Title: Moby-Dick or The Whale
Author: Melville, Herman
Language: English
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Moby-Dick

or,

THE WHALE.

by Herman Melville



Etymology


(Supplied by a late consumptive usher to a grammar school.)

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



Extracts (supplied by a sub-sub-librarian.)


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

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



CHAPTER I. LOOMINGS


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom
and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,
I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and
respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint
a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may
order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the
satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is
one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or
metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades,
and be content.

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

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

Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael.
Bloody Battle in Affghanistan.


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

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

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



CHAPTER II. THE CARPET-BAG


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER III. THE SPOUTER-INN


Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,
low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of
the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large
oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the
unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent
study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of
the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its
purpose. such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first
you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New
England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint
of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the
entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however
wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. But what most puzzled and
confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something
hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim,
perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy,
squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet
was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity
about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an
oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant.
Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you
through.—It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It's the unnatural
combat of the four primal elements.—It's a blasted heath.—It's a
Hyperborean winter scene.—It's the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream
of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous
something in the picture's midst. That once found out, and all the rest
were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a
gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself? In fact, the artist's
design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the
aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the
subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the
half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts
alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over
the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three
mast-heads. The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a
heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set
with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with
knots of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle
sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a
long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what
monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting
with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty
old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were
storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty
years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a
sunset. And that harpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was flung in Javan
seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterward slain off the Cape
of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a
restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty
feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump. Crossing this dusky
entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut through what in old times
must have been a great central chimney with fire-places all round—you
enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low
ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you
would almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of
such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so
furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered with
cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide
world's remotest nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room
stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale's
head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the
whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. within are
shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and
in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which
name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who,
for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death.
Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true
cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses
deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians
rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to
this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so
on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for
a shilling. Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen
gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of
skrimshander. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be
accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was
full—not a bed unoccupied. But avast, he added, tapping his forehead,
you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye? I
s'pose you are goin' a whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort
of thing.

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should
ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that
if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the
harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander
further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with
the half of any decent man's blanket. I thought so. All right; take a
seat. Supper?—you want supper? Supper 'll be ready directly. I sat down
on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery.
At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his
jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space
between his legs. he was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but
he didn't make much headway, I thought. At last some four or five of us
were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as
Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing
but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to
button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea
with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial
kind—not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings
for supper! One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to
these dumplings in a most direful manner. My boy, said the landlord,
you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty. Landlord, I whispered,
that aint the harpooneer, is it? Oh, no, said he, looking a sort of
diabolically funny, the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He
never eats dumplings, he don't—he eats nothing but steaks, and likes
'em rare. The devil he does, says I. Where is that harpooneer? Is he
here? He'll be here afore long, was the answer. I could not help it,
but I began to feel suspicious of this dark complexioned harpooneer. At
any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should
sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not
what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the
evening as a looker on. Presently a rioting noise was heard without.
Starting up, the landlord cried, That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her
reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full
ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees. A
tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open,
and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy
watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all
bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed
an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their
boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that
they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth—the bar—when the
wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out
brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon
which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he
swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never
mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador,
or on the weather side of an ice-island. The liquor soon mounted into
their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly
landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously. I
observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he
seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own
sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise
as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had
ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a
sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will
here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet
in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have
seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt,
making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep
shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to
give him much joy. His voice at once announced

that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must
be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleganian Ridge in
Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height,
this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he
became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed
by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favorite
with them, they raised a cry of Bulkington! Bulkington! where's
Bulkington? and darted out of the house in pursuit of him. It was now
about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet
after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan
that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen. No
man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal
rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but
people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to
sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town,
and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely
multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should
sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep
two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all
sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and
cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin. The
more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought
of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer,
his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the
tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.
Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home
and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at
midnight—how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?
Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I shan't sleep
with him. I'll try the bench here. just as you please; i'm sorry i cant
spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board
here—feeling of the knots and notches. But wait a bit, Skrimshander;
I've

got a carpenter's plane there in the bar—wait, I say, and I'll make ye
snug enough. So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk
handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at
my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and
left; till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible
knot. The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for
heaven's sake to quit—the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not
know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine
plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing
them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his
business, and left me in a brown study. I now took the measure of the
bench, and found that it was a foot too short; but that could be mended
with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench in the
room was about four inches higher than the planed one—so there was no
yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only
clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my
back to settle down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught
of cold air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan
would never do at all, especially as another current from the rickety
door met the one from the window, and both together formed a series of
small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had
thought to spend the night. The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I,
but stop, couldn't I steal a march on him—bolt his door inside, and
jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent knockings? it
seemed no bad idea; but upon second thoughts I dismissed it. For who
could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the
room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock
me down! Still, looking around me again, and seeing no possible chance
of spending a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I
began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable
prejudices against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile;
he must be dropping in before long. I'll have a good look at him then,
and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all—there's no
telling.

But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes,
and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer. Landlord! said I, what
sort of a chap is he—does he always keep such late hours? It was now
hard upon twelve o'clock. The landlord chuckled again with his lean
chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my
comprehension. No, he answered, generally he's an early bird—airley to
bed and airley to rise—yes, he's the bird what catches the worm.—But
to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth
keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head. Can't sell
his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?
getting into a towering rage.

Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually
engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in
peddling his head around this town? That's precisely it, said the
landlord, and I told him he couldn't sell it here, the market's
overstocked. With what? shouted I.

With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world? I tell
you what it is, landlord, said I, quite calmly, you'd better stop
spinning that yarn to me—I'm not green. May be not, taking out a stick
and whittling a toothpick, but I rayther guess you'll be done brown if
that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin' his head. I'll break it for
him, said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable
farrago of the landlord's. It's broke a'ready, said he. Broke, said
I—broke, do you mean? Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell
it, I guess.

Landlord, said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow
storm,—landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another,
and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you
tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to
a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet
seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating
stories, tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the
man whom

you design for my bedfellow—a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an
intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of
you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and
whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him.
And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story
about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that
this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a
madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to
induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a
criminal prosecution. Wall, said the landlord, fetching a long breath,
that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then.
But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of
has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of
'balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all
on 'em but one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause
to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about
the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday,
but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads
strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions. This
account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that
the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me—but at the same
time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out a Saturday night
clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as
selling the heads of dead idolators? Depend upon it, landlord, that
harpooneer is a dangerous man. He pays reg'lar, was the rejoinder.

But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning
flukes—it's a nice bed: Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we
were spliced. There's plenty room for two to kick about in that bed;
it's an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to
put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming
and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the
floor, and came near breaking his arm. After

that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I'll give ye a glim in
a jiffy; and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me,
offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a
clock in the corner, he exclaimed I vum it's Sunday—you won't see that
harpooneer to-night; he's come to anchor somewhere—come along then; do
come; won't ye come? I considered the matter a moment, and then up
stairs we went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam,
and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed, almost big enough
indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep abreast. There, said the
landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did double
duty as a wash-stand and centre table; there, make yourself comfortable
now, and good night to ye. I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he
had disappeared. Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed.
Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably
well. I then glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and
centre table, could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but
a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a
man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room,
there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner;
also a large seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no
doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of
outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall
harpoon standing at the head of the bed. But what is this on the chest?
I took it up, and held it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt
it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory
conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large door
mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like
the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole
or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South
American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer
would get into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town
in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down
like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a
little damp, as though this

mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in
it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a
sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave
myself a kink in the neck. I sat down on the side of the bed, and
commenced thinking about this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door
mat. After thinking some time on the bed-side, I got up and took off my
monkey jacket, and then stood in the middle of the room thinking. I
then took off my coat, and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves.
But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, and
remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer's not coming
home at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but
jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light
tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven. Whether
that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is
no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a
long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly
made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy
footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room
from under the door. Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the
harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and
resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand,
and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered
the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good
way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began working away
at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the
room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for
some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This
accomplished, however, he turned round—when, good heavens! what a
sight! Such a face! It was of a dark purplish, yellow color, here and
there stuck over with large, blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just
as I thought, he's a terrible bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got
dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that
moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I plainly
saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all,

those black squares on his cheeks. they were stains of some sort or
other. At first I knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of
the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man—a
whaleman too—who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by
them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant
voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it,
thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any
sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that
part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of
the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good
coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a
white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the
South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary
effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through
me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after
some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and
presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with
the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room,
he then took the New Zealand head—a ghastly thing enough—and crammed it
down into the bag. He now took off his hat—a new beaver hat—when I came
nigh singing out with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his
head—none to speak of at least—nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted
up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world
like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between me and the
door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a
dinner. Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the
window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to
make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my
comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely
nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, i confess i was now as
much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken
into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that
I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a
satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed
his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were
checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all
over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years'
War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still
more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs
were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that
he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman
in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to
think of it. A peddler of heads too—perhaps the heads of his own
brothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens! look at that tomahawk!
But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about
something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me
that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall,
or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in
the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image
with a hunch on its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old
Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought
that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar
manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened
a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing
but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage
goes up to the empty fireplace, and removing the papered fire-board,
sets up this little hunchbacked image, like a tenpin, between the
andirons. the chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty,
so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine
or chapel for his Congo idol. I now screwed my eyes hard towards the
half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime—to see what was
next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out
of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then
laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from the
lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently,
after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier

withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them
badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing
off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the
little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort
of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were
accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who
seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody
or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural
manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very
unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly
as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock. All these queer
proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now
exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and
jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never,
before the light was put out, to break the spell into which I had so
long been bound. But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say,
was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the
head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his
mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The
next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal,
tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I
could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he
began feeling me. Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled
away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or
whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the
lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but
ill comprehended my meaning. Who-e debel you?—he at last said—you no
speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e. And so saying the lighted tomahawk began
flourishing about me in the dark. Landlord, for God's sake, Peter
Coffin! shouted I. Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me! Speak-e!
tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e! again growled the cannibal,
while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco
ashes about me till I thought

my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the
landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I
ran up to him.

Don't be afraid now, said he, grinning again. Queequeg here wouldn't
harm a hair of your head. Stop your grinning, shouted I, and why didn't
you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal? I thought ye
know'd it;—didn't I tell ye, he was peddlin' heads around town?—but
turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here—you sabbee me, I
sabbee you—this man sleepe you—you sabbee? Me sabbee plenty—grunted
Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in bed. You gettee
in, he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the
clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a
really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For
all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking
cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought i to
myself—the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason
to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober
cannibal than a drunken Christian. Landlord, said I, tell him to stash
his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop
smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy
having a man smoking in bed with me. It's dangerous. Besides, I aint
insured. This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again
politely motioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much
as to say—I wont touch a leg of ye. Good night, landlord, said I, you
may go. I turned in, and never slept better in my life.



CHAPTER IV. THE COUNTERPANE


Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown
over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost
thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of
odd little parti-colored squares and triangles; and this arm of his
tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no
two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his
keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt
sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I
say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork
quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I
could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues
together; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I
could tell that Queequeg was hugging me. My sensations were strange.
Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, I well remember a
somewhat similar circumstance that befell me; whether it was a reality
or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I
had been cutting up some caper or other—I think it was trying to crawl
up the chimney, as i had seen a little sweep do a few days previous;
and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me,
or sending me to bed supperless,—my mother dragged me by the legs out
of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock
in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our
hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it, so up
stairs I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as
slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got
between the sheets. I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen
entire hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection.
Sixteen hours in

bed! the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light
too; the sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches
in the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt
worse and worse—at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my
stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at
her feet, beseeching her as a particular favor to give me a good
slippering for my misbehavior; anything indeed but condemning me to lie
abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most
conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For
several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than
I have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes.
At last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and
slowly waking from it—half steeped in dreams—I opened my eyes, and the
before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt
a shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and
nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine.
My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable,
silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely
seated by my bedside. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there,
frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet
ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid
spell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided
away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it
all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in
confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I
often puzzle myself with it. Now, take away the awful fear, and my
sensations at feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar,
in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking up and
seeing Queequeg's pagan arm thrown round me. But at length all the past
night's events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then
I lay only alive to the comical predicament. For though I tried to move
his arm—unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still
hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain. I
now strove to rouse him— Queequeg!—but his only answer was a snore. I
then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and
suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there
lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a
hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a
strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk!
Queequeg!—in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake! At length, by dint
of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the
unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of
style,

I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm,
shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and
sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his
eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be there,
though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly
dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no
serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a
creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made up touching the character
of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he
jumped out upon the floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to
understand that, if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave
me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks
I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very civilized
overture; but, the truth is, these savages have an innate sense of
delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous how essentially polite
they are. I pay this particular compliment to Queequeg, because he
treated me with so much civility and consideration, while I was guilty
of great rudeness; staring at him from the bed, and watching all his
toilette motions; for the time my curiosity getting the better of my
breeding. Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don't see every day, he
and his ways were well worth unusual regarding. He commenced dressing
at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one, by the by, and
then—still minus his trowsers—he hunted up his boots. What under the
heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next movement was to
crush himself—boots in hand, and hat on—under the bed; when, from
sundry violent

gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was hard at work booting
himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever heard of, is any man
required to be private when putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you
see, was a creature in the transition state—neither caterpillar nor
butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness
in the strangest possible manner. his education was not yet completed.
He was an undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilized,
he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but
then, if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of
getting under the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his hat
very much dented and crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking and
limping about the room, as if, not being much accustomed to boots, his
pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones—probably not made to order
either—rather pinched and tormented him at the first go off of a bitter
cold morning. Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window,
and that the street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a
plain view into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous
figure that Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat
and boots on; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet
somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as
possible. He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time
in the morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg,
to my amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to
his chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up
a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre-table, dipped it into
water and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he
kept his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed
corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it
a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the
wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.
Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best cutlery with a
vengeance. Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came
to know of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how
exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept.

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



CHAPTER V. BREAKFAST


I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the
grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him,
though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my
bedfellow. However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too
scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his
own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not
be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent
in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about
him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for. The
bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the
night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were
nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates,
and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and
harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky
beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning
gowns. You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore.
This young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue,
and would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days
landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades
lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the
complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly
bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who
could show a cheek like

Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes'
western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone
by zone.

