.
  "Hast seen the White Whale?"
  "Look!" replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and
with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.
  "Hast killed him?"
  "The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that," answered the
other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose
gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.
  "Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch,
Ahab held it out, exclaiming- "Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand
I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are
these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place
behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"
  "Then God keep thee, old man- see'st thou that"- pointing to the
hammock- "I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only
yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only that one I bury; the rest
were buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb." Then
turning to his crew- "Are ye ready there? place the plank then on
the rail, and lift the body; so, then- Oh! God"- advancing towards the
hammock with uplifted hands- "may the resurrection and the life-"
  "Brace forward! Up helm!" cried Ahab like lightning to his men.
  But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the
sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea;
not so quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have
sprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.
  As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange
life-buoy hanging at the Pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief.
  "Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!" cried a foreboding voice in her
wake. "In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn
us your taffrail to show us your coffin!"
  CHAPTER 132
  The Symphony

  It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air
was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust
and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as
Samson's chest in his sleep.
  Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of
small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the
feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the
bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and
these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the
masculine sea.
  But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in
shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex,
as it were, that distinguished them.
  Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle
air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the
girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion- most seen
here at the Equator- denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving
alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.
  Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly
firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in
the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of
the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's
forehead of heaven.
  Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky!
how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I
seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly
gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks
which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
  Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side
and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the
more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the
lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for
a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air,
that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother
world, so long cruel- forbidding- now threw affectionate arms round
his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over
one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her
heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped
a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as
that one wee drop.
  Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the
side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless
sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful
not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and
stood there.
  Ahab turned.
  "Starbuck!"
  "Sir."
  "Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On
such a day- very much such a sweetness as this- I struck my first
whale- a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty- forty- forty years ago!-
ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and
peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty
years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war
on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those
forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I
have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned,
walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small
entrance to any sympathy from the green country without- oh,
weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!-
when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known
to me before- and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare-
fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul!- when the poorest
landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's
fresh bread to my mouldy crusts- away, whole oceans away, from that
young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next
day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow- wife? wife?- rather a
widow with her husband alive? Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I
married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the
boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand
lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey- more a
demon than a man!- aye, aye! what a forty years' fool- fool- old fool,
has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and
palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the
richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard,
that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been
snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me,
that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some
ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel
deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering
beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!- crack my
heart!- stave my brain!- mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of
grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus
intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look
into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better
than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearthstone!
this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye.
No, no; stay on board, on board!- lower not when I do; when branded
Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no!
not with the far away home I see in that eye!"
  "Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all!
why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us
fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are
Starbuck's- wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow
youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,
longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!- this instant let me
alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would
we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have
some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."
  "They have, they have. I have seen them- some summer days in the
morning. About this time- yes, it is his noon nap now- the boy
vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me,
of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come
back to dance him again."
  "'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every
morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of
his father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for
Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away!
See, see! the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!"
  But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he
shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.
  "What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor
commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so
keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time;
recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart,
I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that
lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an
errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some
invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one
small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that
thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned
round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the
handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this
unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase
and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to
doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a
mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the airs smells now, as
if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere
under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping
among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all
sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as
last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swarths-
Starbuck!"
  But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen
away.
  Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at
two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there, Fedallah was
motionlessly leaning over the same rail.
  CHAPTER 133
  The Chase - First Day

  That night, in the mid-watch when the old man- as his wont at
intervals- stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went
to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely,
snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing
nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near.
Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth
by the living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was
any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the
dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as
nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be
slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened.
  The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently
vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea
directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the
pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks
of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
  "Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!"
  Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the
forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps
that they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did
they appear with their clothes in their hands.
  "What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
  "Nothing, nothing sir!" was the sound hailing down in reply.
  "T'gallant sails!- stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!"
  All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for
swaying him to the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they
were hoisting him thither, when, while but two thirds of the way
aloft, and while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy
between the main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a
gull-like cry in the air. "There she blows!- there she blows! A hump
like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"
  Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the
famous whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his
final perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing
just beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the
Indian's head was almost on a level with Ahab's heel. From this height
the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea
revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent
spout into the air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same
silent spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and
Indian Oceans.
