Public Domain Tales: Moby-Dick: Book Five

**Public Domain tales: Moby-Dick: Book Five** is the forty-third book in the Public Domain Tales series,

75. The Right Whale’s Head, Contrasted View
Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at 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 sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested, comb-like
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,
scimetar-shaped slats of whale-bone, 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
open-mouthed 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
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mouth;14F
15 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.”
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 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 in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm
Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.
15 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.
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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 Indiamen 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 crowbars. By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious
fact I drive at. But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as
ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of
distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provision in
him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head
altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out of the water;
considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelop; 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
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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 befel the weakling youth
lifting the dread goddess’s veil at Lais?
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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,15F
16 whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming the
cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward
end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of the
forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two almost equal parts,
which before were naturally divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance.
The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the
crossing and re-crossing, 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 the
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 line 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.
16 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.
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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.
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78. Cistern And Buckets
Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect posture, runs straight
out upon the overhanging main-yard-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 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
iron-bound 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 re-mounting 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
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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 boarding-sword in its hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering
over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to
the rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every ripple, as
moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some
hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.
“Ha! ha!” cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch overhead; and
looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight
strange to see, as an arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave.
“Both! both!—it is both!”—cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and soon after,
Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and with the other clutching the long
hair of the Indian. Drawn into the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but
Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.
Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the slowly
descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as
to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and
upwards, and so hauled out our poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first thrusting in
for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might
occasion great trouble;—he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had
wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old
way—head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be
expected.
And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or
rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most
untoward and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be
forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and
rowing.
I know that this queer adventure of the 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.
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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 fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the
secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily
be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio 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?
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79. The Praire
To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this Leviathan; this is a thing
which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would
seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to have 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 jolly-boat, 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 all 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, ears, 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 man, is Lavater’s mark of genius.
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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 as 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 if it you can.
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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 the 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 view of a moderately inclined plane
resting throughout on a level base. But in life—as we have elsewhere seen—this inclined
plane is angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the
junk and sperm. At the high end the skull forms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while
under the long floor of this crater—in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length
and as many in depth—reposes the mere handful of this 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 vertebræ to a strung
necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a
German conceit, that the vertebræ are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious external
resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once
pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebræ of which he
was inlaying, in a sort of basso-relievo, 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.
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As it passes through the remaining vertebræ the canal tapers in size, but for a considerable
distance remains of large capacity. Now, of course, this canal is filled with much the same
strangely fibrous substance—the spinal cord—as the brain; and directly communicates with
the brain. And what is still more, for many feet after emerging from the 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 vertebræ, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer
convex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should call this high hump the organ of
firmness or indomitableness in the Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable,
you will yet have reason to know.
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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
overgrowing him, seemed afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this
whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such
venerable leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed
their 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,
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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 I ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so
before? it must be, he’s lost his tiller.”
As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the 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 keel 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 villanous 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 quohogs for
supper, you know, my lads—baked clams and muffins—oh, 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.
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“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 Gay-head? 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
circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird has a voice, and
with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea,
was chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through
his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing
bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so
pitied.
Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod’s boats the advantage,
and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick chose to hazard what to him must have
seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the last chance would 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 sun-beam! 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 wheel-spokes 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!”
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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 boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue—the gunwales
of the bows were almost even with the water, while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And
the whale soon ceasing to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of
expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish. But though boats have been
taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this “holding on,” as it is called; this hooking up by
the sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan into
soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing,
it is to be doubted whether this course is always the best; for it is but reasonable to presume,
that the longer the stricken whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. Because,
owing to the enormous surface of him—in a full grown sperm whale something less than
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 fish-spears!
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 a great part
from the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a small
ice-field 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 lengths 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
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degree at least instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose
peculiarities it is, to have an entire nonvalvular structure of the 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 in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible 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 cutting into him with the spade, the entire length of a
corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch before
described. But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured
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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 timber-heads; 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
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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.