Grub, ho! now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went
to breakfast. They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become
quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always,
though: Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the
Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the
parlor. But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by
dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty
stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor
Mungo's performances—this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very
best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part,
that sort of thing is to be had anywhere. These reflections just here
are occasioned by the circumstance that after we were all seated at the
table, and I was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to
my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence.
And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of
sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded
great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them
dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast
table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as
sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of
some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these
bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen! But as for Queequeg—why,
Queequeg sat there among them—at the head of the table, too, it so
chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his
breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his
bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there
without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent
jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But
that was certainly very coolly done by him, and every

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



CHAPTER VI. THE STREET


If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish
an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a
civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first
daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford. In thoroughfares
nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer to view
the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway
and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the
affrighted ladies. Regent street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays;
and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the
natives. But New Bedford beats all Water street and Wapping. In these
last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual
cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of
whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare.
But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatabooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians,
and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft
which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still
more curious, certainly more comical.

There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New
Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are
mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and
now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green
as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think
them but a few hours old. Look there! that chap strutting round the
corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a
sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou'-wester and
a bombazine cloak. No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred
one—I mean a downright bumpkin dandy—a fellow that, in the dog-days,
will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his
hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to
make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you
should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In
bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats;
straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will
burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven,
straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest. But think not
that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to
show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had
it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps
have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it is,
parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they look so
bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all
New England. It is a land of oil, true enough; but not like Canaan; a
land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with milk; nor in
the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of
this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses;
parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they?
how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country? Go and gaze
upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and
your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery
gardens came from the

Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned
and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander
perform a feat like that? In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give
whales for dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with
a few porpoises a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant
wedding; for, they say, they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and
every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles. In
summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples—long avenues
of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and
bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their
tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art;
which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright
terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at
creation's final day. And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like
their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine
carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh
heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in
Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their
sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were
drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.



CHAPTER VII. THE CHAPEL


In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are
the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who
fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.
Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
special errand. The sky had changed from clear,

sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy
jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the
stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of
sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only
broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper
seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief
were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and
there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing
several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on
either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following,
but I do not pretend to quote:—Sacred To the Memory of John Talbot,
Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of
Desolation, off Patagonia, November 1st, . This Tablet Is erected to
his Memory By his Sister. Sacred To the Memory of Robert Long, Willis
Ellery, Nathan Coleman, Walter Canny, Seth Macy, and Samuel Gleig,
Forming one of the boats' crews of the Ship Eliza, Who were towed out
of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the Pacific, December
31st, . This Marble Is here placed by their surviving Shipmates.

Sacred To the Memory of The late Captain Ezekiel Hardy, Who in the bows
of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, August
3d, This Tablet Is erected to his Memory by His Widow. Shaking off the
sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door,
and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by
the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous
curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only person present
who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only one who could
not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on
the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names
appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but so many
are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several
women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some
unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled
those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets
sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh! ye whose
dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can
say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods
in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered
marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable
inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines
that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the
beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might
those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. In what census of
living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a
universal proverb says of them, that

they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin
Sands; how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other
world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus
entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living
earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon
immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless
trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how
it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we
nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the
living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a
knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not
without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the
tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a
Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky
light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who
had gone before me, Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But
somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine
chance for promotion, it seems—aye, a stove boat will make me an
immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a
speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what
then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.
Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true
substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too
much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking
that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees
of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is
not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat
and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.



CHAPTER VIII. THE PULPIT


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

a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided
the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this
ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany
color, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was,
seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of
the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the
man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly
sailorlike but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the
steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel. the perpendicular
parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones,
were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that at
every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had
not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the
present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see
Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping
over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the
whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little
Quebec. I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for
this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and
sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any
mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober
reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen.
Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies
his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties
and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the
word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a
self-containing stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial
well of water within the walls. But the side ladder was not the only
strange feature of the place, borrowed from the chaplain's former
sea-farings. Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit,
the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large painting
representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee
coast of black rocks and snowy breakers. But high above the

flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of
sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel's face; and this bright face
shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something
like that silver plate now inserted into the Victory's plank where
Nelson fell. Ah, noble ship, the angel seemed to say, beat on, beat on,
thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking
through; the clouds are rolling off—serenest azure is at hand. Nor was
the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had
achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the
likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on the
projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed
beak. What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this
earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads
the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first
descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is
the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds.
Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete;
and the pulpit is its prow.



CHAPTER IX. THE SERMON


Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered
the scattered people to condense. Starboard gangway, there! side away
to larboard—larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships! There
was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still
slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every
eye on the preacher. He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's
bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his
closed eyes,

and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and
praying at the bottom of the sea. This ended, in prolonged solemn
tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is
foundering at sea in a fog—in such tones he commenced reading the
following hymn; but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas,
burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy—The ribs and terrors in
the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While all God's sun-lit waves
rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom. I saw the opening maw of
hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that
feel can tell—Oh, I was plunging to despair. In black distress, I
called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear
to my complaints—No more the whale did me confine. With speed he flew
to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; Awful, yet bright, as
lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God. My song for ever shall
record That terrible, that joyful hour; I give the glory to my God, His
all the mercy and the power. Nearly all joined in singing this hymn,
which swelled high above the howling of the storm. A brief pause
ensued; the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at
last, folding his hand down upon the proper page, said: Beloved
shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah—And God
had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Shipmates, this book,
containing only four chapters—four yarns—is one of the smallest strands
in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does
Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a pregnant lesson to us is this
prophet! What

a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's belly! How billow-like and
boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging over us; we sound with
him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of
the sea is about us! But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah
teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as
sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful
men, it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin,
hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment,
repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As
with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in his
wilful disobedience of the command of God—never mind now what that
command was, or how conveyed—which he found a hard command. But all the
things that God would have us do are hard for us to do—remember
that—and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And
if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying
ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. With this sin
of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at God, by seeking
to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men, will carry him
into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this
earth.

He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship that's bound for
Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By
all accounts Tarshish could have been no other city than the modern
Cadiz. That's the opinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz,
shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah
could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the Atlantic was
an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is
on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and
Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from
that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then,
shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable
man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat
and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like
a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered,
self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in

those days, jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been
arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no
baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,—no friends accompany him
to the wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he
finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as
he steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for
the moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's
evil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and
confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the
man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but
still serious way, one whispers to the other—"Jack, he's robbed a
widow;" or,"Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or,"Harry lad, I
guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike,
one of the missing murderers from Sodom." Another runs to read the bill
that's stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is
moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a
parricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and
looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now
crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah
trembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so
much the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that
itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the
sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him
pass, and he descends into the cabin. "Who's there?" cries the Captain
at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his papers for the
Customs—"who's there?" Oh! how that harmless question mangles Jonah!

For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. "I seek
a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir?" Thus far
the busy captain had not looked up to jonah, though the man now stands
before him; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts
a scrutinizing glance. "We sail with the next coming tide," at last he
slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. "No sooner, sir?"—"Soon
enough for any honest man that goes a passenger." Ha! Jonah, that's
another stab. But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent.
"I'll sail with ye,"—he says,—"the passage money, how much is
that,—I'll pay now." For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if
it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history,"that he paid the
fare thereof" ere the craft did sail. And taken with the context, this
is full of meaning. Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose
discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in
the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can
travel freely,

and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all
frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's
purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum;
and it's assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive;
but at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with
gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions
still molest the Captain.

He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any way, he
mutters;

and Jonah is put down for his passage. "Point out my state-room, Sir,"
says Jonah now. "I'm travel-weary; I need sleep." "Thou look'st like
it," says the Captain, "there's thy room." Jonah enters, and would lock
the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling
there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about
the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked within.
All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth,
and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead.
The air is close, and jonah gasps. then, in that contracted hole, sunk,
too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding
presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in
the smallest of his bowel's wards. Screwed at its axis against the
side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's room; and the
ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales
received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still
maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in
truth,

infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels
among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in
his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far
successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that
contradiction in the lamp more and

more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.
"Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!" he groans, "straight upward, so it
burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!" Like one
who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling,
but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman
race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as one
who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish,
praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid
the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the
man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's
naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's
prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep. And now
the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the
deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides
to sea.

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

her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead,
aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon
beat downward again towards the tormented deep. Terrors upon terrors
run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing attitudes, the
God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark him; more and
more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test
the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they fall to
casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them.
The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they mob him
with their questions. "What is thine occupation? whence comest thou?
thy country? what people?" but mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of
poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from;
whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions, but
likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the
unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is
upon him. "I am a Hebrew," he cries—and then—"I fear the Lord the God
of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!" Fear him, O Jonah?
Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straightway, he now
goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more
and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet
supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of
his deserts,—when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast
him forth into the sea, for he knew that for

his sake this great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from
him, and seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the
indignant gale howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to
God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah. And now
behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea; when
instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is
still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water
behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless
commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into
the yawning jaws

awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like the
Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and so many white
bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto learn a weighty lesson.
For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct
deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves
all his deliverance to God, contenting

himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still
look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful
repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And
how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual
deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not
place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him
before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed
to repent of it like Jonah. While he was speaking these words, the
howling of the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add new
power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed
tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest heaved as with a
ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and
the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow, and the light
leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a
quick fear that was strange to them. There now came a lull in his look,
as he silently turned over the leaves of the Book once more; and, at
last, standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed
communing with God and himself. But again he leaned over towards the
people, and bowing his head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet
manliest humility, he spake these words: Shipmates, God has laid but
one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what
murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners;
and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner
than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and
sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while
some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah
teaches to me as a pilot of

the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true
things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the
ears of a wicked nineveh, jonah, appalled at the hostility he should
raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God
by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never
reached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed
him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him
along"into the midst of the seas," where the eddying depths sucked him
ten thousand fathoms down, and"the weeds were wrapped about his head,"
and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond
the reach of any plummet—"out of the belly of hell"—when the whale
grounded upon the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the
engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the
fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale
came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the
delights of air and earth; and"vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;"
when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and
beaten—his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring
of the ocean—Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that,
shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!
This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of
the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from
Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God
has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than
to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness!

Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who
would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to
him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is
himself a castaway! He drooped and fell away from himself for a moment;
then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as
he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,—but oh! shipmates! on the
starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the
top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is

deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is
to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods
and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable
self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the
ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight
is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and
destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of
Senators and Judges. Delight,—top-gallant delight is to him, who
acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a
patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows
of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel
of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who
coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O Father!—chiefly
known to me by Thy rod—mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven
to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is
nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live
out the lifetime of his God? He said no more, but slowly waving a
benediction, covered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling,
till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the place.



CHAPTER X. A BOSOM FRIEND


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

soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on
his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every
fiftieth page—as I fancied—stopping a moment, looking vacantly around
him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of
astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to
commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more
than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties being
found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was
excited. With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was,
and hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste—his
countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means
disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly
tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in
his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a
spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there
was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness
could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed
and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being
shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and
looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture
to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent
one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington's
head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long
regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were
likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on
top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed. Whilst
I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be
looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my
presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but
appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous
book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night
previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found
thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference
of his

very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not know
exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm
self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed
also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the
other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have
no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck
me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something
almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from
home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which was the only way he could
get there—thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in
the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving
the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal
to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt
he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be
true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or
so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself
out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman,
he must have broken his digester. As I sat there in that now lonely
room; the fire burning low, in that mild stage when, after its first
intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at; the
evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and peering
in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn
swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in
me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against
the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat,
his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no
civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of
sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards
him. And those same things that would have repelled most others, they
were the very magnets that thus drew me. I'll try a pagan friend,
thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I
drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing
my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these
advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last

night's hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to
be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased,
perhaps a little complimented. We then turned over the book together,
and I endeavored to explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the
meaning of the few pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his
interest; and from that we went to jabbering the best we could about
the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon I
proposed a social smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he
quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that
wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us. If there
yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's breast,
this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us
cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I
to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against
mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were
married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends;
he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this
sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing
to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would
not apply. After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to
our room together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out
his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out
some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and
mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them
towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he
silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers' pockets. I let them stay.
He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed
the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed
anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I
deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or
otherwise. I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the
infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with

this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is
worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous
God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous
of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is
worship?—to do the will of God—that is worship. And what is the will of
God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to
me—that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do
I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my
particular Presbyterian form of worship. consequently, i must then
unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the
shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt
biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his
nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our
own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without
some little chat. How it is I know not; but there is no place like a
bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they
say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some
old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning.
Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving
pair.



CHAPTER XI. NIGHTGOWN


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

position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found
ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning
against the head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and
our two noses bending over them, as if our knee-pans were warming-pans.
We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of
doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in
the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth,
some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this
world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in
itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and
have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any
more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or
the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the
general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.

For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a
fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the
height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket
between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there
you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. We
had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all at
once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether
by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always
keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness of
being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright
except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper
element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey
part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant

and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of
the unilluminated twelve-o'clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable
revulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that
perhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide
awake; and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs
from his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong
repugnance to his smoking in

the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow
when love once comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than
to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be
full of such serene household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned
for the landlord's policy of insurance. I was only alive to the
condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket
with a real friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders,
we now passed the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there
grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame
of the new-lit lamp. Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled
the savage away to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of
his native island; and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go
on and tell it. He gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill
comprehended not a few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I
had become more familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me to
present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I
give.



CHAPTER XII. BIOGRAPHICAL


Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and
South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. When a
new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass
clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling;
even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see
something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father
was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal
side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors.
There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though

sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his
untutored youth. A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and
Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her
full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his
father's influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in
his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship
must pass through when she quitted

the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of
land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water.
Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow
seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the
ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with
one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up
the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled
a ringbolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a
cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and
Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his
wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and
told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage—this
sea Prince of Wales, never saw the captain's cabin. They put him down
among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter
content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained
no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of
enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he
was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the
arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more
than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of
whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both
miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father's
heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the
sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they
spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for
lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a
pagan.

and thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,
wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer
ways about him, though now some time from home. By hints, I asked him
whether he did not propose going back, and having a coronation; since
he might now consider his father dead and gone, he being very old and
feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; and added that he
was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for
ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before
him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as soon as he felt
himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail
about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a
harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now. I
asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future
movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon
this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my
intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port
for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to
accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the
same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my
every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of
both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection
I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such,
could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was
wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted
with the sea, as known to merchant seamen. His story being ended with
his pipe's last dying puff, Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead
against mine, and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each
other, this way and that, and very soon were sleeping.