  "And did none of ye see it before?" cried Ahab, hailing the
perched men all around him.
  "I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and
I cried out," said Tashtego.
  "Not the same instant; not the same- no, the doubloon is mine,
Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have
raised the White Whale first. There she blows!- there she blows!-
there she blows! There again!- there again!" he cried, in
long-drawn, lingering, methodic tones, attuned to the gradual
prolongings of the whale's visible jets. "He's going to sound! In
stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck,
remember, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a
point! So; steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black
water! All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr.
Starbuck; lower, lower,- quick, quicker!" and he slid through the
air to the deck.
  "He is heading straight to leeward, sir," cried Stubb, "right away
from us; cannot have seen the ship yet."
  "Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!- brace up!
Shiver her!- shiver her!- So; well that! Boats, boats!"
  Soon all the boats but Starbuck's were dropped; all the boat-sails
set- all the paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to
leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up
Fedallah's sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.
  Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the
sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the
ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its
waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the
breathless hunter came so nigh seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his
entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea
as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of
finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of
the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft
Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening white shadow from his
broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the
shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into
the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright
bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again by
the light toes of hundreds of gay fowls softly feathering the sea,
alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising
from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a
recent lance projected from the white whale's back; and at intervals
one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro
skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked on
this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons.
  A gentle joyousness- a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness,
invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away
with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely,
leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching
fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove,
not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White
Whale as he so divinely swam.
  On each soft side- coincident with the parted swell, that but once
leaving him then flowed so wide away- on each bright side, the whale
shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters
who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had
ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the
vesture of tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest
on, to all who for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that
same way thou mayst have bejuggled and destroyed before.
  And thus, through the serene tranquilities of the tropical sea,
among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding
rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full
terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched
hideousness of his jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from
the water; for an instant his whole marbleized body formed a high
arch, like Virginia's Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his
bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded
and went out of sight. Hoveringly halting, and dipping on the wing,
the white sea-fowls longingly lingered over the agitated pool that
he left.
  With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift,
the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's reappearance.
  "An hour," said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern; and he
gazed beyond the whale's place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide
wooing vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his
eyes seemed whirling round in his head as he swept the watery
circle. The breeze now freshened; the sea began to swell.
  "The birds!- the birds!" cried Tashtego.
  In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds
were now all flying towards Ahab's boat; and when within a few yards
began fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round,
with joyous, expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man's; Ahab
could discover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down
and down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no
bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and
magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly
revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up
from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth and
scrolled jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the
blue of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like
an open-doored marble tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his
steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous
apparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to change places with him,
went forward to the bows, and seizing Perth's harpoon, commanded his
crew to grasp their oars and stand by to stern.
  Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis,
its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale's head while
yet under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick,
with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly
transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his
pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat.
  Through and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled
for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner
of a biting shark slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his
mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up
into the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The
bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of
Ahab's head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the
White Whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her
mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms;
but the tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other's heads to
gain the uttermost stern.
  And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as
the whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from
his body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at
from the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and
while the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis
impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious
with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all
alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all
this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly
strove to wrench from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw
slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and
snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft,
bit the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again in
the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks. These floated
aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at the stern-wreck
clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold fast to the oars to
lash them across.
  At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the
first to perceive the whale's intent, by the crafty upraising of his
head, a movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his
hand had made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But
only slipping further into the whale's mouth, and tilting over
sideways as it slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw;
spilled him out of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell
flat-faced upon the sea.
  Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a
little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and
down in the billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole
spindled body; so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose- some
twenty or more feet out of the water- the now rising swells, with
all their confluent waves, dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively
tossing their shivered spray still higher into the air.* So, in a
gale, the but half baffled Channel billows only recoil from the base
of the Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit with their scud.