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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,” saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible
use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St.
George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great
monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin,
have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.
Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the creature encountered by
that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely represented of a 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,
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have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer
with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we are much better entitled
to St. 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 versâ; certainly they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the
prophet?
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order.
Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, we find the
headwaters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous
oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread 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?
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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.
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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.
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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 manœuvre with the
lance called pitchpoling. Small sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts nothing like
it. It is only indispensable with an inveterate running whale; its grand fact and feature is the
wonderful distance to which the long lance is accurately darted from a violently rocking,
jerking boat, under extreme headway. Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some ten
or twelve feet in length; the staff is much slighter than that of the harpoon, and also of a
lighter material—pine. It is furnished with a small rope called a warp, of considerable length,
by which it can be hauled back to the hand after darting.
But before going further, it is important to mention here, that though the harpoon may be
pitchpoled in the same way with the lance, yet it is seldom done; and when done, is still less
frequently successful, on account of the greater weight and inferior length of the harpoon as
compared with the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks. As a general thing,
therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play.
Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and equanimity in the
direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands
upright in the tossed bow of the flying boat; 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 warp in one hand, so as to
secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then holding the lance full
before his 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
lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the
whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.
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“That drove the spigot out of him!” cries Stubb. “’Tis July’s immortal Fourth; all fountains
must run wine to-day! 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.
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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 is it, too, that this
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necessity for the whale’s rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For not by
hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath
the sunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the
victory to thee!
In man, breathing is incessantly going on—one breath only serving for two or three
pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to attend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he
must, or die he will. But the Sperm Whale only breathes about 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�261
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.
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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.
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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 whaleboat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib
or a dashed plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the most serious result.
These submerged side blows are so often received in the fishery, that they are accounted mere
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 from 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 lie considerably below
the level of his back, they are then completely out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is
about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are tossed
erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they 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
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Philopater testified of the African elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the
most devout of all beings. For according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity
often hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the profoundest silence.
The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the elephant, so far as some
aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk of the other are concerned, should not tend to place
those two opposite organs on an equality, much less the creatures to which they respectively
belong. For as the mightiest elephant is but a terrier to Leviathan, so, compared with
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.16F
17
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.
17 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.
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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 Javan 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 has raced within his
fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but what’s in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the
whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred to foreign
wharves; the 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
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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, falls 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
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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 our 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 sails;—Malays, sir, and after us!”
As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should fairly have entered the
straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot pursuit, to make up for their 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 has been gnawing it, without being able to drag the firm thing from its place.
But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and when, after steadily
dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo
Point on the Sumatra side, emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the
harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining upon the ship,
than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained upon the Malays. But still driving on
in the wake of the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship
neared them; and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the boats. But no
sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the Sperm Whale, become
notified of the three keels that were after them,—though as yet a mile in their rear,—than
they rallied again, and forming in close ranks and battalions, so that their spouts all looked
like flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.
Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and after several hours’
pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase, when a general pausing commotion
among the whales gave animating token that they were now at last under the influence of that
strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive it in the whale,
they say he is gallied. The compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly
and steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout; and like King Porus’
elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with consternation. In
all directions expanding in vast irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither,
by their short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distraction of panic. This was still
more strangely evinced by those of their number, who, completely paralysed as it were,
helplessly floated like 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
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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 beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone
by the madness of men.
Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion, yet it is to be observed
that as a whole the herd neither advanced 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 our faces, and then running away with us
like light, steered straight for the heart of the herd. Though such a movement on the part of
the whale struck under such circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented; and indeed is almost
always more or less anticipated; yet does it present one of the more perilous vicissitudes of
the fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into the frantic shoal, you
bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a delirious throb.
As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of speed to rid himself of
the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides
menaced as we flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was
like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer through their complicated
channels and straits, knowing not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed.