CHAPTER XIII. WHEELBARROW


wheelbarrow next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head
to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade's bill; using,
however, my comrade's money. The grinning landlord, as well as the
boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had
sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin's cock and
bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the
very person whom I now companied with. We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and
embarking our things, including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg's
canvas sack and hammock, away we went down to the Moss, the little
Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. As we were going along
the people stared; not at Queequeg so much—for they were used to seeing
cannibals like him in their streets,—but at seeing him and me upon such
confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along wheeling the
barrow by turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the
sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him why he carried such a
troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did
not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied, that
though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection
for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in
many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In
short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers'
meadows armed with their own scythes—though in no wise obliged to
furnished them—even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons,
preferred his own harpoon. Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he
told me a funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It
was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one,

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

what you tink now,—Didn't our people laugh? At last, passage paid, and
luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided
down the Acushnet river. On

one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered
trees all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains
of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the
world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while
from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises
of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises
were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only
begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on,
for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness
of all earthly effort. Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze
waxed fresh; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a
young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!—how I spurned
that turnpike earth!—that common highway all over dented with the marks
of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of
the sea which will permit no records. At the same foam-fountain,
Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me. His dusky nostrils swelled
apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew, and our
offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast; ducked and dived her
brows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways
darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts
buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling
scene were we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some time
we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a lubber-like
assembly, who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so
companionable; as though a white man were anything more dignified than
a whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there,
who, by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and
centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young saplings
mimicking him behind his back. I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was
come.

Dropping his harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by
an almost miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily
into the air; then slightly

tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting
lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted
his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff. Capting! Capting!
yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer; Capting, Capting,
here's the devil.

Hallo, you sir, cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking up
to Queequeg, what in thunder do you mean by that? Don't you know you
might have killed that chap? What him say? said Queequeg, as he mildly
turned to me.

He say, said I, that you came near kill-e that man there, pointing to
the still shivering greenhorn. Kill-e, cried Queequeg, twisting his
tattooed face into an unearthly expression of disdain, ah! him bevy
small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e
big whale! Look you, roared the Captain, I'll kill-e you, you cannibal,
if you try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye. But
it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to mind
his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted the
weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to
side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor
fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all
hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it,
seemed madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in
one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of
snapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable
of being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing
the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the
midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and
crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured
one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso,
caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next
jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was
run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern
boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long
living arc of a leap. For three

minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms
straight out before him, and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders
through the freezing foam. I looked at the grand and glorious fellow,
but saw no one to be saved. The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting
himself perpendicularly from the water, Queequeg now took an instant's
glance around him, and seeming to see just how matters were, dived down
and disappeared. A few minutes more, and he rose again, one arm still
striking out, and with the other dragging a lifeless form. The boat
soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands voted
Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that hour I
clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his
last long dive. Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to
think that he at all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous
Societies. He only asked for water—fresh water—something to wipe the
brine off; that done, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and
leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him,
seemed to be saying to himself—It's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all
meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians.



CHAPTER XIV. NANTUCKET


Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a
fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket. Nantucket! Take out your map
and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it
stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone
lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach,
without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in
twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights
will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don't

grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to
send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces
of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in
Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get
under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis,
three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes,
something like Laplander snowshoes;

that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded,
and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and
tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of
sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no
Illinois. Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island
was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an
eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an
infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their
child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow
in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous
passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory
casket,—the poor little Indian's skeleton. What wonder, then, that
these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a
livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown
bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they
pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of
great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant
belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring's Straits; and
in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the
mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and
most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such
portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to
be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults! And thus have
these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their
ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so
many Alexanders; parcelling out among

them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate
powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon
Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing
banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the
Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires;
other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are
but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and
privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but
plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves,
without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless

deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he
alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro
ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there
lies his business,

which a noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the
millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the
prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters
climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes
to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the
moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset
folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at
nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and
lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of
walruses and whales.



CHAPTER XV. CHOWDER


It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to
anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no
business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord
of the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the
Try Pots, whom he asserted to

be the proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and
moreover he had assured us that cousin Hosea, as he called him, was
famous for his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted that we could not
possibly do better than try pot-luck at the Try Pots. But the
directions he had given us about keeping a yellow warehouse on our
starboard hand till we opened a white church to the larboard, and then
keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a corner three points to
the starboard, and that done, then ask the first man we met where the
place was: these crooked directions of his very much puzzled us at
first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted that the yellow
warehouse—our first point of departure—must be left on the larboard

hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say it was on the
starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little in the dark, and
now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire the way, we
at last came to something which there was no mistaking. Two enormous
wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses' ears, swung from the
cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an old doorway. The
horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other side, so that this
old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I was over
sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I could not help staring
at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort of crick was in my neck
as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for
Queequeg, and one for me. It's ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper
upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the
whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black
pots too! Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching tophet? I
was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman with
yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn, under
a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured eye,
and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen shirt.
Get along with ye, said she to the man, or I'll be combing ye!

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

And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving
Mrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs. Upon
making known our desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey,
postponing further scolding for the present, ushered us into a little
room, and seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently
concluded repast, turned round to us and said—Clam or Cod? What's that
about Cods, ma'am? said I, with much politeness. Clam or Cod? she
repeated. A clam for supper? a cold clam; is that what you mean, Mrs.
Hussey? says I; but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the
winter time, ain't it, Mrs Hussey? But being in a great hurry to resume
scolding the man in the purple shirt, who was waiting for it in the
entry, and seeming to hear nothing but the word clam, Mrs. Hussey
hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, and bawling out

clam for two, disappeared. Queequeg, said I, do you think that we can
make out a supper for us both on one clam? However, a warm savory steam
from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect
before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was
delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made
of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with
pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the
whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and
salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in
particular, Queequeg seeing his favorite fishing food before him, and
the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great
expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs.
Hussey's clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little
experiment.

Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word cod with great
emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savory steam came
forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine
cod-chowder was placed before us. We resumed business; and while plying
our spoons in the

bowl, thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on
the head? What's that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people?
But look, Queequeg, ain't that a live eel in your bowl? Where's your
harpoon? Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well
deserved its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders.
Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper,
till you began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The
area before the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a
polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account
books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the
milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning
happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen's
boats, I saw Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and
marching along the sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head,
looking very slip-shod, I assure ye. Supper concluded, we received a
lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey concerning the nearest way to
bed; but, as Queequeg was about to precede me up the stairs, the lady
reached forth her arm, and demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon
in her chambers. Why not? said I; every true whaleman sleeps with his
harpoon—but why not?

Because it's dangerous, says she. Ever since young Stiggs coming from
that unfort'nt v'y'ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half,
with only three barrels of ile, was found dead in my first floor back,
with his harpoon in his side; ever since then I allow no boarders to
take sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg
(for she had learned his name), I will just take this here iron, and
keep it for you till morning. But the chowder; clam or cod to-morrow
for breakfast, men? Both, says I; and let's have a couple of smoked
herring by way of variety.



CHAPTER XVI. THE SHIP


In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise and no
small concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, that he had been
diligently consulting Yojo—the name of his black little god—and Yojo
had told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it
everyway, that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in
harbor, and in concert selecting our craft; instead of this, I say,
Yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest
wholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us; and, in order
to do so, had already pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself,
I, Ishmael, should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though
it had turned out by chance; and in that vessel I must immediately ship
myself, for the present irrespective of Queequeg. I have forgotten to
mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed great confidence in the
excellence of Yojo's judgment and surprising forecast of things; and
cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good sort of god,
who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all cases did not
succeed in his benevolent designs. Now, this plan of Queequeg's, or
rather Yojo's, touching the selection of our craft; I did not like that
plan at all. I had not a little relied on Queequeg's sagacity to point
out the whaler best fitted to carry us and our fortunes securely. But
as all my remonstrances produced no effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged
to acquiesce; and accordingly prepared to set about this business with
a determined rushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quickly
settle that trifling little affair. Next morning early, leaving
Queequeg shut up with Yojo in our little bedroom—for it seemed that it
was some sort of Lent or Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation, and
prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that

day; how it was I never could find out, for, though I applied myself to
it several times, I never could master his liturgies and XXXIX
Articles—leaving Queequeg, then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo
warming himself at his sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out
among the shipping. After much prolonged sauntering and many random
inquiries, I learnt that there were three ships up for three-years'
voyages—The Devil-Dam the Tit-bit, and the pequod. devil- dam, i do not
know the origin of; tit-bit is obvious; Pequod, you will no doubt
remember, was the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians,
now extinct as the ancient Medes. I peered and pryed about the
Devil-Dam; from her, hopped over to the Tit-bit; and, finally, going on
board the Pequod, looked around her for a moment, and then decided that
this was the very ship for us. You may have seen many a quaint craft in
your day, for aught I know;—squared-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese
junks; butter-box galliots, and what not; but take my word for it,

you never saw such a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She
was a ship of the old school, rather small if anything; with an old
fashioned claw-footed look about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained
in the typhoons and calms of all four oceans, her old hull's complexion
was darkened like a French grenadier's, who has alike fought in Egypt
and Siberia. Her venerable bows looked bearded. Her masts—cut somewhere
on the coast of Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a
gale—her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings
of Cologne. Her ancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the
pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Beckett
bled. But to all these her old antiquities, were added new and
marvellous features, pertaining to the wild business that for more than
half a century she had followed. Old Captain Peleg, many years her
chief-mate, before he commanded another vessel of his own, and now a
retired seaman, and one of the principal owners of the Pequod,—this old
Peleg, during the term of his chief-mateship, had built upon

her original grotesqueness, and inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness
both of material and device, unmatched by anything except it be
Thorkill-Hake's carved buckler or bedstead. She was

apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with
pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of
a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All
round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous
jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for
pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran
not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves
of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she
sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously
carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The
helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar,
when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft,
but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having
authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at
first I saw nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of
tent, or rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast. It
seemed only a temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical
shape, some ten feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber
black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the
right-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of
these slabs laced together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at
the apex united in a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved
to and fro like a top-knot on some old Pottowotamie Sachem's head. A
triangular opening faced towards the bows of the ship, so that the
insider commanded a complete view forward. And half concealed in this
queer tenement, I at length found one who by his aspect seemed to have
authority; and who, it being noon, and the ship's work suspended, was
now enjoying respite from the burden of command. He was seated on an
old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and
the bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same
elastic stuff of which the wigwam was constructed. There was nothing so
very particular, perhaps, about the

appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most
old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the
Quaker style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of
the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have
arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always
looking to windward;—for this causes the muscles about the eyes to
become pursed together. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a
scowl. Is this the Captain of the Pequod? said I, advancing to the door
of the tent. Supposing it be the Captain of the Pequod, what dost thou
want of him? he demanded. I was thinking of shipping. Thou wast, wast
thou? I see thou are no Nantucketer—ever been in a stove boat? No, Sir,
I never have. Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say—eh?
Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I've been several
voyages in the merchant service, and I think that—Merchant service be
damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that leg?—I'll take that
leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service
to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now ye feel
considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships. But
flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?—it looks a
little suspicious, don't it, eh?—Hast not been a pirate, hast
thou?—Didst not rob

thy last Captain, didst thou?—Dost not think of murdering the officers
when thou gettest to sea? I protested my innocence of these things. I
saw that under the mask of these half humorous inuendoes, this old
seaman, as an insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular
prejudices, and rather distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed
from Cape Cod or the Vineyard. But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to
know that before I think of shipping ye. Well, sir, I want to see what
whaling is. I want to see the world. Want to see what whaling is, eh?
Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?

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

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

Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed up, crunched by
the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat!—ah, ah! I was a
little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at the
hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I
could, What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know
there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed
I might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident.
Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see; thou
dost not talk shark a bit. Sure, ye've been to sea before now; sure of
that? Sir, said I, I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in
the merchant—Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant
service—don't aggravate me—I won't have it. But let us understand each
other. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet feel
inclined for it? I do, sir. Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a
harpoon down a live whale's throat, and then jump after it? Answer,
quick! I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so;
not to be got rid of, that is; which I don't take to be the fact. Good
again. Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find out by
experience what whaling is, but ye also want to

go in order to see the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so.
Well then, just step forward there, and take a peep over the
weather-bow, and then back to me and tell me what ye see there. For a
moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not knowing
exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But
concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg started
me on the errand. Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I
perceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was
now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was
unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest
variety that I could see. Well, what's the report? said Peleg when I
came back; what did ye see? Not much, I replied—nothing but water;
considerable horizon though, and there's a squall coming up, I think.
Well, what dost thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to go
round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can't ye see the world where
you stand? I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I
would; and the Pequod was as good a ship as any—I thought the best—and
all this I now repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed
his willingness to ship me. And thou mayest as well sign the papers
right off, he added—come along with ye. And so saying, he led the way
below deck into the cabin. seated on the transom was what seemed to me
a most uncommon and surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain
Bildad, who along with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of
the vessel; the other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports,
being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children,
and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a
foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest
their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in
approved state stocks bringing in good interest. Now, Bildad, like
Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers,

was a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect;
and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon
measure the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously
modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of
these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and
whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a
vengeance. So that there are instances among them of men, who, named
with Scripture names—a singularly common fashion on the island—and in
childhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the
Quaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless
adventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these
unoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not
unworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when
these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a
globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and
seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and
beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think
untraditionally and independently; receiving all nature's sweet or
savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding
breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from

accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language—that
man makes one in a whole nation's census—a mighty pageant creature,
formed for noble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him,
dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he
have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of
his nature. For all men tragically great are made so through a certain
morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is
but disease. But, as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with
quite another; and still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only
results again from another phase of the Quaker, modified by individual
circumstances. Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do,
retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg—who cared not a rush for
what are called serious things, and indeed deemed those selfsame
serious things the veriest of all trifles—Captain Bildad

had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect
of Nantucket Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the
sight of many unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn—all that
had not moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much
as altered one angle of his vest. Still, for all this immutableness,
was there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain Bildad.
Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land
invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific;
and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his
straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now
in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled
these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to
concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the sage
and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this
practical world quite another. This world pays dividends. Rising from a
little cabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer
in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header,
chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship-owner; Bildad, as I hinted
before, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from
active life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining
days to the quiet receiving of his well-earned income. Now Bildad, I am
sorry to say, had the reputation of being an incorrigible old hunks,
and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard task-master. They told me in
Nantucket, though it certainly seems a curious story, that when he
sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew, upon arriving home, were
mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore exhausted and worn out.
For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was certainly rather
hard-hearted to say the least. He never used to swear, though, at his
men, they said; but somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel,
unmitigated hard work out of them. When Bildad was a chief-mate, to
have his drab-colored eye intently looking at you, made you feel
completely nervous, till you could clutch something—a hammer or a
marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other, never
mind what. Indolence and

idleness perished from before him. His own person was the exact
embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he
carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft,
economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat. Such,
then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I followed
Captain Peleg down into the cabin. The space between the decks was
small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so, and
never leaned, and this to save his coat tails. His broad-brim was
placed beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his drab vesture was
buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he seemed absorbed in
reading from a ponderous volume. Bildad, cried Captain Peleg, at it
again, Bildad, eh? Ye have been studying those Scriptures, now, for the
last thirty years, to my certain knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad? As
if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate, Bildad,
without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up, and seeing
me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg. He says he's our man,
Bildad, said Peleg, he wants to ship. Dost thee? said Bildad, in a
hollow tone, and turning round to me. I dost, said I unconsciously, he
was so intense a Quaker. What do ye think of him, Bildad? said Peleg.
He'll do, said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at his
book in a mumbling tone quite audible. I thought him the queerest old
Quaker I ever saw, especially as Peleg, his friend and old shipmate,
seemed such a blusterer. But I said nothing, only looking round me
sharply. Peleg now threw open a chest, and drawing forth the ship's
articles, placed pen and ink before him,

and seated himself at a little table. I began to think it was high time
to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for
the voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid
no wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares
of the profits called

lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance
pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's company.