  *This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its
designation (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary
up-and-down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called
pitchpoling, previously described. By this motion the whale must
best and most comprehensively view whatever objects may be
encircling him.

  But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly
round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his
vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more
deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him,
as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's
elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in
the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to
swim,- though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such
a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed
bubble which the least chance shock might burst. From the boat's
fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eved him; the
clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not succor him; more
than enough was it for them to look to themselves. For so
revolvingly appalling was the White Whale's aspect, and so planetarily
swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed
horizontally swooping upon them. And though the other boats, unharmed,
still hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into the eddy to
strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant destruction
of the jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that case could
they themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then, they
remained on the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had now
become the old man's head.
  Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the
ship's mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the
scene; and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!-
"Sail on the"- but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from
Moby Dick, and whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it
again, and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,- "Sail on
the whale!- Drive him off!"
  The Pequod's prows were pointed-, and breaking up the charmed
circle, she effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As
he sullenly swam off, the boats flew to the rescue.
  Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white
brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily
strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom for a
time, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one
trodden under foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails
came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines.
  But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the
more abbreviate it. In an instant's compass, great hearts sometimes
condense to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly
diffused through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such hearts,
though summary in each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in
their life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of
instantaneous intensities; for even in their pointless centres,
those noble natures contain the entire circumferences of inferior
souls.
  "The harpoon," said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on
one bended arm- "is it safe?"
  "Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it," said Stubb, showing
it.
  "Lay it before me;- any missing men?"
  "One, two, three, four, five;- there were five oars, sir, and here
are five men."
  "That's good.- Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him!
there! there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!- Hands off
from me! The eternal sap runs up in Ahab's bones again! Set the
sail; out oars; the helm!"
  It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being
picked up by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the
chase is thus continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was
thus now. But the added power of the boat did not equal the added
power of the whale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin;
swimming with a velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under
these circumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an
indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew
endure for so long a period, such an unintermitted, intense
straining at the oar; a thing barely tolerable only in some one
brief vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as it sometimes happens,
offered the most promising intermediate means of overtaking the chase.
Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were soon swayed up to
their cranes- the two parts of the wrecked boat having been previously
secured by her- and then hoisting everything to her side, and stacking
her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it with stunsails, like
the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the Pequod bore down in
the leeward wake of Moby Dick. At the well known, methodic
intervals, the whale's glittering spout was regularly announced from
the manned mast-heads; and when he would be reported as just gone
down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the deck,
binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted
hour expired, his voice was heard.- "Whose is the doubloon now? D'ye
see him?" and if the reply was No, sir! straightway he commanded
them to lift him to his perch. In this way the day wore on; Ahab,
now aloft and motionless; anon, unrestingly pacing the planks.
  As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men
aloft, or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a
still greater breadth- thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched
hat, at every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been
dropped upon the quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow to
shattered stern. At last he paused before it; and as in an already
over-clouded sky fresh troops of clouds will sometimes sail across, so
over the old man's face there now stole some such added gloom as this.
  Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to
evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in
his Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed-
"The thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir,
ha! ha!"
  "What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man!
did I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I could
swear thou wert a paltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a
wreck."
  "Aye, sir," said Starbuck drawing near, "'tis a solemn sight; an
omen, and an ill one."
  "Omen? omen?- the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to
man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and
give an old wives' darkling hint.- Begone! Ye two are the opposite
poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck;
and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions
of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold- I
shiver!- How now? Aloft there! D'ye see him? Sing out for every spout,
though he spout ten times a second!"
  The day was nearly done; only the helm of his golden robe was
rustling. Soon it was almost dark, but the look-out men still remained
unset.
  "Can't see the spout now, sir;- too dark"- cried a voice from the
air.
  "How heading when last seen?"
  "As before, sir,- straight to leeward."
  "Good! he will travel slower now 'tis night. Down royals and
top-gallant stunsails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before
morning; he's making a passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm
there! keep her full before the wind!- Aloft! come down!- Mr. Stubb,
send a fresh hand to the fore-mast head, and see it manned till
morning."- Then advancing towards the doubloon in the main-mast- "Men,
this gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide here till
the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises him,
upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man's; and if on
that day I shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be
divided among all of ye! Away now! the deck is thine, sir!"