But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering off from this monster
directly across our route in advance; now edging away from that, whose colossal flukes were
suspended overhead, while all the time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand,
pricking out of our way whatever whales he could reach by short darts, for there was no time
to make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted duty was now
altogether dispensed with. They chiefly attended to the shouting part of the business. “Out of
the way, Commodore!” cried one, to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the
surface, and for an instant threatened to swamp us. “Hard down with your tail, there!” cried a
second to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly cooling himself with his own
fan-like extremity.
All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented by the Nantucket
Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares of wood of equal size are stoutly clenched together,
so that they cross each 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 drugg comes into requisition.
Our boat was furnished with three of them. The first and second were successfully darted,
and we saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance
of the towing drugg. They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball. But upon
flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard the clumsy wooden block, it caught under
one of the seats of the boat, and in an instant tore it out and carried it away, dropping the
oarsman in the 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
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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 snuffling round us, right up to
our gunwales, and touching them; till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly
domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched their backs with his
lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the time refrained from darting it.
But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met
our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms
of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly
to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly
transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the
breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal
nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so did the
young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of
Gulf-weed 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.
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“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.17F
18
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these
inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments;
yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of
my being, do I myself still 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
18 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.
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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 waifed. The waif is a pennoned pole,
two or three of which are carried by every boat; and which, when additional game is at hand,
are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale, both to mark its place 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.
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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 en bon point.
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 unwarrantably pert
young Leviathan coming that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies,
with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away! High times, indeed,
if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic
bliss; though do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his
bed; for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible
duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly
battle, and all for love. They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them
together, and so striving for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers.
Not a few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters,—furrowed heads, broken
teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated mouths.
But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at the first rush of the
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 fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these
Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the
sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must take care of
themselves; at least, with only the maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous roving
lovers that might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for
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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 female whales 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.
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89. Fast-Fish And Loose-Fish
The allusion to the waifs and 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 farthing, 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 recognised symbol of
possession; so long as the party waifing it plainly evince their ability at any time to take it
alongside, as well as their intention so to do.
These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen themselves
sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks—the 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
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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 as
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 of each other.
These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the very learned judge in set
terms decided, to wit,—That as for the boat, he awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had
merely abandoned it to save their lives; but that with regard to the controverted whale,
harpoons, and line, they belonged to the defendants; the whale, because it was a 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 door-plate for a
waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker,
gets from 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 £100,000 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.
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What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard
by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What
Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United
States? All 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?
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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
£150 from the precious oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and
good ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares; up steps a very
learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his
arm; and laying it upon the 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?”
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“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, an honest
clergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to take the
case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To which my Lord Duke in
substance replied (both letters were published) that he had already done so, and received the
money, and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend
gentleman) would decline meddling with other 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-pinmoney, 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.
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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 know 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,
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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, aint 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 Guernsey-man, 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.”
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“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 jib-booms. 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 quite 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.”
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“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 as 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 handfuls
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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.
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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’ trousers 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 grave-yard, for the
foundations of a Lying-in Hospital.
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I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the
existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called
Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von
Slack, in his great work on Smells, a textbook on that subject. As its name imports (smeer,
fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the
Dutch 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 from a
South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling
her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in
the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, if but
decently treated, whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill 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 jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led
out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?
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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 ship-keepers, whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are
pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ship-keepers 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;
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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 wont 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
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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
jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely,
though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped
primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the 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.
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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 this 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, woven almost within
the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe
grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,—literally and truly, like the
smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I
forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my
heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue
in allaying the heat of anger: while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or
petulence, 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
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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-gaff-man 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.
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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!18F
19
19 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.
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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 main-mast, 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 punch-bowls. 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 that 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 carcase; sail had been
made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was
licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and
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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!
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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 grave-yards, 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.
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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 try-works, 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.
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98. Stowing Down And Clearing Up
Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off descried 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 as 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 ley is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the
whale remains clinging to the side, that ley quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along
the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The soot
is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous implements which have been in use are
likewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the
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 hangings
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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 the 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!