I was also aware that being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would
not be very large; but considering that I was used to the sea, could
steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from
all I had heard I should be offered at least the 275th lay—that is, the
275th part of the clear nett proceeds of the voyage, whatever that
might eventually amount to. And though the 275th lay was what they call
a rather long lay, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had a
lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out
on it, not to speak of my three years' beef and board, for which I
would not have to pay one stiver. It might be thought that this was a
poor way to accumulate a princely fortune—and so it was, a very poor
way indeed. But I am one of those that never take on about princely
fortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge
me, while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon
the whole, I thought that the 275th lay would be about the fair thing,
but would not have been surprised had I been offered the 200th,
considering I was of a broad-shouldered make. But one thing,
nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about receiving a
generous share of the profits was this: Ashore,

I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old
crony Bildad; how that they being the principal proprietors of the
Pequod, therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered
owners, left nearly the whole management of the ship's affairs to these
two. And I did not know but what the stingy old Bildad might have a
mighty deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him
on board the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his
Bible as if at his own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to
mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise,
considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings;
Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his
book, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth— Well,
Captain Bildad, interrupted Peleg, what d'ye say, what lay shall we
give this young man?

Thou knowest best, was the sepulchral reply, the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much, would it?—"where moth and rust do
corrupt, but lay—" Lay, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven
hundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that
I, for one, shall not lay up many lays here below, where moth and rust
do corrupt. It was an exceedingly long lay that, indeed; and though
from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman,
yet the slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and
seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a
teenth of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven
hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at the time.
Why, blast your eyes, Bildad, cried Peleg, Thou dost not want to
swindle this young man! he must have more than that. Seven hundred and
seventy-seventh, again said Bildad, without lifting his eyes; and then
went on mumbling—for where your treasure is, there will your heart be
also. I am going to put him down for the three hundredth, said Peleg,
do ye hear that, Bildad! The three hundredth lay, I say. Bildad laid
down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said, Captain Peleg,
thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the duty thou owest
to the other owners of this ship—widows and orphans, many of them—and
that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may
be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. The seven
hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg. Thou Bildad! roared
Peleg, starting up and clattering about the cabin. Blast ye, Captain
Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these matters, I would afore
now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder
the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn. Captain Peleg, said
Bildad steadily, thy conscience may be drawing ten inches of water, or
ten fathoms, i can't tell; but as thou art still an impenitent man,
captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one;
and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain
Peleg.

Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye
insult me. It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that
he's bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me,
and start my soul-bolts, but I'll—I'll—yes, I'll swallow a live goat
with all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting,
drab-colored son of a wooden gun—a straight wake with ye! As he
thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a marvellous
oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him. Alarmed at
this terrible outburst between the two principal and responsible owners
of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up all idea of sailing in
a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily commanded, I stepped
aside from the door to give egress to Bildad, who, I made no doubt, was
all eagerness to vanish from before the awakened wrath of Peleg. But to
my astonishment, he sat down again on the transom very quietly, and
seemed to have not the slightest intention of withdrawing. He seemed
quite used to impenitent Peleg and his ways. As for Peleg, after
letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more left in him, and
he, too, sat down like a lamb,

though he twitched a little as if still nervously agitated. Whew! he
whistled at last—the squall's gone off to leeward, I think. Bildad,
thou used to be good at sharpening a lance, mend that pen, will ye. My
jack-knife

here needs the grindstone. That's he; thank ye, Bildad. Now then, my
young man, Ishmael's thy name, didn't ye say? Well then, down ye go
here, Ishmael, for the three hundredth lay. Captain Peleg, said I, I
have a friend with me who wants to ship too—shall I bring him down
to-morrow? To be sure, said peleg. fetch him along, and we'll look at
him. What lay does he want? groaned Bildad, glancing up from the book
in which he had again been burying himself. Oh! never thee mind about
that, Bildad, said Peleg. Has he ever whaled it any? turning to me.
Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg. Well, bring him
along then.

And, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I
had done a good morning's work, and that the Pequod was the identical
ship that Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape.
But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the
captain with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though,
indeed, in many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out, and
receive all her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself visible by
arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged,
and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the
captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he
does not trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to
the owners till all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to
have a look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into his
hands. Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg, inquiring where Captain
Ahab was to be found. And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It's all
right enough; thou art shipped. Yes, but I should like to see him. But
I don't think thou wilt be able to at present. I don't know exactly
what's the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house; a sort
of sick, and yet he don't look so. In fact, he ain't sick; but no, he
isn't well either. Any how, young man, he won't always see me, so I
don't suppose he will thee. He's a queer man, Captain Ahab—so some
think—but a good one. Oh, thou'lt like him well enough; no fear, no
fear. he's a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak
much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be
forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well
as 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves;
fixed his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales. His lance!
aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain't
Captain Bildad; no, and he ain't Captain Peleg; he's Ahab, boy; and
Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king! And a very vile one.
When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?

Come hither to me—hither, hither, said Peleg, with a significance in
his eye that almost startled me. Look ye, lad; never say that on board
the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself.
'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died
when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at
Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And,
perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn
thee. It's a lie. I know Captain Ahab well; I've sailed with him as
mate years ago; I know what he is—a good man—not a pious, good man,
like Bildad, but a swearing good man—something like me—only there's a
good deal more of him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly;
and I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind
for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump
that brought that about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever
since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's been a
kind of moody—desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all
pass off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young
man,

it's better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one.
So good-bye to thee—and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens to
have a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife—not three voyages
wedded—a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet girl that
old man has a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm
in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his
humanities! As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had
been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a
certain wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at
the time, I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don't know
what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a
strange awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all
describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt
it; and it did not disincline me towards him; though I felt impatience
at what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to
me then. However, my thoughts were at length carried in other
directions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind.



CHAPTER XVII. THE RAMADAN


As Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all
day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I
cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations,
never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue
even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other
creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of
footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the
torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the
inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name. I say, we good
Presbyterian christians should be charitable in these things, and not
fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what
not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was
Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about
Yojo and his Ramadan;—but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what
he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him
rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and
Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are
all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and
rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door;
but no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside.
Queequeg, said I softly through the key-hole:—all silent. I say,
Queequeg! why don't you speak? It's I—Ishmael. But all remained still
as before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant
time; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked through
the key-hole; but the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the
key-hole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one. I could only see
part of the foot-board of the bed and a line of

the wall, but nothing more. I was surprised to behold resting against
the wall the wooden shaft of Queequeg's harpoon, which the landlady the
evening previous had taken from him, before our mounting to the
chamber. That's strange, thought I; but at any rate, since the harpoon
stands yonder, and he seldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore
he must be inside here, and no possible mistake.
Queequeg!—Queequeg!—all still. Something must have happened. Apoplexy!
I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly

resisted. Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the
first person i met—the chambermaid. la! la! she cried, i thought
something must be the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast,
and the door was locked; and not a mouse to be heard; and it's been
just so silent ever since. But I thought, may be, you had both gone off
and locked your baggage in for safe keeping. La! La, ma'am!—Mistress!
murder! Mrs. Hussey! apoplexy!—and with these cries, she ran towards
the kitchen, I following. Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot
in one hand and a vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away
from the occupation of attending to the castors, and scolding her
little black boy meantime. Wood-house! cried I,

which way to it? Run for God's sake, and fetch something to pry open
the door—the axe!—the axe! he's had a stroke; depend upon it!—and so
saying I was unmethodically rushing up stairs again empty-handed, when
Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot and vinegar-cruet, and the
entire castor of her countenance. What's the matter with you, young
man? Get the axe! For God's sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I
pry it open! Look here, said the landlady, quickly putting down the
vinegar-cruet, so as to have one hand free; look here; are you talking
about prying open any of my doors?—and with that she seized my arm.
What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you, shipmate? In as
calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand the
whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet

to one side of her nose, she ruminated for an instant; then
exclaimed—No! I haven't seen it since I put it there. Running to a
little closet under the landing of the stairs, she glanced in, and
returning, told me that Queequeg's harpoon was missing. He's killed
himself, she cried. It's unfort'nate stiggs done over again—there goes
another counterpane—god pity his poor mother!—it will be the ruin of my
house. Has the poor lad a sister? Where's that girl?—there, Betty, go
to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with—"no
suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;"—might as well
kill both birds at once. Kill? The Lord be merciful to his ghost!
What's that noise there? You, young man, avast there! And running up
after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force open the door. I
won't allow it; I won't have my premises spoiled. Go for the locksmith,
there's one about a mile from here. But avast! putting her hand in her
side-pocket, here's a key that'll fit, I guess; let's see. And with
that, she turned it in the lock; but, alas! Queequeg's supplemental
bolt remained unwithdrawn within. Have to burst it open, said I, and
was running down the entry a little, for a good start, when the
landlady caught at me, again vowing I should not break down her
premises; but I tore from her, and with a sudden bodily rush dashed
myself full against the mark. With a prodigious noise the door flew
open, and the knob slamming against the wall, sent the plaster to the
ceiling; and there, good heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool
and self-collected; right in the middle of the room; squatting on his
hams, and holding Yojo on top of his head. He looked neither

one way nor the other way, but sat like a carved image with scarce a
sign of active life. Queequeg, said I, going up to him, Queequeg,
what's the matter with you? He hain't been a sittin' so all day, has
he? said the landlady. But all we said, not a word could we drag out of
him; I almost felt like pushing him over, so as to change his position,
for it was almost intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally

constrained; especially, as in all probability he had been sitting so
for upwards of eight or ten hours, going too without his regular meals.
Mrs. Hussey, said I, he's alive at all events; so leave us, if you
please, and I will see to this strange affair myself. Closing the door
upon the landlady,

I endeavored to prevail upon Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain.
There he sat; and all he could do—for all my polite arts and
blandishments—he would not move a peg, nor say a single word, nor even
look at me, nor notice my presence in any the slightest way. I wonder,
thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan; do they fast
on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so; yes, it's
part of his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; he'll get up
sooner or later, no doubt. It can't last for ever, thank God, and his
Ramadan only comes once a year; and I don't believe it's very punctual
then. I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the
long stories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding
voyage, as they called it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a
schooner or brig, confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic
Ocean only); after listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly
eleven o'clock, I went up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by
this time Queequeg must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a
termination. But no; there he was just where I had left him; he had not
stirred an inch. I began to grow vexed with him; it seemed so downright
senseless and insane to be sitting there all day and half the night on
his hams in a cold room, holding a piece of wood on his head. For
heaven's sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up and have
some supper. You'll starve; you'll kill yourself, Queequeg. But not a
word did he reply. Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to
bed and to sleep; and no doubt, before a great while, he would follow
me. But previous to turning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and
threw it over him, as it promised to be a very cold night; and he had
nothing but his ordinary round jacket on. For some time, do all I
would, I could not get into the faintest doze. I had blown out the
candle; and the mere thought of Queequeg— not four feet off—sitting
there in that uneasy position, stark alone in the cold and dark; this
made me really wretched. Think of it; sleeping all night in the same
room with a wide awake pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable
Ramadan! But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till
break of day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg,
as if he had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first
glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating
joints, but with a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay;
pressed his forehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan was over.
Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion,
be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any
other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when
a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment
to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to
lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and
argue the point with him. And just so I now did with Queequeg.
Queequeg, said I, get into bed now, and lie and listen to me. I then
went on, beginning with the rise and progress of the primitive
religions, and coming down to the various religions of the present
time, during which time I labored to show Queequeg that all these
Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms
were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed,
in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense. I told him,
too, that he being in other things such an extremely sensible and
sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now so
deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides,
argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in;
and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. This
is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy
notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather
digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested
apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary
dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.

I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with
dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it
in. He said no; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great
feast given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great battle
wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o'clock in the
afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening. No more,
Queequeg, said I, shuddering; that will do; for I knew the inferences
without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who had visited
that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when a great
battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard or
garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed in great
wooden trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and
cocoanuts; and with some parsley in their mouths, were sent round with
the victor's compliments to all his friends, just as though these
presents were so many Christmas turkeys. After all, I do not think that
my remarks about religion made much impression upon Queequeg. Because,
in the first place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing on that important
subject, unless considered from his own point of view; and, in the
second place, he did not more than one third understand me, couch my
ideas simply as I would; and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a
good deal more about the true religion than I did. He looked at me with
a sort of condescending concern and compassion, as though he thought it
a great pity that such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly
lost to evangelical pagan piety. At last we rose and dressed; and
Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty breakfast of chowders of all
sorts, so that the landlady should not make much profit by reason of
his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering along, and
picking our teeth with halibut bones.