  And so saying, he placed himself half way within the scuttle, and
slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals
rousing himself to see how the night wore on.
  CHAPTER 134
  The Chase - Second Day

  At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh.
  "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the
light to spread.
  "See nothing, sir."
  "Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought
for;- the top-gallant sails!- aye, they should have been kept on her
all night. But no matter- 'tis but resting for the rush."
  Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular
whale, continued through day into night, and through night into day,
is a thing by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For
such is the wonderful skill, prescience of experience, and
invincible confidence acquired by some great natural geniuses among
the Nantucket commanders; that from the simple observation of a
whale when last descried, they will, under certain given
circumstances, pretty accurately foretell both the direction in
which he will continue to swim for a time, while out of sight, as well
as his probable rate of progression during that period. And, in
these cases, somewhat as a pilot, when about losing sight of a
coast, whose general trending he well knows, and which he desires
shortly to return to again, but at some further point; like as this
pilot stands by his compass, and takes the precise bearing of the cape
at present visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright the
remote, unseen headland, eventually to be visited: so does the
fisherman, at his compass, with the whale; for after being chased, and
diligently marked, through several hours of daylight, then, when night
obscures the fish, the creature's future wake through the darkness
is almost as established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the
pilot's coast is to him. So that to this hunter's wondrous skill,
the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all
desired purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land. And as
the mighty iron Leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known
in its every pace, that, with watches in their hands, men time his
rate as doctors that of a baby's pulse; and lightly say of it, the
up train or the down train will reach such or such a spot, at such
or such an hour; even so, almost, there are occasions when these
Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep, according to the
observed humor of his speed; and say to themselves, so many hours
hence this whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have about
reached this or that degree of latitude or longitude. But to render
this acuteness at all successful in the end, the wind and the sea must
be the whaleman's allies; for of what present avail to the becalmed or
wind-bound mariner is the skill that assures him he is exactly
ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port? Inferable from these
statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching the chase
of whales.
  The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a
cannonball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level
field.
  "By salt and hemp!" cried Stubb, "but this swift motion of the
deck creeps up one's legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I
are two brave fellows!- Ha, ha! Some one take me up, and launch me,
spine-wise, on the sea,- for by live-oaks! my spine's a keel. Ha,
ha! we go the gait that leaves no dust behind!"
  "There she blows- she blows!- she blows!- right ahead!" was now
the mast-head cry.
  "Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I knew it- ye can't escape- blow on and
split your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow
your trump- blister your lungs!- Ahab will dam off your blood, as a
miller shuts his watergate upon the stream!"
  And Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The
frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like
old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them
might have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight
through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all
sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before the
bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and
by the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past
night's suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which
their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these
things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great
bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible
as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so
enslaved them to the race.
  They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them
all; though it was put together of all contrasting things- oak, and
maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp- yet all these ran
into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way,
both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all
the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear;
guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were
all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did
point to.
  The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were
outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with
one hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others,
shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking
yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for
their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness
to seek out the thing that might destroy them!
  "Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when,
after the lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had
been heard. "Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick
casts one odd jet that way, and then disappears."
  It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken
some other thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved;
for hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed
to its pin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra,
that made the air vibrate as with the combined discharge of rifles.
The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as- much
nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a
mile ahead- Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm
and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic
fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but
by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his
utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms
his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain
of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and
more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem
his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.
  "There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his
immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to
Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved
against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised,
for the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and
stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first
sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in
a vale.
  "Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour
and thy harpoon are at hand!- Down! down all of ye, but one man at the
fore. The boats!- stand by!"
  Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men,
like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and
halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped
from his perch.
  "Lower away," he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat- a
spare one, rigged the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the ship is
thine- away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!"