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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 left it last. 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;
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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, ’tis fit that man should live in pains and die in
pangs! So be it, then! Here’s stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.”
“No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil’s claws must 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 rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the
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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 Water-bearer, 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 back country. And by Jove, he’s found something there in the
vicinity of his thigh—I guess it’s Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he 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.”
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“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 on fire to unscrew it. But,
unscrew your navel, and what’s the consequence? Then again, if it stays here, that is ugly,
too, for when aught’s nailed to the mast it’s a sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha! old
Ahab! the White Whale; he’ll nail ye! This is a 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!”
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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-boat, 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, good-natured, 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 this 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 fold 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 forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had
never once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by an
ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to
be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a 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 hope to attain.
It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward circumstance that befel 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
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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 starboard 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
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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 woollen frock or shirt, and
patched trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between a marlingspike he held
in one hand, and a 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 here; he knows.”
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“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 bye-play 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 ye, 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 saw’st 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.
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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.
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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 that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic:
not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were the first among
mankind to harpoon with 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 Enderbys, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to the present day; though
doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable for the great South Sea of
the other world.
The ship named after him was worthy of the 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 bye we scrambled down, so sober,
that we had to pass the flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle
scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it to my taste.
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The beef was fine—tough, but with body in it. They said it was bull-beef; 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. Pott’s, 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. Texel & Leyden cheese.
144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article).
550 ankers of Geneva.
10,800 barrels of beer.
309
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, etc., 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 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 550 ankers of
gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might fancy them to
have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a 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.
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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 behoves me now to unbutton him
still further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose
the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his
ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton.
But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know
aught about the subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your
capstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up
a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can you land a 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 that 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 Tranquo, 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 vertù, had brought together in Pupella whatever rare things the
more ingenious of his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices,
chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes; and all these distributed
among whatever natural wonders, the 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 fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun, then the
skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms
now sheltered it.
The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebræ were carved with Arsacidean annals, in
strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so
that the mystic head again sent forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the
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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 freshet-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 villanies 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 cunning weaver;
himself all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but
himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful
Life, and begat him 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 vertù. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the
priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced before this
skeleton—brushed the vines aside—broke through the ribs—and with a ball of Arsacidean
twine, wandered, eddied long amid its many winding, shaded collonades and arbors. But soon
my line was out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I saw no
living thing within; naught was there but bones.
Cutting me a green 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 measurement I please. Because there are skeleton
authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell
me, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where they have some fine
specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise, I have heard that in the museum of
Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call “the only perfect
specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in the United States.” Moreover, at a place in
Yorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable has in his
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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.
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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 back�bone. 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 foot�path 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,
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and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered joints; and in place
of the weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank!
How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright
this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this
peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his
angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and
livingly found out.
But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a crane, to pile its bones high
up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now it’s done, it looks much like Pompey’s Pillar.
There are forty and odd vertebræ in all, which in the skeleton are not locked together. They
mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy
masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in width something less than three feet, and in depth
more than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in
width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller
ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the 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.
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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 measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic involutions of his
intestines, where they lie in him like great cables and hausers coiled away in the subterranean
orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship.
Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behoves me to approve myself
omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his
blood, and spinning him out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described
him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify
him in an archæological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other
creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed
unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to
stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that
whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have
invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose;
because that famous 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 out-reaching 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 ranks 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
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disinterred in the Rue Dauphiné in Paris, a short street opening almost directly upon the
palace of the Tuileries; and bones disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in
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 vertebræ,
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 school-boy. 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, abounding in
centaurs, griffins, and dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the
moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was there swimming in that
planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled.
Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity of the whale, in his own
osseous post-diluvian 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
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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.