CHAPTER XVIII. HIS MARK


As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg
carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us
from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal,
and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that
craft, unless they previously produced their papers. What do you mean
by that, Captain Peleg? said I, now jumping on the bulwarks, and
leaving my comrade standing on the wharf. I mean, he replied, he must
show his papers. Yea, said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking
his head from behind Peleg's, out of the wigwam. He must show that he's
converted. Son of darkness, he added, turning to Queequeg, art thou at
present in communion with any christian church? Why, said I, he's a
member of the first Congregational Church. Here be it said, that many
tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to be
converted into the churches.

First Congregational Church, cried Bildad, what! that worships in
Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman's meeting-house? and so saying, taking out
his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana
handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the
wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at
Queequeg. How long hath he been a member? he then said, turning to me;
not very long, I rather guess, young man. No, said Peleg, and he hasn't
been baptized right either, or it would have washed some of that
devil's blue off his face. Do tell, now, cried Bildad, is this
Philistine a regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting? I never
saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord's day.

I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeeting, said I,

all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First
Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is. Young man,
said Bildad sternly, thou art skylarking with me—explain thyself, thou
young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me. Finding myself
thus hard pushed, I replied. I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic
Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here,
and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong; the great
and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we
all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways
touching the grand belief;

in that we all join hands. Splice, thou mean'st splice hands, cried
Peleg, drawing nearer. Young man, you'd better ship for a missionary,
instead of a fore-mast hand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon
Deuteronomy—why Father Mapple himself couldn't beat it, and he's
reckoned something. Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about the
papers. I say, tell Quohog there—what's that you call him? tell Quohog
to step along. By the great anchor, what a harpoon he's got there!
looks like good stuff that; and he handles it about right. I say,
Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you ever stand in the head of a
whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish? Without saying a word,
Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon the bulwarks, from
thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to the side; and
then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in some
such way as this:—Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere?
You see him? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den! and taking sharp
aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean
across the ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of
sight. Now, said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, spos-ee him
whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead. Quick, Bildad, said Peleg, his
partner, who, aghast at the

close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin
gangway.

Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship's papers. We must have
Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog,
we'll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that's more than ever was given a
harpooneer yet out of

Nantucket. So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg
was soon enrolled among the same ship's company to which I myself
belonged. When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything
ready for signing, he turned to me and said, I guess Quohog there don't
know how to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy
name or make thy mark? But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or
thrice before taken part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed;
but taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place,
an exact counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon
his arm; so that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his
appellative, it stood something like this:—Quohog his mark. Meanwhile
Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing Queequeg, and at
last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his
broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting one
entitled The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to Lose, placed it in
queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his,
looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, Son of darkness, I must do my
duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the
souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways, which
I sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman.
Spurn the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to
come; mind thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the
fiery pit! Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's
language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,

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

Peleg! Peleg! said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, thou thyself, as
I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what it
is to have the fear of death; how, then, can'st thou prate in this
ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this
same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on
Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did'st
thou not think of Death and the Judgment then? Hear him, hear him now,
cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his hands far
down into his pockets,—hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When every
moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the judgment then?
What? With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering
against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think
of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think about Death then.

Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all
hands—how to rig jury-masts—how to get into the nearest port; that was
what I was thinking of. Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat,
stalked on

deck, where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking
some sail-makers who were mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then
he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which
otherwise might have been wasted.



CHAPTER XIX. THE PROPHET


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

You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose, said I, trying to gain a little
more time for an uninterrupted look at him. Aye, the Pequod—that ship
there, he said, drawing back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it
straight out from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger
darted full at the object. Yes, said I, we have just signed the
articles. Anything down there about your souls? About what? Oh, perhaps
you hav'n't got any, he said quickly. no matter though, i know many
chaps that hav'n't got any,—good luck to 'em; and they are all the
better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon. What
are you jabbering about, shipmate? said I. He's got enough, though, to
make up for all deficiencies of that sort in other chaps, abruptly said
the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he. Queequeg,
said I, let's go; this fellow has broken loose from somewhere; he's
talking about something and somebody we don't know.

Stop! cried the stranger. Ye said true—ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder yet,
have ye? Who's Old Thunder? said I, again riveted with the insane
earnestness of his manner. Captain Ahab. What! the captain of our ship,
the Pequod? Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that
name. Ye hav'n't seen him yet, have ye? No, we hav'n't. He's sick they
say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long.
All right again before long! laughed the stranger, with a solemnly
derisive sort of laugh.

Look ye; when captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine
will be all right; not before. What do you know about him? What did
they tell you about him? Say that! They didn't tell much of anything
about him; only I've heard that he's a good whale-hunter, and a good
captain to his crew.

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

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

All about it, eh—sure you do?—all? Pretty sure. With finger pointed and
eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as
if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little, turned and
said:—Ye've shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well,
what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again,
perhaps it wont be, after all. Any how, it's all fixed and arranged
a'ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well
these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates,
morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye. Look
here, friend, said I, if you have anything important to tell us, out
with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken
in your game; that's all I have to say. And it's said very well, and I
like to hear a chap talk up that way; you are just the man for him—the
likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning! Oh, when ye get there,
tell 'em I've concluded not to make one of 'em. Ah, my dear fellow, you
can't fool us that way—you can't fool us. It is the easiest thing in
the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him. Morning
to ye, shipmates, morning. Morning it is, said I. Come along, Queequeg,
let's leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?

Elijah. Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after
each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he
was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone
perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and
looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us,
though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I
said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my
comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner
that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us,
but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This
circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing,
shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me

all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all
connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost;
and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg
had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous; and the
prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves
to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things. I was resolved to satisfy
myself whether this ragged Elijah was really dogging us or not, and
with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg,

and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on,
without seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and
finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.



CHAPTER XX. ALL ASTIR


A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the pequod.
not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on
board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything
betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close.
Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam
keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing
and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on
the rigging were working till long after night-fall. On the day
following Queequeg's signing the articles, word was given at all the
inns where the ship's company were stopping, that their chests must be
on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the vessel
might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving,
however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they always give
very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several
days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and there

is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod was
fully equipped. Every one knows what a multitude of things—beds,
sauce-pans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers,
and what not, are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just
so with whaling, which necessitates a three-years' housekeeping upon
the wide ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers,
and bankers. And though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet
not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the
great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to
the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them
at the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that
of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all
kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss of the very things
upon which the success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare
boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare
everythings, almost, but a spare captain and duplicate ship. At the
period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the Pequod
had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and
iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there was a
continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of
things, both large and small. Chief among those who did this fetching
and carrying was Captain Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most
determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who
seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should be found
wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one time
she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward's pantry;
another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate's desk, where he
kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some
one's rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name,
which was Charity—Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a
sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither
and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised
to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board

a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in which
she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars. But it was
startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on board, as
she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still
longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain
Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a long
list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went his
mark opposite that article upon the paper.

Every once and a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den,
roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the
mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam. During
these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft, and
as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was
going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would answer,
that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard every
day; meantime, the two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend to
everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been
downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my
heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a
voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the
absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open
sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he
be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up
his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I
said nothing, and tried to think nothing. At last it was given out that
some time next day the ship would certainly sail. So next morning,
Queequeg and I took a very early start.



CHAPTER XXI. GOING ABOARD


It was nearly six o'clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we
drew nigh the wharf. There are some sailors running ahead there, if I
see right, said I to Queequeg, it can't be shadows; she's off by
sunrise, I guess; come on! Avast! cried a voice, whose owner at the
same time coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders,
and then insinuating himself between us, stood stooping forward a
little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to
me. It was Elijah. Going aboard? Hands off, will you, said I. Lookee
here, said Queequeg, shaking himself, go 'way! Aint going aboard, then?
Yes, we are, said I, but what business is that of yours? Do you know,
Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent? No, no, no; I
wasn't aware of that, said elijah, slowly and wonderingly looking from
me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable glances. Elijah, said I,
you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We are going to the
Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be detained. Ye be,
be ye? Coming back afore breakfast? He's cracked, Queequeg, said I,
come on. Holloa! cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had
removed a few paces. Never mind him, said I, Queequeg, come on. But he
stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder,
said—Did ye see anything looking like men going towards that ship a
while ago? Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered,
saying,

Yes, I thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be
sure.

Very dim, very dim, said Elijah. Morning to ye. Once more we quitted
him; but once more he came softly after us; and touching my shoulder
again, said,

See if you can find 'em now, will ye? Find who? Morning to ye! morning
to ye! he rejoined, again moving off. Oh! I was going to warn ye
against—but never mind, never mind—it's all one, all in the family
too;—sharp frost this morning, ain't it? Good bye to ye. Shan't see ye
again very soon, I guess; unless it's before the Grand Jury. And with
these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me, for the moment, in
no small wonderment at his frantic impudence. At last, stepping on
board the Pequod, we found everything in profound quiet, not a soul
moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the hatches were all on,
and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to the forecastle, we
found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a light, we went down, and
found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He
was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his face downwards and
inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept upon him.
Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to? said I,
looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the
wharf, Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I
would have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that
matter, were it not for Elijah's otherwise inexplicable question. But I
beat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to
Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body; telling him to
establish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper's rear,
as though feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado,
sat quietly down there. Gracious! Queequeg, don't sit there, said I.
Oh! perry dood seat, said Queequeg, my country way; won't hurt him
face. Face! said I, call that his face? very benevolent countenance

then; but how hard he breathes, he's heaving himself; get off,
Queequeg, you are heavy, it's grinding the face of the poor. Get off,
Queequeg! Look, he'll twitch you off soon. I wonder he don't wake.
Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and
lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing
over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning
him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his
land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king,
chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening
some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house
comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy
fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was
very convenient on an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs
which are convertible into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief
calling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of himself
under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place. While
narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the tomahawk from
me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper's head.
What's that for, Queequeg? Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy! He was
going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe, which,
it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed his
soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The
strong vapor now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to
tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; then seemed
troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat up and
rubbed his eyes. Holloa!

he breathed at last, who be ye smokers? Shipped men, answered I, when
does she sail? Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day.
The Captain came aboard last night. What Captain?—Ahab? Who but him
indeed?

I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when we
heard a noise on deck. Halloa! Starbuck's astir, said the rigger. He's
a lively chief mate, that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I
must turn to. And so saying he went on deck, and we followed. It was
now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes; the
riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged; and
several of the shore people were busy in bringing various last things
on board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within
his cabin.



CHAPTER XXII. MERRY CHRISTMAS


At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship's
riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and
after the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whaleboat, with her
last gift—a night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law,
and a spare bible for the steward—after all this, the two captains,
Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate,
Peleg said: Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right?
Captain Ahab is all ready—just spoke to him—nothing more to be got from
shore, eh? Well, call all hands, then. Muster 'em aft here—blast 'em!
No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg, said Bildad,
but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding. How now! Here
upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain Peleg and
Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the quarter-deck, just
as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well as to all
appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him was yet
to be seen; Only, they said he was in the cabin. But then, the idea
was,

that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship under
weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at all
his proper business, but the pilot's; and as he was not yet completely
recovered—so they said—therefore, Captain Ahab stayed below. And all
this seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchant service many
captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable time after
heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a
farewell merrymaking with their shore friends, before they quit the
ship for good with the pilot. But there was not much chance to think
over the matter, for Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do
most of the talking and commanding, and not Bildad.

Aft here, ye sons of bachelors, he cried, as the sailors lingered at
the main-mast. Mr. Starbuck, drive 'em aft. Strike the tent there!—was
the next order. As I hinted before, this whalebone marquee was never
pitched except in port; and on board the Pequod, for thirty years, the
order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing to heaving
up the anchor.

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

ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought
he would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily
I paused on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of
the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for
a pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with the thought that in
pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred
and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear,
and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in
the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my
first kick. Is that the way they heave in the marchant service? he
roared. Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! why
don't ye spring, i say, all of ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap
with the red whiskers; spring there, Scotchcap; spring, thou green
pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out! And so
saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg very
freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody.
Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day. At
last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a
short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night,
we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing
spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on
the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks
of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows.
Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as
the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering
frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his
steady notes were heard,—Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand
dressed in living green. So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan
rolled between. Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me
than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid

winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and
wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant
haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the
grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.
At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no
longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging
alongside. It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were
affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to
depart, yet; very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and
perilous a voyage—beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some
thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an
old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once more
starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say
good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,—poor
old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides" ran down
into the cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on
deck, and looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless
waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked
towards the land, looked aloft; looked right and left; looked
everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon
its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a
lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as
to say, Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can. As for
Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all his
philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern
came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck—now
a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate. But, at
last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about
him,—Captain Bildad—come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the main-yard
there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now! Careful,
careful!—come, Bildad, boy—say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck—luck to
ye, Mr. Stubb—luck to ye,

Mr. Flask—good-bye, and good luck to ye all—and this day three years
I'll have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and
away! God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men, murmured old
Bildad, almost incoherently. I hope ye'll have fine weather now, so
that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye—a pleasant sun is all he
needs, and ye'll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be
careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don't stave the boats needlessly, ye
harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent.
within the year. Don't forget your prayers, either. Mr Starbuck, mind
that cooper don't waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in
the green locker! Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, men; but
don't miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts.
Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I
thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication.
Good-bye, good-bye! Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold,
Mr. Starbuck; it'll spoil. Be careful with the butter—twenty cents the
pound it was, and mind ye, if—Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop
palavering,—away! and with that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and
both dropt into the boat. Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night
breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls
wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged
like fate into the lone Atlantic.



CHAPTER XXIII. THE LEE SHORE


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

When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive
bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see

standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and
fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four
years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still
another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.
Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no
epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington.
Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship,
that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give
succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort,
hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our
mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's
direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land,
though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and
through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing,
fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks
all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly
rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe! Know ye, now,
Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable
truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of
the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous,
slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth,
shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling
infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were
safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take
heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of
thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!