  As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the
first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming
for the three crews. Ahab's boat was central; and cheering his men, he
told them he would take the whale head-and-head,- that is, pull
straight up to his forehead,- a not uncommon thing; for when within
a certain limit, such a course excludes the coming onset from the
whale's sidelong vision. But ere that close limit was gained, and
while yet all three boats were plain as the ship's three masts to
his eye; the White Whale churning himself into furious speed, almost
in an instant as it were, rushing among the boats with open jaws,
and a lashing tail, offered appalling battle on every side; and
heedless of the iron darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent
on annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made.
But skilfully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained chargers
in the field; the boats for a while eluded him; though, at times,
but by a plank's breadth; while all the time, Ahab's unearthly
slogan tore every other cry but his to shreds.
  But at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so
crossed and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of
the three lines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of
themselves, warped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him;
though now for a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to
rally for a more tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab
first paid out more line; and then was rapidly hauling and jerking
in upon it again- hoping that way to disencumber it of some snarls-
when lo!- a sight more savage than the embattled teeth of sharks!
  Caught and twisted- corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose
harpoons and lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came
flashing and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab's boat.
Only one thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically
reached within- through- and then, without- the rays of steel; dragged
in the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then,
twice sundering the rope near the chocks- dropped the intercepted
fagot of steel into the sea; and was all fast again. That instant, the
White Whale made a sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the
other lines; by so doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boats
of Stubb and Flask towards his flukes; dashed them together like two
rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the
sea, disappeared in a boiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the
odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and round, like the
grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch.
  While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out
after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture,
while aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial,
twitching his legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and
Stubb was lustily singing out for some one to ladle him up; and
while the old man's line- now parting- admitted of his pulling into
the creamy pool to rescue whom he could;- in that wild
simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils,- Ahab's yet
unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires,-
as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale
dashed his broad forehead against its bottom, and sent it turning over
and over, into the air; till it fell again- gunwale down- and Ahab and
his men struggled out from under it, like seals from a sea-side cave.
  The first uprising momentum of the whale- modifying its direction as
he struck the surface- involuntarily launched him along it, to a
little distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and
with his back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his
flukes from side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank,
the least chip or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail
swiftly drew back, and came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as
if satisfied that his work for that time was done, he pushed his
pleated forehead through the ocean, and trailing after him the
intertangled lines, continued his leeward way at a traveller's
methodic pace.
  As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again
came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the
floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at,
and safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders,
wrists, and ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances;
inextricable intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all these
were there; but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen
any one. As with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now found grimly
clinging to his boat's broken half, which afforded a comparatively
easy float; nor did it so exhaust him as the previous day's mishap.
  But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him;
as instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder
of Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist him. His
ivory leg had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter.
  "Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who
he will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has."
  "The ferrule has not stood, sir," said the carpenter, now coming up;
put good work into that leg."
  "But no bones broken, sir, I hope," said Stubb with true concern.
  "Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!- d'ye see it.- But even
with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living
bone of mine one jot more me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor
white whale, nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in
his own proper and inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder
floor, any mast scrape yonder roof?- Aloft there! which way?"
  "Dead to leeward, sir."
  "Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the
rest of the spare boats and rig them- Mr. Starbuck away, and muster
the boat's crews."
  "Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir."
  "Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate! that the
unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!"
  "Sir?"
  "My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane- there, that
shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him
yet. By heaven it cannot be!-missing?- quick! call them all."
  The old man's hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company,
the Parsee was not there.
  "The Parsee!" cried Stubb- "he must have been caught in-"
  "The black vomit wrench thee!- run all of ye above, alow, cabin,
forecastle- find him- not gone- not gone!"
  But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee
was nowhere to be found.
  "Aye, sir," said Stubb- "caught among the tangles of your line- I
thought I saw him dragging under."
  "My line! my line? Gone?- gone? What means that little word?- What
death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the
belfry. The harpoon, too!- toss over the litter there,- d'ye see
it?- the forged iron, men, the white whale's- no, no, no,- listered
fool! this hand did dart it!- 'tis in the fish!- Aloft there! Keep him
nailed-Quick!- all hands to the rigging of the boats- collect the
oars- harpooneers! the irons, the irons!- hoist royals higher- a
pull on all the sheets!- helm there! steady, steady for your life!