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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 whales yet exhumed, by far the largest is the Alabama one mentioned
in the last chapter, and that was less than seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we
have already seen, that the 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 Lacépède, the French naturalist, in his elaborate
history of whales, in the very beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at
one hundred metres, three hundred and 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 whale-ships, 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
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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
life-time—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 Whale 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
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he tells us that at one hunting the King of Siam took 4000 elephants; that in those regions
elephants are numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes. And there seems no
reason to doubt that if these elephants, which have now been hunted for thousands of years,
by Semiramis, by Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East—if they
still survive there in great numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all hunting, since
he has a pasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as large as all Asia, both Americas,
Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea combined.
Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity of whales, their
probably attaining the age of a century and more, therefore at any one period of time, several
distinct adult generations must be contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain some
idea of, by imagining all the 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.
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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 a former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see,
that as the most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the
sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events do
naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and
posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this:
that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some natural enjoyments
here shall have no children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be
followed by the 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 heart-woes, 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 soft-cymballing, 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
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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.
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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-handed, 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 land-bird 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
oarsman 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
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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 a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was
a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the
muscles of his fingers. He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in
parvo, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior—though a little swelled—of a common
pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of various sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork�screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers, nail-filers, counter-sinkers. 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.
325
108. Ahab And The Carpenter
THE DECK—FIRST NIGHT WATCH
(Carpenter standing before his 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 soft which should
be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and shinbones. 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 ferule 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 shinbone—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, now, I must call his old Mogulship, and see
whether the length will be all right; too short, if anything, I guess. Ha! that’s the heel; we are
in luck; here he comes, or it’s somebody else, that’s certain.
AHAB (advancing).
(During the ensuing scene, the carpenter continues sneezing at times).
Well, manmaker!
Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length. Let me measure, sir.
Measured for a leg! good. Well, it’s not the first time. About it! There; keep thy finger on it.
This is a cogent vice thou hast here, carpenter; let me feel its grip once. So, so; it does pinch
some.
Oh, sir, it will break bones—beware, beware!
No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this slippery world that can hold, man.
What’s Prometheus about there?—the blacksmith, I mean—what’s he about?
He must be forging the 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 this 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?
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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 to know? Shall I
keep standing here? (aside).
’Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here’s one. No, no, no; I must have a
lantern.
Ho, ho! That’s it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my turn.
What art thou thrusting that 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; so;—yes, yes—oh dear!
Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good workmanlike workman, eh!
Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou
makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that is,
carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive that old
Adam away?
Truly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard something curious on that
score, sir; how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will
be still pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?
It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once was; so, now, here is only
one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly
there, there to a hair, do I. Is’t a riddle?
I should humbly call it a poser, sir.
Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may not be invisibly
and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now standest; 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 mayest 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 this leg is done?
327
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
Prætorians 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 his work).
Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb always says he’s queer; says
nothing but that one sufficient little word queer; he’s queer, says Stubb; he’s queer—queer,
queer; and keeps dinning it into Mr. Starbuck all the time—queer, sir—queer, queer, very
queer. And here’s his leg! Yes, now that I think of it, here’s his bedfellow! has a stick of
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 waters 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!
328
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.19F
20
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
gale? Starbuck! I’ll not have the Burtons hoisted.”
“What will the owners say, sir?”
“Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What cares Ahab?
Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if
the owners were my conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its
commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this 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.”
20 In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it is a regular semi-weekly 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.
329
“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.
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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 hoops, were hoisted out,
till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if
you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an 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.
331
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 same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased
him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior,
stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes;
for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons,
their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white
breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his
hammock, according to the usual 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 bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his
breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over
him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin
with little but his composed countenance in view. “Rarmai” (it will do; it is easy), he
murmured at last, and signed to be replaced in his hammock.
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But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all this while, drew nigh to
him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took him by the hand; in the other, holding his
tambourine.
“Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? Where go ye now? But if the
currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the beaches are only beat with 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 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
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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!”
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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
seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod
over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these 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 Californian towns, but
yesterday planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of
Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between float 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!”
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112. The Blacksmith
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, pike-heads, 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 petulence 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.
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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. Come 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 sun-rise, and by fall of eve, the
blacksmith’s soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth went a-whaling.