CHAPTER XXIV. THE ADVOCATE


As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling;
and as this business of whaling has somehow come

to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable
pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of
the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales. In the first place,
it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact, that among
people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a level
with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were
introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but
slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented
to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the naval
officers he should append the initials S. W. F. (Sperm Whale Fishery)
to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed pre-eminently
presuming and ridiculous. Doubtless one leading reason why the world
declines honoring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our
vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when
actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of
defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and
butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom
the world invariably delights to honor. And as for the matter of the
alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into
certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the
whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the
cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in
question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are
comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which
so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits? And if the

idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's
profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched
up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm
whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what
are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked
terrors and wonders of God! But, though the world scouts at us whale
hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an
all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles
that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our
glory! But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts
of scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been. Why did the Dutch
in DeWitt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis
XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from
Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families
from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the years

and

pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of 1,000,000

pounds? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now
outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy
of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men;
yearly consuming 00824,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time
of sailing, 20,000,000

dollars; and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped
harvest of 00847,000,000 dollars. How comes all this, if there be not
something puissant in whaling? But this is not the half; look again. I
freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,
point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty
years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken
in one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way
and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so
continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may
well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves
pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to
catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many

years past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the
remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and
archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever
sailed. If American and european men-of-war now peacefully ride in once
savage harbors, let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the
whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted
between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the
heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cookes, Your Krusensterns; but I
say that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket,
that were as great, and greater than your Cooke and your Krusenstern.
For in their succorless emptyhandedness, they, in the heathenish
sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands,
battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cooke with all his marines
and muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a
flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the
lifetime commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures
which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted
unworthy of being set down in the ship's common log. Ah, the world! Oh,
the world! Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but
colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between
Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the
Pacific coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous
policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space
permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last
eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of
Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those
parts. That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia,
was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first
blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned
those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched
there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony.
Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the
emigrants were several times saved

from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily
dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all
Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the
whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant,
and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first
destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become
hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due;
for already she is on the threshold. But if, in the face of all this,
you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations
connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you
there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time. The whale has no
famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say. The
whale no

famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who wrote the first
account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who composed the
first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than
Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from
Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced
our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke! True enough,
but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood
in their veins. No good

blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood
there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel"
afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of
Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and
harpooneers—all kith and kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting the
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other. Good again; but
then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable.

Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory
law, the whale is declared a royal fish.

Oh, that's only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any
grand imposing way. The whale never figured in any grand imposing way?
In one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his
entering the world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way
from the Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the
cymballed procession. Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you
will, there is no real dignity in whaling. No dignity in whaling? The
dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus is a
constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your hat in presence of
the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know a man that, in
his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account that
man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of
taking as many walled towns. And, as for me, if, by any possibility,
there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever
deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I
might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do
anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to
have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my
creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively
ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my
Yale College and my Harvard.

See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.

See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.



CHAPTER XXV. POSTSCRIPT


In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but
substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who
should wholly suppress a not unreasonable

surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate,
would he not be blameworthy? It is well known that at the coronation of
kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of
seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a
saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a caster of state. How
they use the salt, precisely—who knows? Certain I am, however, that a
king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of
salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its
interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated
here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because
in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who
anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth,

a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has
probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he
can't amount to much in

his totality. But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what
kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil,
nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor
cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its
unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils? Think of
that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with
coronation stuff!



CHAPTER XXVI. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES


The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a
Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an
icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being
hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood
would not spoil like bottled

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

Aye, aye, said Stubb, the second mate, Starbuck, there, is as careful a
man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery. But we shall ere long see
what that word careful precisely means when used by a man like Stubb,
or almost any other whale hunter. Starbuck was no crusader after
perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful
to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions.
Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, courage
was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her
bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for
lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a
fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I
am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to
be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so
killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father's? Where, in
the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother? With
memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which
could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But
it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such
terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature
that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in
him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its
confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it
was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which,
while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or
whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet
cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors,
which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged
and mighty man. But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any
instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce
might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful,
nay shocking, to expose the fall of valor in the soul. Men may seem
detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves,

fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces;
but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and
glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his
fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate
manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains
intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest
anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety
itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings
against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is
not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which
has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that
wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all
hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute!
The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our
divine equality! If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and
castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave
round

them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most
abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted
mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light;
if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then
against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just spirit of
equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my
kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic

God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale,
poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of
finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who
didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon
a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in
all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions
from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!



CHAPTER XXVII. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES


Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence,
according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky;
neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as

they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most
imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a
journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and
careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly
encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as
particular about the comfortable arrangement of his part of the boat,
as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box.

When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he
handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling
tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank
and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this
Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought
of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at
all, might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind
that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he
took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir
themselves there, about something which he would find out when he
obeyed the order, and not sooner. What, perhaps, with other things,
made Stubb such an easygoing, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off
with the burden of life in a world full of grave peddlers, all bowed to
the ground with their packs; what helped to bring about that almost
impious good-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. For,
like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular
features of his face. You would almost as soon have expected him to
turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe.

He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack,
within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked
them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of
the chapter; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when
Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he
put his pipe into his mouth. I say this continual smoking must have
been one cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition; for every one
knows that this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly
infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who have
died exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera, some people go about
with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against
all mortal tribulations, Stubb's tobacco smoke might have operated as a
sort of disinfecting agent. The third mate was Flask, a native of
Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very
pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the
great Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and
therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them
whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence
for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so
dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger from
encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but
a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only a
little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in
order to kill and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his
made him a little waggish in the matter of whales; he followed these
fish for the fun of it; and a three years' voyage round Cape Horn was
only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time. As a carpenter's
nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may be
similarly divided.

Little Flask was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last
long. They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in
form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by
that name in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating
side timbers inserted in it, served to brace the ship against the icy
concussions of those battering seas. Now these three mates—Starbuck,
Stubb, and Flask, were

momentous men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded
three of the Pequod's boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle
in which Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on
the whales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or,
being armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked
trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins. And
since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic
Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer,
who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the
former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and
moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy
and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set
down who the Pequod's harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of
them belonged. first of all was queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief
mate, had selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known. Next
was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly
promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last
remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the
neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring
harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of
Gay-Headers. Tashtego's long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones,
and black rounding eyes—for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but
Antarctic in their glittering expression—all this sufficiently
proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud
warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had
scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer
snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now
hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon
of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look
at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have
credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half
believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of
the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire. Third among the
harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black

negro-savage, with a lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended
from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called
them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to
them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler,
lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been
anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors
most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold
life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what
manner of men they shipped; daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues,
and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six
feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at
him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to
beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro,
Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a
chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it
said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men
before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans
born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same
with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military
and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the
construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say,
because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the
brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No
small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the
outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews
from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the
Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland
Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage
homewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling,
but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all
Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging
the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate
continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set
these Isolatoes were! An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the

isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab
in the pequod to lay the world's grievances before that bar from which
not very many of them ever come back. Black Little Pip—he never did—oh,
no! he went before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod's forecastle,
ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the
eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was
bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a
coward here, hailed a hero there!



CHAPTER XXVIII. AHAB


For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was
seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the
watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed
to be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from
the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was
plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and
dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to
penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin. Every time I
ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed aft to
mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague disquietude
touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became
almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at times by the
ragged Elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me,
with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of. But poorly
could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to
smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the
wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness—to call
it so—which I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship,
it seemed against all warrantry to

cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body
of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than
any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences
had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this—and rightly ascribed
it—to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild
Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it
was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the
mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colorless
misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment
of the voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in
his own different way, could not readily be found, and they were every
one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it
being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we
had biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to
the southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we
sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its
intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but
still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a
fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort
of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at
the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards
the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran
apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck. There seemed no
sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any.
He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has
overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking
away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high,
broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable
mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among
his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny
scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a
slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular
seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when
the upper lightning

tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and
grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil,
leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark
was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate
wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout
the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the
mates. But once Tashtego's senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the
crew, superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years
old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in
the fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet,
this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman
insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out
of Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless,
the old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested
this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that no
white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever
Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out—which might hardly come to
pass, so he muttered—then, whoever should do that last office for the
dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole. So powerfully
did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which
streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a
little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg
upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this
ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm
whale's jaw. Aye, he was dismasted off Japan, said the old Gay-Head
Indian once; but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast
without coming home for it. he has a quiver of 'em. I was struck with
the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod's
quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizen shrouds, there was an auger
hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg
steadied in that hole;

one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect,
looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an
infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable

wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that
glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him;
though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly
showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a
troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood
before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal
overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit
in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was
every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or
seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the
sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became
still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from
home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept
him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost
continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or
perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary
there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making a passage now;
not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives needing
supervision the mates were fully competent to, so that there was little
or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus
chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer
were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks
to pile themselves upon. Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling
persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed
gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked,
dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic
woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at
least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted
visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful
allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the
faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon
flowered out in a smile.



CHAPTER XXIX. ENTER AHAB; TO HIM, STUBB


Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went
rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost
perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the
Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing,
redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped
up—flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights
seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely
pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted
suns! For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days
and such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning
weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward
world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mild
hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice
most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies, more
and more they wrought on Ahab's texture. Old age is always wakeful; as
if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that
looks like death. among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will
oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so
with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the
open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than
from, the cabin to the planks. It feels like going down into one's
tomb,—he would mutter to himself,—for an old captain like me to be
descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth. So, almost
every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were set, and
the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below; and when
if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it
not rudely down, as by day,

but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place, for fear of
disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady
quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would
watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, griping
at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considerating
touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually
abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied
mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would
have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their
dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the
mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy,
lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast,
Stubb, the odd second mate, came up from below, and with a certain
unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was
pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but there might
be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly and
hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the
ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou did'st not know Ahab then. Am I a
cannon-ball, Stubb, said Ahab, that thou wouldst wad me that fashion?
But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave; where such
as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at
last.—Down, dog, and kennel! Starting at the unforeseen concluding
exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a
moment; then said excitedly, I am not used to be spoken to that way,
sir; I do but less than half like it, sir. Avast! gritted Ahab between
his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid some
passionate temptation.

No, sir; not yet, said Stubb, emboldened, I will not tamely be called a
dog, sir. Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass,
and begone, or I'll clear the world of thee! As he said this, Ahab
advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that
Stubb involuntarily retreated. I was never served so before without
giving a hard blow for it, muttered Stubb, as he found himself
descending the cabin-scuttle.

It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't well know whether
to go back and strike him, or—what's that?—down here on my knees and
pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would
be the first time I ever did pray. It's queer; very queer; and he's
queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old man
Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!—his eyes like
powder-pans! is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure
as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed
now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don't
sleep then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a
morning he always finds the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled and
tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied
into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked
brick had been on it? A hot old man! I guess he's got what some folks
ashore call a conscience; it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say—worse
nor a toothache. Well, well; I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep
me from catching it. He's full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into
the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects;
what's that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments with
him in the hold?

Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old game—Here
goes

for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the
world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's
about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn
me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against
my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when
you can, is my twelfth—So here goes again. But how's that? didn't he
call me a dog?

blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses
on top of that! He might as well have kicked me, and done with it.
Maybe he

did kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken all aback with his
brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil's the
matter with me? I don't stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that
old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must
have been dreaming, though—How? how? how?—but the only way's

to stash it; so here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I'll
see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by day-light.



CHAPTER XXX. THE PIPE


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



CHAPTER XXXI. QUEEN MAB


Next morning Stubb accosted Flask. Such a queer dream, King-Post, I
never had. You know the old man's ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked
me with it; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my little man,
I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and
I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still more
curious, Flask—you know how curious all dreams are—through all this
rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that
after all, it was not much of an insult, that kick from ahab. "Why,"
thinks I,"what's the row? It's not a real leg, only a false leg." And
there's a mighty difference between a living thump and a dead thump.
That's what makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage
to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member—that makes the
living insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself all the while,
mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid—so
confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was
thinking to myself, "what's his leg now, but a cane—a whalebone cane.
Yes," thinks I,"it was only a playful cudgelling—in fact, only a
whaleboning that he gave me—not a base kick. Besides," thinks I,"look
at it once; why, the end of it—the foot part—what a small sort of end
it is; whereas, if a broad footed farmer kicked me, there's a devilish
broad insult.

But this insult is whittled down to a point only." But now comes the
greatest joke of the dream, Flask. While I was battering away at the
pyramid, a sort of badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back,
takes me by the shoulders, and slews me round. "What are you 'bout?"
says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened. Such a phiz! But, somehow,
next moment I was over the fright. "What am I about?" says I at last.
"And what business is that of yours, I should like to know, Mr.
Humpback? Do you want a

kick?" By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned
round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he
had for a clout—what do you think, I saw?—why thunder alive, man, his
stern was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on
second thoughts,"I guess I won't kick you, old fellow." "Wise Stubb,"
said he,"wise Stubb;" and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of
eating of his own gums like a chimney hag. seeing he wasn't going to
stop saying over his "wise Stubb, wise Stubb," I thought I might as
well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my
foot for it, when he roared out, "Stop that kicking!" "Halloa," says
I,"what's the matter now, old fellow?" "Look ye here," says he;"let's
argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he?" "Yes, he did,"
says I—"right here it was." "Very good," says he—"he used his ivory

leg, didn't he?" "Yes, he did," says I. "Well then," says he, "wise
Stubb, what have you to complain of? Didn't he kick with right good
will? it wasn't a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you
were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It's
an honor; I consider it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England
the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and
made garter-knights of; but, be

your boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man
of. Remember what I say; be kicked by him; account his kicks honors;
and on no account kick back; for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb.
Don't you see that pyramid?" With that, he all of a sudden seemed
somehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored;
rolled over; and there I was in my hammock! Now, what do you think of
that dream, Flask? I don't know; it seems a sort of foolish to me,
tho'. May be, may be. But it's made a wise man of me, Flask. D'ye see
Ahab standing there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best
thing you can do, Flask, is to let that old man alone; never speak to
him, whatever he says. Halloa! what's that he shouts? Hark!

Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!
If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him! What d'ye think of
that now, Flask? ain't there a small drop

of something queer about that, eh? a white whale—did ye mark that, man?
Look ye—there's something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask.
Ahab has that that's bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this way.