I'll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight
through it, but I'll slay him yet!
  "Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried
Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man- In Jesus' name
no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased;
twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under
thee; thy evil shadow gone- all good angels mobbing thee with
warnings:- what more wouldst thou have?- Shall we keep chasing this
murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him
to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal
world? Oh, oh,- Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"
  "Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since
that hour we both saw- thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But
in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the
palm of this hand- a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab,
man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and
me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates'
lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou
obeyest mine.- Stand round men, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the
stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot.
'Tis Ahab- his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that
moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half-stranded, as ropes
that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I
break, yell hear me crack; and till ye hear that, know that Ahab's
hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called
omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown,
drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to
sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick- two days he's floated- to-morrow
will be the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more,- but only to
spout his last! D'ye feel brave men, brave?"
  "As fearless fire," cried Stubb.
  "And as mechanical," muttered Ahab. Then as the men went forward, he
muttered on: "The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the same
to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek
to drive out of others' hearts what's clinched so fast in mine!- The
Parsee- the Parsee!- gone, gone? and he was to go before:- but still
was to be seen again ere I could perish- How's that?- There's a riddle
now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole
line of judges:- like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain. I'll, I'll
solve it, though!"
  When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.
  So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as
on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of
the grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by
lanterns in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and
sharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken
keel of Ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while
still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his
scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on
its dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.
  CHAPTER 135
  The Chase - Third Day

  The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more
the solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of
the daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.
  "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.
  "In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all.
Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a
lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a
summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing
open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food
for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only
feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's
audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought
to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our
poor brains beat too much for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my
brain was very calm- frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a
glass in which the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still
this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it;
but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere,
between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How
the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of
split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has
no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and
wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing
hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!- it's tainted. Were I
the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I'd
crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble
and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it
has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run
through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will
not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing- a
nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the
things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things
are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a
most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And
yet, I say again, and swear it now, that there's something all
glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least,
that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast,
vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser
currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies
of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And
by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my
good ship on; these Trades, or something like them- something so
unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it!
Aloft there! What d'ye see?"
  "Nothing, sir."
  "Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the
sun! Aye, aye, it must be so. I've over-sailed him. How, got the
start? Aye, he's chasing me now; not I, him- that's bad; I might
have known it, too. Fool! the lines- the harpoons he's towing. Aye,
aye, I have run him by last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye,
but the regular look outs! Man the braces!"
  Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's
quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the
braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream
in her own white wake.
  "Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck
to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. "God
keep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside
wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!"
  "Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen
basket. "We should meet him soon."
  "Aye, aye, sir," and straightway Starbuck did Ahab's bidding, and
once more Ahab swung on high.
  A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now
held long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points
off the weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from
the three mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire
had voiced it.
  "Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On
deck there!- brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's eye. He's too
far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that
helmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down.
But let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea;
there's time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young;
aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the
sand-hills of Nantucket! The same- the same!- the same to Noah as to
me. There's a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They
must lead somewhere- to something else than common land, more palmy
than the palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to
windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good
bye, old mast-head! What's this?- green? aye, tiny mosses in these
warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab's head! There's
the difference now between man's old age and matter's. But aye, old
mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though are we
not, my ship? Aye, minus a leg, that's all. By heaven this dead wood
has the better of my live flesh every way. I can't compare with it;
and I've known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of
men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. What's that he
said? he should still go before me, my pilot; and yet to be seen
again? But where? Will I have eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing
I descend those endless stairs? and all night I've been sailing from
him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more thou toldist
direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot
fell short. Good bye, mast-head- keep a good eye upon the whale, the
while I'm gone. We'll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white
whale lies down there, tied by head and tail."
  He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered
through the cloven blue air to the deck.