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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 woful 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
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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, with regular, gasping hems, he hammered on
the anvil, Perth passing to him the glowing rods, one 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 half way along the pole’s length, and firmly secured
so, with intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope—like the Three Fates—
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remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his
ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere
he entered his cabin, a light, unnatural, 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!
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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 earthy life,—in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in
new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life
immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling
threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm.
There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed
gradations, and at the last one pause:—through 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:—
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“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye!—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 scales, leaped up in that same golden light:—
“I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that he has always been
jolly!”
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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’ staterooms. 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 centrepiece. In the forecastle, the sailors had actually caulked and pitched their
chests, and filled them; it was humorously added, that the cook had clapped a head on his
largest boiler, and filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare 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 ornamented
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 Bastile, 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
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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 are 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 sayest; 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 homeward�bound 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.
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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!”
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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.
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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 obervation 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 immeasureable
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 sea-mark! 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 dead�reckoning, 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
347
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 it!”
348
119. The Candles
Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of
ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba
knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent
Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes
burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
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
masts fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the tempest had left for its
after sport.
Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the 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 tetering 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?”
349
“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
teter 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.
350
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 far away 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 mainmast, 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 main-mast links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and
let mine beat against it; blood against fire! So.”
Then turning—the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot upon the Parsee; and with
fixed upward eye, and 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 its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified
impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe’er I came;
wheresoe’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.”
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[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 eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain
seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I
talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out
of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the
flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now do I 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! ’tis
an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and
make a fair wind of it 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.
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120. The Deck Towards 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-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.—By masts and keels! he takes me for the hunch�backed 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!”
353
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 off from the crown of
the anchor here, though, so I can pass the rope; now listen. What’s the mighty difference
between holding a 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.”
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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!”
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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 shuttle-cock 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 any one
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-he-yo, cheerly,
men!” the crew singing for joy, that so promising an event should so soon have falsified the
evil portents preceding it.
In compliance with the standing order of his commander—to report immediately, and at any
one of the 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,—than 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 stock; let me touch it—lift it. Strange, that I, who have
handled so many deadly lances, strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded? I must see.
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
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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.”
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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 tetering 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. In instances where the lightning has actually struck
the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has
at times been still more fatal; all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before
magnetic steel was of no more use than an old 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.
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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 feign have wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab is lord over the level load-stone
yet. Mr. Starbuck—a lance without a 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 the 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.
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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 rate of progression every hour. It had been thus with the
Pequod. The wooden reel and angular log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the
railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it; the 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. Or, 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.
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“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 whale-boat. 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! 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 of 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.”
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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 transfixedly 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 wail.
But this only the more affected some of them, because most mariners cherish a very
superstitious feeling about seals, arising not only from their peculiar tones when in distress,
but also from the human look of their round heads and 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 the 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 foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as
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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 wont put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with that
coffin? And now I’m ordered to make a 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 it
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 the 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,
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there’ll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath
the sun! Come hammer, calking-iron, pitch-pot, and marling-spike! Let’s to it.”
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127. The Deck
The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open hatchway; the
Carpenter calking 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, inter-meddling, 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 calking
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.”
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“He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot latitudes. I’ve heard that
the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems
to me some sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He’s always under the
Line—fiery hot, I tell ye! He’s looking this way—come, oakum; quick. Here we go again.
This wooden mallet is the cork, and I’m the professor of musical glasses—tap, tap!”
(Ahab to himself.)
“There’s a sight! There’s sound! The greyheaded woodpecker 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 conduits from the
unknown worlds must empty into thee!”
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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 blue water, not very far to leeward;
whereupon, the fourth rigged boat—a reserved one—had been instantly lowered in chase.
After a keen sail before the wind, this fourth boat—the swiftest keeled of all—seemed to
have succeeded in fastening—at least, as well as the man at the 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 day light; 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
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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 boat’s 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 whale-ship 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 round; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat
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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, woful 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.
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129. The Cabin
(Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow.)
“Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is coming when Ahab would
not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee by him. There is that in thee, poor lad,
which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes
my most desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall serve thee, as if thou
wert the captain. 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 here I’ll
stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they bulge through; and oysters come to join me.”
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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 ocean-fold, 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 eyes did plainly say—We
two watchmen never rest.
Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step up 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
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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 mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the
Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.
And yet, somehow, did Ahab—in his own proper self, as daily, hourly, and every instant,
commandingly revealed to his subordinates,—Ahab seemed an independent lord; the Parsee
but his slave. Still again both seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the
lean shade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and keel was solid
Ahab.
At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard from aft—“Man the
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 main-mast head, he received the two
ends of the downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared a pin for the
other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This done, with that end yet in his hand and standing
beside the pin, he looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his
glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then settling his
firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,—“Take the rope, sir—I give it into thy hands,
Starbuck.” Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word for them to hoist him to
his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope at last; and 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
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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.
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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 will ever do that,” answered the other, sadly glancing
upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors were
busy in sewing together.
“Not forged!” and snatching 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!”
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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—
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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
hearth-stone! 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 cozzening, hidden lord and
master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and
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longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is
Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself;
but is as an 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 air 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 swaths—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.
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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!
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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 his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was
distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a
revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the
slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft 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 fowl 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 may’st have bejuggled and destroyed before.
And thus, through the serene tranquillities 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.
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“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 side-long 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 strategem,
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 it 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
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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.20F
21 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.
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 eyed
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.
21 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.
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“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 stun-sails, 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 poltroon. 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!”
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The day was nearly done; only the hem 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 stun-sails, 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.
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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 windbound 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 cannon-ball, 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.
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“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 water-gate 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 discharges of rifles. The triumphant halloo of thirty
buckskin lungs was heard, as—much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet,
less than a mile ahead—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 immeasureable 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!”
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Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like shooting stars, slid to the
deck, by the isolated back-stays and halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was
dropped from his perch.
“Lower away,” he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat—a spare one, rigged the
afternoon previous. “Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine—keep away from the boats, but keep
near them. Lower, all!”
As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first assailant himself, 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 irons darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate
plank of which those boats were made. But skilfully manœuvred, 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 downwards—and Ahab and his men
struggled out from under it, like seals from a seaside cave.
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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; “I 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——”
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“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,—blistered fool;
this hand did dart it!—’tis in the fish!—Aloft there! keep him nailed—quick!—all hands to
the rigging of the boats—collect the oars—harpooneers! the irons, the irons!—hoist the
royals higher—a pull on all the sheets!—helm there! steady, steady for your life! I’ll ten
times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I’ll slay him yet!”
“Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck; “never, never wilt thou
capture him, old man—In Jesus’ name no more of this, that’s worse than 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 me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump;
leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. ’Tis Ahab—his 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, ye’ll 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
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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.
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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 oversailed 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.
390
“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 told’st direful truth
as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good by, 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.”
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“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 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,—beats 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? sees’t 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-beat 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!”
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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 but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in
repairing them. One after the other, through the portholes, as he sped, he also caught flying
glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and
lances. As he saw all this; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers
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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 shark’s 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 sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow,
and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the
elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed
into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen—who foreknew not the precise instant of the
dart, and were therefore unprepared for its effects—these were flung out; but so fell, that, in
an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a combing wave,
hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man helplessly dropping astern, but still
afloat and swimming.
Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, instantaneous swiftness, the
White Whale darted through the weltering sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to
take new turns with the line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on their
seats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment the treacherous line felt that double strain
and tug, it snapped in the empty air!
“What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!—’tis whole again; oars! oars! Burst in upon him!”
Hearing the tremendous rush of the 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.
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“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 ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh,
oh! thou grinning whale, but there’ll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For
me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted
death, though;—cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die!”
“Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother’s
drawn my 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,
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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 groove;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn
caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was
shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy 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 lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat
itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, 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.
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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 the rocking boat, was dropped
astern. So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the half�spent 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
dirge-like 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.
THE END