CHAPTER XXXII. CETOLOGY


Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost
in its unshored, harborless immensities. Ere

that come to pass; ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with
the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to
attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative
understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions
of all sorts which are to follow. It is some systematized exhibition of
the whale in his broad genera, that I would now fain put before you.
Yet is it no easy task. The classification of the constituents of a
chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the best and latest
authorities have laid down. No branch of Zoology is so much involved as
that which is entitled Cetology, says Captain Scoresby, A. D. . It is
not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry as to
the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families....
Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal (sperm
whale), says Surgeon Beale, A. D. . Unfitness to pursue our research in
the unfathomable waters. Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of
the cetacea. A field strewn with thorns. All these incomplete
indications but serve to torture us naturalists. Thus speak of the
whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of
zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be
little, yet of books there are

a plenty; and so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of
whales. many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and
seamen,

who have at large or in little, written of the whale. Run over a
few:—The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas
Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi;
Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron
Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett;
J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T.
Cheever. But to what ultimate generalizing purpose all these have
written, the above cited extracts will show. Of the names in this list
of whale authors, only those following Owen ever saw living whales; and
but one of them was a real professional harpooneer and whaleman. I mean
Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of the Greenland or
right-whale, he is the best existing authority. But Scoresby knew
nothing and says nothing of the great sperm whale, compared with which
the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said,
that the Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He
is not even by any means the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the
long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till
some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous and utterly unknown
sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in
all but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation
has been every way complete. Reference to nearly all the leviathanic
allusions in the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that the
Greenland whale, without one rival, was to them the monarch of the
seas. But the time has at last come for a new proclamation. This is
Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all,—the Greenland whale is
deposed,—the great sperm whale now reigneth! There are only two books
in being which at all pretend to put the living sperm whale before you,
and at the same time, in the remotest degree succeed in the attempt.
Those books are Beale's and Bennett's; both in their time surgeons to
English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact and reliable men. The

original matter touching the sperm whale to be found in their volumes
is necessarily small; but so far as it goes, it is of excellent
quality, though mostly confined to scientific description. As yet,
however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in
any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten
life. Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular
comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the
present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent
laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I
hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete;
because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very
reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical
description of the various species, or—in this place at least—to much
of any description. My object here is simply to project the draught of
a systematization of cetology.

I am the architect, not the builder. But it is a ponderous task; no
ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-office is equal to it. To grope down
into the bottom of the sea after them; to have one's hands among the
unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a
fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this
leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me. Will he (the
leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain!
But I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had
to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will
try. There are some preliminaries to settle. first: the uncertain,
unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very
vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains
a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A. D.
, Linnaeus declares, I hereby separate the whales from the fish. But of
my own knowledge, I know that down to the year , sharks and shad,
alewives and herring, against Linnaeus's express edict, were still
found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan. The
grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished

the whales from the waters, he states as follows: On account of their
warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow
ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem, and finally, ex lege
naturae jure meritoque. I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey
and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain
voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were
altogether insufficient.

Charley profanely hinted they were humbug. Be it known that, waiving
all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a
fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me. This fundamental thing
settled, the next point is, in what internal respect does the whale
differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus has given you those items. But
in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish
are lungless and cold blooded. Next: how shall we define the whale, by
his obvious externals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time to
come? To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal
tail. There you have him. However contracted, that definition is the
result of expanded meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but
the walrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious. but the last term
of the definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first.
Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen
have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among
spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped, invariably
assumes a horizontal position. By the above definition of what a whale
is, I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea
creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best informed
Nantucketers;

nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively
regarded as alien. Hence, all the smaller, spouting,

and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this ground-plan of
Cetology. Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host.
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary
BOOKS (subdivisible into Chapters), and these shall comprehend them
all, both small and large. I. The FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE;
III. the DUODECIMO WHALE. As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm
Whale; of the OCTAVO, the Grampus; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise.
FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:—I. The Sperm
Whale; II. the Right

Whale; III. the Fin Back Whale; IV. the Hump-backed Whale; V. the

Razor Back Whale; VI. the Sulphur Bottom Whale. BOOK I. ( Folio),
CHAPTER I. ( Sperm Whale).—This whale, among the English of old vaguely
known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed
whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the
Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt,
the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales
to encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most
valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that
valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities
will, in many other places, be enlarged upon.

It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically
considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was
almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil
was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days
spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a
creature identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland
or Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was
that quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable
of the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was
exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment
and medicament. It was only to be had from the

druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in
the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became

known, its original name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to
enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity.
And so the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the
whale from which this spermaceti was really derived. BOOK I. ( Folio),
CHAPTER II. ( Right Whale).—In one respect this is the most venerable
of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by man. It
yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and the oil
specially known as

whale oil, an inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is
indiscriminately designated by all the following titles: The Whale; the
Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the
Right whale. there is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of
the species thus multitudinously baptized. What then is the whale,
which I include in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great
Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the
English Whalemen; the Baliene Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the
Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale which for more than
two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English in the
Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen have long
pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor' West
Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them Right
Whale Cruising Grounds. Some pretend to see a difference between the
Greenland whale of the English and the right whale of the Americans.
But they precisely agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet
been presented a single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical
distinction. It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most
inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history
become so repellingly intricate. The right whale will be elsewhere
treated of at some length, with reference to elucidating the sperm
whale. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER III. ( Fin-Back).—Under this head I
reckon a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout,
and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the
whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the
Atlantic, in the New York

packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the
Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and
a lighter color, approaching to olive. His great lips present a
cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large
wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he
derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. this fin is some three
or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the back,
of an angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the
slightest other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin
will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from the surface. When the
sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples, and
this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled
surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it
somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on
it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. The Fin-Back is not
gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. Very
shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the
remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet
rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with
such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present
pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable
Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From
having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with
the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated Whalebone
whales, that is, whales with baleen.

Of these so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several
varieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed whales
and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched whales; under-jawed
whales and rostrated whales, are the fishermen's names for a few sorts.
In connexion with this appellative of Whalebone whales , it is of great
importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be
convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is
in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded
upon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that
those marked parts or features very

obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system
of Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the
whale, in his kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, back-fin,
and teeth; these are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately
dispersed among all sorts of whales, without any regard to what may be
the nature of their structure in other and more essential particulars.
Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale, each has a hump; but
there the similitude ceases. Then, this same humpbacked whale and the
Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the
similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other parts above
mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular
combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an
irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general methodization
formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the
whale-naturalists has split. But it may possibly be conceived that, in
the internal parts of the whale, in his anatomy—there, at least, we
shall be able to hit the right classification. Nay; what thing, for
example, is there in the Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than
his baleen? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is impossible
correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And if you descend into the
bowels of the various leviathans, why there you will not find
distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematizer as those
external ones already enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to
take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and
boldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here
adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone
is practicable. To proceed.

book i. ( folio), chapter iv. ( hump back).—this whale is often seen on
the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and
towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you
might call him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular
name for him does

not sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a
hump, though a smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has
baleen. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of all

the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any
other of them. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER V. ( Razor Back).—Of this
whale little is known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off
Cape Horn. Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and
philosophers. Though no coward, he has never yet shown any part of him
but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know
little more of him, nor does anybody else. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER
VI. ( Sulphur Bottom).—Another retiring gentleman, with a brimstone
belly, doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of
his profounder divings. He is seldom seen; at least I have never seen
him except in the remoter southern seas, and then always at too great a
distance to study his countenance. He is never chased; he would run
away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur
Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest
Nantucketer. Thus ends BOOK I. ( Folio), and now begins BOOK II. (
octavo).

OCTAVOES. These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which
at present may be numbered:—I., the Grampus; II., the Black Fish; III.,
the

Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer. BOOK II. ( Octavo),
CHAPTER I. ( Grampus).—Though this fish, whose loud sonorous breathing,
or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well
known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among
whales. But possessing all the grand distinctive features of the
leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one. He is of
moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet in
length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist. He swims in
herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable

in quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach
is regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.
BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER II. ( Black Fish).—I give the popular
fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are the best.
Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and
suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so called,
because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the
Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and from the
circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he
carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale
averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost
all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin
in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more
profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the
Hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic
employment—as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and
quite alone by themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax.
Though their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you
upwards of thirty gallons of oil. BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER III. (
Narwhale), that is, Nostril whale.—Another instance of a curiously
named whale, so named I suppose from his peculiar horn being originally
mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is some sixteen feet in
length, while its horn averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and
even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is but a
lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed
from the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which
has an ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect
of a clumsy left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn or
lance answers, it would be hard to say. It does not seemed to be used
like the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors
tell me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning over the
bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an
ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea,

and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks
through. But you cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct.
My own opinion is, that however this one-sided horn may really be used
by the Narwhale—however that may be—it would certainly be very
convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets. The Narwhale I
have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn
whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism to be found
in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From certain cloistered old
authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn was in
ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and as
such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also distilled
to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of
the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in
itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me
that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen
Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of
Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; when Sir
Martin returned from that voyage, saith Black Letter, on bended knees
he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale,
which for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor. An Irish
author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise
present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the
unicorn nature. The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look,
being of a milk-white ground color, dotted with round and oblong spots
of black. His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little
of it, and he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar
seas. BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER IV. ( Killer).—Of this whale little
is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the
professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I
should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very
savage—a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales
by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is
worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort
of oil he has. Exception

might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of
its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea;
Bonapartes and Sharks included. BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER V. (
Thrasher).—This gentleman

is famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his
foes. He mounts the Folio whale's back, and as he swims, he works his
passage by flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world
by a similar process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the
Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas. thus ends book II.
( Octavo), and begins BOOK III. ( Duodecimo). DUODECIMOES.—These
include the smaller whales. I.

The Huzza Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed
Porpoise. To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject,
it may possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four
or five feet should be marshalled among WHALES—a word, which, in the
popular sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures
set down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my
definition of what a whale is—i. e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal
tail. BOOK III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER I ( Huzza Porpoise).—This is the
common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own
bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and something
must be done to distinguish

them. I call them thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals,
which upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in
a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with
delight by the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from
the breezy billows to windward. They are the lads that always live
before the wind. They

are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers
at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of
godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will
yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid
extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among
jewellers and watchmakers.

Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know.
It may never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his
spout is so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the next
time you have a chance, watch him; and you will then see the great
Sperm whale himself in miniature. BOOK III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. (
Algerine Porpoise).—A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think,
in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much
of the same general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I
have lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him captured. BOOK
III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER III. ( Mealy-mouthed Porpoise). The largest
kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it is known.
The only English name, by which he has hitherto been designated, is
that of the fishers—Right-Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance that he
is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in
some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly
girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has
no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail,
and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils
all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable,
yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called the
bright waist, that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two
separate colors, black above and white below. The white comprises part
of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he
had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and
mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise. Beyond
the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the Porpoise
is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the Leviathans of
note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous
whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not
personally. I shall enumerate them by their forecastle appellations;
for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators, who
may complete what I have here but begun. If any of the following

whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be
incorporated into this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or
Duodecimo magnitude:—The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the
Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon
Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the
Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic,
Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other lists
of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I
omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them
for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing. Finally:
It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here, and at
once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word.
But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as
the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing
upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be
finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave
the

copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This
whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh Time,
Strength, Cash, and Patience!

I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and
Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are
included by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish
are a nosy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers,
and feeding on wet

hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as
whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the
kingdom of Cetology.

Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.
Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of
the former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them
in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its diminished form
does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume
does.



CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SPECKSYNDER


Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place
as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising
from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown
of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet. The large
importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is evinced by the
fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries and more
ago, the command of a whale ship was

not wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided
between him and an officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word
means Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief
Harpooneer. In those days, the captain's authority was restricted to
the navigation and general management of the vessel: while over the
whale-hunting department and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief
Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the
corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still
retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks
simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain's
more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the
harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since
in the American Fishery he is not only an important officer in the
boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling
ground) the command of the ship's deck is also his; therefore the grand
political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart
from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their
professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as
their social equal. Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer
and man at sea, is this—the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence,
in whale-ships and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters
with the captain; and so, too, in most of the American whalers the
harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship. That is to say,
they take their meals in the captain's cabin, and sleep in a place
indirectly communicating with it. Though the long period of a Southern
whaling voyage (by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by
man), the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interest
prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for their
profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck, together
with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work; though all
these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline
than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an old
Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances,
live together; for all that,

the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom
materially relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the
Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading his
quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military
navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the
imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth. And though of
all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least given to that
sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage he ever
exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required no
man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the
quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar
circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he
addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in
terrorem, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means
unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea. Nor, perhaps,
will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and
usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making
use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately
intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had
otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms
that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship.
For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never
assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the
aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in
themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever
keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and
leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who
become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice
hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted
superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in
these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them,
that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have
imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the
ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain;

then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous
centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal
indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a
hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings
and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it
must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and
featured in the unbodied air!



CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CABIN-TABLE


It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale
loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord
and master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking
an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on
the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on
the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the
tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But
presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the
deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying,

Dinner, Mr. Starbuck, disappears into the cabin. When the last echo of
his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has
every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from
his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a grave
peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness, Dinner,
Mr. Stubb, and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the
rigging

awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it be
all right with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old
burden, and with a rapid Dinner, Mr. Flask, follows after his
predecessors. But the third emir, now seeing himself all alone on the
quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for,
tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and
kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of
a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous
sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes
down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from the deck,
reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music.

But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new
face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters
King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. It is
not the least among the strange things bred by the intense
artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck
some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and
defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those
very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that
same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say
deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the
table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this
difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of
Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously,
therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he
who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own
private dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power
and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man's royalty
of state transcends Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest.
Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar.
It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding.
Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a
ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that
peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.

Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion
on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still
deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be
served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab,
there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind,
their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as he carved
the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world they
would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even
upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when reaching out his
knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab
thereby motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the mate received his
meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little
started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed
it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like
the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor
profoundly dines with the seven

Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals,
eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not
conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking
Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. And poor
little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this weary
family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his would have
been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this
must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had
he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never more would he have
been able to hold his head up in this honest world; nevertheless,
strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped himself,
the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all,
did flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the
owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his
clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage
in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was
not for him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless
man! Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner,

and Flask is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was
badly jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of
him; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If
Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a
small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then
Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls
that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to
the deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that
ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment
he had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or
less. For what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it
immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever
departed from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fist
a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was
before the mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the
vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so
that any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in
Flask's official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to
obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at
Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered
before awful Ahab. Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be
called the first table in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure,
taking place in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was
cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid
steward. And then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they
being its residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants'
hall of the high and mighty cabin. In strange contrast to the hardly
tolerable constraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the
captain's table, was the entire care-free license and ease, the almost
frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers. While
their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of
their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish
that there was a report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their
bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous

appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies
made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring
on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.
And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble
hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of
accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoonwise. And once
Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by
snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty
wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the
circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous,
shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny
of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing
spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous
visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one
continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished
with all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into
his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the
blinds of its door, till all was over. It was a sight to see Queequeg
seated over against Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indian's:
crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench would have
brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at every motion of
his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an
African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great
negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly
possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up
the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person.
But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the
abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in
the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are giants
made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of the
lip in eating—an ugly sound enough—so much so, that the trembling
Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his
own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to
produce himself,

that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted Steward all but
shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden
fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried
in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which
whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives;
that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy.
How could he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must
certainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions.
Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals.
Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. in good time,
though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise
and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial
bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in
scabbards. But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and
nominally lived there; still, being anything but sedentary in their
habits, they were scarcely ever in it except at meal-times, and just
before sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar
quarters. In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American
whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by
rights the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy
alone that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in
real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly
be said to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did
enter it, it was something as a street-door enters a house; turning
inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a
permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much
hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was
inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom,
he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the
Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer
had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the
hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so,
in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved
trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!