  In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop's
stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to
the mate,- who held one of the tackle- ropes on deck- and bade him
pause.
  "Starbuck!"
  "Sir?"
  "For the third time my soul's ship starts upon this voyage,
Starbuck."
  "Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so."
  "Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are
missing, Starbuck!"
  "Truth, sir: saddest truth."
  "Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of
the flood;- and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested
comb, Starbuck. I am old;- shake hands with me, man."
  Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck's tears the glue.
  "Oh, my captain, my captain!- noble heart- go not- go not!- see,
it's a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion
then!"
  "Lower away!"-cried Ahab, tossing the mate's arm from him. "Stand by
for the crew!"
  In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.
  "The sharks! the sharks!" cried a voice from the low cabin-window
there; "O master, my master, come back!"
  But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then;
and the boat leaped on.
  Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship,
when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters
beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every
time they dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat
with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the
whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently
following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over
the banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the
first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White
Whale had been first descried; and whether it was that Ahab's crew
were all such tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh
more musky to the senses of the sharks- a matter sometimes well
known to affect them,- however it was, they seemed to follow that
one boat without molesting the others.
  "Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side,
and following with his eyes the receding boat- "canst thou yet ring
boldly to that sight?- lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and
followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical
third day?- For when three days flow together in one continuous
intense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the
noon, and the third the evening and the end of that thing- be that end
what it may. Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me, and
leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant,- fixed at the top of a
shudder! Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and
skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl; thou
fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes
grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but
clouds sweep between- Is my journey's end coming? My legs feel
faint; like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,- beat it
yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck!- stave it off- move, move! speak
aloud!- Mast-head there! See ye my boy's hand on the hill?- Crazed;-
aloft there!- keep thy keenest eye upon the boats:- mark well the
whale!- Ho! again!- drive off that hawk! see! he pecks- he tears the
vane"- pointing to the red flag flying at the main-truck- "Ha, he
soars away with it!- Where's the old man now? see'st thou that
sight, oh Ahab!- shudder, shudder!"
  The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the
mast-heads- a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had
sounded; but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on
his way a little sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew
maintaining the profoundest silence, as the head-bent waves hammered
and hammered against the opposing bow.
  "Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads
drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin
and no hearse can be mine:- and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!"
  Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles;
then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of
ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard;
a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled
with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot
lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping
veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then
fell swamping back into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the
waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly
sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed
like new milk round the marble trunk of the whale.
  "Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted
forward to the attack; but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that
corroded in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the
angels that fell from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons
overspreading his broad white forehead, beneath the transparent
skin, looked knitted together; as head on, he came churning his tail
among the boats; and once more flailed them apart; spilling out the
irons and lances from the two mates' boats, and dashing in one side of
the upper part of their bows, but leaving Ahab's almost without a
scar.
  While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks; and
as the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire
flank as he shot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up.
Lashed round and round to the fish's back; pinioned in the turns
upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the
involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the
Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended
eyes turned full upon old Ahab.
  The harpoon dropped from his hand.
  "Befooled, befooled!"- drawing in a long lean breath- "Aye,
Parsee! I see thee again.- Aye, and thou goest before; and this,
this then is the hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to
the last letter of thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away,
mates, to the ship! those boats are useless now; repair them if ye can
in time, and return to me; if not, Ahab is enough to die- Down, men!
the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in,
that thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs;
and so obey me.- Where's the whale? gone down again?"
  But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with
the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last
encounter had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was
now again steadily swimming forward; and had almost passed the
ship,- which thus far had been sailing in the contrary direction to
him, though for the present her headway had been stopped. He seemed
swimming with his utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing
his own straight path in the sea.
  "Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third
day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou,
that madly seekest him!"
  Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly
impelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab
was sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish
Starbuck's face as he leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn
the vessel about, and follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious
interval. Glancing upwards he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo,
eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were
rocking in the two staved boats which had just been hoisted to the
side, and were busily at work in repairing them. One after the
other, through the port-holes, as he sped, he also caught flying
glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among
bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all this; as he heard the
hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving a nail
into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking that the vane or
flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had
just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a
hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.
  Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the
resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether
it was some latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was
true, the White Whale's way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the
boat so rapidly nearing him once more; though indeed the whale's
last start had not been so long a one as before. And still as Ahab
glided over the waves the unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so
pertinaciously stuck to the boat; and so continually bit at the plying
oars, that the blades became jagged and crunched, and left small
splinters in the sea, at almost every dip.
  "Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull
on! 'tis the better rest, the sharks' jaw than the yielding water."
  "But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"
  "They will last long enough! pull on!- But who can tell"- he
muttered- "whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on
Ahab?- But pull on! Aye, all alive, now- we near him. The helm! take
the helm! let me pass,"- and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him
forward to the bows of the still flying boat.
  At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along
with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its
advance- as the whale sometimes will- and Ahab was fairly within the
smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout,
curled round his great Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to
him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted
to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse
into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as
if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sidewise writhed; spasmodically
rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole
in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for
the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would
once more have been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the
oarsmen- who foreknew not the precise instant of the dart, and were
therefore unprepared for its effects- these were flung out; but so
fell, that, in an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again,
and rising to its level on a combing wave, hurled themselves bodily
inboard again; the third man helplessly dropping astern, but still
afloat and swimming.
  Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,
instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the
weltering sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new
turns with the line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn
round on their seats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment
the treacherous line felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in
the empty air!
  "What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!- 'tis whole again; oars!
oars! Burst in upon him!"
  Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale
wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that
evolution, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship;
seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions;
bethinking it- it may be- a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he
bore down upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers
of foam.
  Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. "I grow blind; hands!
stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night?"
  "The whale! The ship!" cried the cringing oarsmen.
  "Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea that ere it be for
ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I
see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! will ye not save my ship?"
  But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the
sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks
burst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat
lay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew,
trying hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water.
  Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego's mast-head
hammer remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping
him as with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as
his own forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon
the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just
as soon as he.
  "The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers
of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a
woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say- ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is
this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long
fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady.
Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable
brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart.
My God, stand by me now!"
  "Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will
now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou
grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but
Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a
mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I
grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I
call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost.
For all that, I would yet ring glasses with thee, would ye but hand
the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty
of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and
jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over
salted death, though;- cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for
one red cherry ere we die!"
  "Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I
hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few
coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up."
  From the ship's bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive;
hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in
their hands, just as they had darted from their various employments;
all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to
side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of
overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed.
Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect,
and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of
his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers
reeled. Some fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the
heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through
the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a
flume.
  "The ship! The hearse!- the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the
boat; "its wood could only be American!"
  Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along
its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface
again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat,
where, for a time, he lay quiescent.
  "I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy
hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked
keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and
Pole-pointed prow,- death- glorious ship! must ye then perish, and
without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest
shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I
feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all
your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole
foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee
I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I
grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I
spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one
common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces,
while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale!
Thus, I give up the spear!"
  The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with
igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;- ran foul. Ahab
stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him
round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their
victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone.
Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of
the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea,
disappeared in its depths.
  For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned.
"The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim,
bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous
Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by
infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the
pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking look-outs on the sea.
And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its
crew, and each floating oar, and every lancepole, and spinning,
animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried
the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.
  But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the
sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the
erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the
flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the
destroying billows they almost touched;- at that instant, a red arm
and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act
of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A
sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from
its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding
Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad
fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously
feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his
death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven,
with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and
his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with
his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had
dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself
with it.
  Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen
white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the
great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years
ago.
EPILOGUE
  Epilogue

       "AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE"
                                            Job.
  The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?- Because
one did survive the wreck.

  It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he
whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that
bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day
the three men were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped
astern. So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full
sight of it, when the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I
was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached
it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and
ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of
that slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till,
gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now,
liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great
buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot
lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed
up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on
a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as
if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with
sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and
picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in
her retracing search after her missing children, only found another
orphan.

                              FINIS
.