CHAPTER XXXV. THE MAST-HEAD


It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the
other seamen my first mast-head came round. In most American whalemen
the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel's
leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and
more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. and if, after a
three, four, or five years' voyage she is drawing nigh home with
anything empty in her—say, an empty vial even—then, her mast-heads are
kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among
the spires of the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of
capturing one whale more. Now, as the business of standing mast-heads,
ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some
measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers of
mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I
find none prior to them. For though their progenitors, the builders of
Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the
loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final
truck was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to
have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God's wrath; therefore, we
cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that
the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion
based upon the general belief among archaeologists, that the first
pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly
supported by the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of
those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs,
those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for
new stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail,
or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous
Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in
the desert and spent the whole latter portion of

his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a
tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless
stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his place by fogs
or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to
the last, literally died at his post.

Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere
stone, iron, and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a
stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing
out upon discovering any strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon
the top of the column of Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one
hundred and fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules the decks
below; whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great
Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in
Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars, his column marks that
point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral
Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in
Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that London smoke,
token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is
smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor
Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to
befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze;
however it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the
thick haze of the future, and descry what

shoals and what rocks must be shunned. It may seem unwarrantable to
couple in any respect the mast-head standers of the land with those of
the sea; but that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an item
for which Obed Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket, stands
accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early times of the
whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit of the
game, the people of that island erected lofty spars along the
sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats,
something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this
same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon
descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the
beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the one
proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship

at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set;
the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving
each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is
exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it
is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks,
striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while
beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters
of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous
Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of
the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship
indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you
into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime
uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras
with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into
unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt
securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what
you shall have for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more
are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable. In one
of those southern whalemen, on a long three or four years' voyage, as
often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the mast-head
would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored
that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the
whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of
anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a
comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock,
a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small
and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your
most usual point of perch is the head of the t' gallant-mast, where you
stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen)
called the t' gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the
beginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To
be sure, in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in
the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest
watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul
is glued inside

of its fleshly tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even
move out of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an
ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is
not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin
encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body,
and no more can you make a convenient closet of your watch-coat.
Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a
southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or
pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the lookouts of a Greenland
whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In
the fire-side narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled A Voyage among the
Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the
re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland; in this
admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a
charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented
crow's-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good
craft. He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in honor of himself; he
being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous
false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our
own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so
likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we
may beget. In shape, the Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a large
tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with a
movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale.
Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a
little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the
stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for
umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which
to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical
conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this
crow's nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him
(also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for
the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns
infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from

the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon
them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor of love for
Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed
conveniences of his crow's-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of
these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his
experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for
the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called
the local attraction of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to
the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the
Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down
blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very
discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned binnacle
deviations, azimuth compass observations, and approximate errors, he
knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in
those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted
occasionally towards that well replenished little case-bottle, so
nicely tucked in on one side of his crow's nest, within easy reach of
his hand. Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the
brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him
that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a
faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with mittened
fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in
that bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole. But if we
Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet
and his Greenland-men were; yet that disadvantage is greatly
counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive
seas in which we South fishers

mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely,
resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off
duty whom I might find there; then ascending a little way further, and
throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of
the watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination.
Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept
but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how
could I—being left completely to myself

at such a thought-engendering altitude,—how could I but lightly hold my
obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders, Keep your
weather eye open, and sing out every time. And let me in this place
movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting
in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given
to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the phaedon
instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say; your
whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed
young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make
you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all
unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many
romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the
carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.
Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of
some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase
ejaculates:—Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand
blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain. Very often do the captains of
such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task,
upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient interest in the voyage;
half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable
ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see
whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a
notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what
use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their
opera-glasses at home. Why, thou monkey, said a harpooneer to one of
these lads, we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou
hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever
thou art up here. Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been
shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like
listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth
by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses
his identity; takes the mystic

ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless
soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen,
gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered,
uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of
those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually
flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to
whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Cranmer's
sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the
round globe over. There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking
life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea;
by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep,
this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at
all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices
you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one
half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the
summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!



CHAPTER XXXVI. THE QUARTER-DECK


( enter Ahab: Then, all.) It was not a great while after the affair of
the pipe, that one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his
wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains
usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal,
take a few turns in the garden. Soon his steady, ivory stride was
heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar
to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones,
with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon
that ribbed

and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger
foot-prints—the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.
But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his
nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his
thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the
main-mast and now at the binnacle, you

could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him
as he paced; so completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but
seemed the inward mould of every outer movement. D'ye mark him, Flask?
whispered Stubb;

the chick that's in him pecks the shell. T'will soon be out. The hours
wore on;—Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing the deck, with
the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect. It drew near the
close of day.

Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg
into the auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he
ordered Starbuck

to send everybody aft. Sir! said the mate, astonished at an order
seldom or never given on ship-board except in some extraordinary case.
Send everybody aft, repeated Ahab. Mast-heads, there! come down! When
the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious and not
wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike
the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly
glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew,
started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were nigh him
resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched
hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among
the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have
summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat.
But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:—What do ye do
when ye see a whale, men? Sing out for him! was the impulsive rejoinder
from a score of clubbed voices.

Good! cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the
hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically
thrown them.

And what do ye next, men? Lower away, and after him! And what tune is
it ye pull to, men? A dead whale or a stove boat! More and more
strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the countenance of the
old man at every shout; while the mariners began to gaze curiously at
each other, as if marvelling how it was that they themselves became so
excited at such seemingly purposeless questions. But, they were all
eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his pivot-hole, with
one hand reaching high up a shroud,

and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:—All
ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white
whale. Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?—holding up a broad
bright coin to the sun—it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D'ye see it?
Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul. While the mate was getting the
hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece
against the skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and
without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself,
producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed
the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him. Receiving
the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast with the
hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and
with a high raised voice exclaiming: Whosoever of ye raises me a
white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of
ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his
starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white
whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys! Huzza! huzza! cried the
seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the
gold to the mast. It's a white whale, I say, resumed Ahab, as he threw
down

the top-maul; a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp
for white water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out. All this while
Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even more intense
interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled
brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately touched
by some specific recollection. Captain Ahab, said Tashtego, that white
whale must be the same that some call Moby Dick. Moby Dick? shouted
Ahab. Do ye know the white whale then, Tash? Does he fan-tail a little
curious, sir, before he goes down? said the Gay-Header deliberately.
And has he a curious spout, too, said Daggoo, very bushy, even for a
parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab? And he have one, two,
tree—oh! good many iron in him hide, too, Captain, cried Queequeg
disjointedly, all twiske-tee betwisk, like him—him—faltering hard for a
word, and screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking a
bottle—like him—him—Corkscrew! cried Ahab, aye, Queequeg, the harpoons
lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big
one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket
wool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he
fan-tails like a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is
Moby Dick ye have seen—Moby Dick—Moby Dick! Captain Ahab, said
Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his
superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed struck with a
thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. Captain Ahab, I have
heard of Moby Dick—but it was not Moby Dick that took off thy leg? Who
told thee that? cried Ahab; then pausing,

Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that
dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on
now. Aye, aye, he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that
of a heart-stricken moose; Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale
that razeed me; made a poor pegging

lubber of me for ever and a day! Then tossing both arms, with
measureless imprecations he shouted out: Aye, aye! and I'll chase him
round Good Hope, and round the horn, and round the norway maelstrom,
and round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye
have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land,
and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin
out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do
look brave. Aye, aye! shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running
closer to the excited old man: A sharp eye for the White Whale; a sharp
lance for Moby Dick! God bless ye, he seemed to half sob and half
shout. God bless ye, men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog.
But what's this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not

chase the white whale? art not game for Moby Dick? I am game for his
crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly
comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt
whales, not my commander's vengeance. How many barrels will thy
vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not
fetch thee much in our Nantucket market. Nantucket market! Hoot! But
come closer, Starbuck; thou

requirest a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and
the accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by
girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then,
let me tell thee,

that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here! He smites his chest,
whispered Stubb, what's that for? methinks it rings most vast, but
hollow.

Vengeance on a dumb brute! cried Starbuck, that simply smote thee from
blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain
Ahab, seems blasphemous. Hark ye yet again,—the little lower layer. All
visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in
the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still
reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind
the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through

the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting
through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to
me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks
me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable
malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and
be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak
that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the
sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the
other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy
presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair
play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more
intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou
reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look
ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are
men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense
thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted
tawn—living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan
leopards—the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek,
and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the
crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale?
See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it.
Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot,
Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin; no
wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt,
then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang
back,

when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainings
seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!—Aye, aye!
thy silence, then, that voices thee. ( aside) something shot from my
dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine;
cannot oppose me now, without rebellion. God keep me!—keep us all!
murmured Starbuck, lowly. But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit
acquiescence of the mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation;
nor yet the low laugh from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations
of

the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against
the masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's
downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the
subterranean laugh died away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out;
the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings!
why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than
warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much predictions from without, as
verifications of the foregoing things within. For with little external
to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still
drive us on. The measure! the measure! cried Ahab. Receiving the
brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he ordered them to
produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the capstan,

with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his
side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company formed a
circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing
every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot
eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes
on at their head in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only to fall
into the hidden snare of the Indian.

Drink and pass! he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the
nearest seaman. The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short
draughts—long swallows, men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so; it goes
round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the
serpent-snapping eye. well done; almost drained. That way it went, this
way it comes. Hand it me—here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so
brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill! Attend now, my
braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and ye mates, flank
me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there with your irons;
and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a
noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will yet see
that—Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand it me. Why,
now, this pewter had run brimming again, wer't not thou St. Vitus'
imp—away, thou ague! Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before
me. Well

done! Let me touch the axis. So saying, with extended arm, he grasped
the three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so
doing, suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing
intently from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as
though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked
into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of
his own magnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong,
sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him;
the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright. In vain! cried Ahab; but,
maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three but once take the full-forced shock,
then mine own electric thing, that had perhaps expired from out me.
Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it
not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye three cup-bearers
to my three pagan kinsmen there—yon three most honorable gentlemen and
noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the
great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, my
sweet cardinals! your own condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do
not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye
harpooneers!

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

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

from the pewter. Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous
chalices! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble
league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits
to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man
the deathful whaleboat's bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we
do not hunt Moby Dick to his death! The long, barbed steel goblets were
lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the
spirits

were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and
turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter
went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to
them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.



CHAPTER XXXVII. SUNSET


The cabin; by the stern windows;

Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out. I leave a white and turbid wake;
pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows
sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. Yonder,
by the ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The
gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun—slow dived from noon,—goes
down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then,
the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it
bright with many a gem; i, the wearer, see not its far flashings; but
darkly feel that i wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron—that
I know—not gold. 'Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me
so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull,
mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!
Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred
me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not
me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted
with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most
subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good
night—good night! ( waving his hand, he moves from the window.) 'Twas
not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at

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



CHAPTER XXXVIII. DUSK


By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning

against it. My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a
madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a
field! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I
think I see his impious end; but feel that

I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me
to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man!
Who's over him, he cries;—aye, he would be a democrat to all above;
look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserable
office,—to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity!
For in his eyes I read

some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time
and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim
in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting
purpose, God may wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead.
But my whole clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I
have no key to lift again. [ A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]
Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of
human mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white
whale is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is
forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life.
Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled,
bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods
within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake,
and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills

me through! Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life! 'tis in
an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,—as wild,
untutored things are forced to feed—Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel
the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me!
and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight
ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye
blessed influences!



CHAPTER XXXIX. FIRST NIGHT-WATCH FORE-TOP


( Stubb solus, and

mending a brace.) Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!—I've been
thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence.
Why so? Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's
queer; and come what will, one comfort's always left—that unfailing
comfort is, it's all predestinated. I heard not all his talk with
Starbuck; but to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the
other evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged
it, knew it; had had the gift, might readily have prophesied it—for
when I clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, wise
Stubb—that's my title—well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here's a carcase.
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to
it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles! I
feel funny. Fa, la! lirra, skirra! What's my juicy little pear at home
doing now? Crying its eyes out?—Giving a party to the last arrived
harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a frigate's pennant, and so am I—fa,
la! lirra, skirra! Oh—We'll drink to-night with hearts as light, To
love, as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim,
And break on the lips while meeting. a brave stave that—who calls? mr.
starbuck? Aye, aye, sir—( Aside) he's my superior, he has his too, if
I'm not mistaken.—Aye, aye, sir, just through with this job—coming.



CHAPTER XL. MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE HARPOONERS AND SAILORS


( Foresail

rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning, and

lying in various attitudes, all singing in chorus.) Farewell and adieu
to you, Spanish ladies! Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain! Our
captain's commanded.—1st Nantucket Sailor Oh, boys, don't be
sentimental; it's bad for the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me! (
Sings, and all

follow.) Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy-glass in his hand, A
viewing of those gallant whales That blew at every strand. Oh, your
tubs in your boats, my boys, And by your braces stand, And we'll have
one of those fine whales, Hand, boys, over hand! So, be cheery, my
lads! may your hearts never fail! While the bold harpooneer is striking
the whale! Mate's Voice from the Quarter-Deck Eight bells there,
forward! 2nd Nantucket Sailor Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d'ye
hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and
let me call the watch. I've the sort of mouth for that—the hogshead
mouth. So, so, ( thrusts his head down the

scuttle,) Star—bo—l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight bells there below! Tumble
up! Dutch Sailor Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I
mark this in our old Mogul's wine; it's quite as deadening to some as

filliping to others. We sing; they sleep—aye, lie down there, like
ground-tier butts. At 'em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail
'em through it. Tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell 'em
it's the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment.
That's the way—that's it; thy throat ain't spoiled with eating
Amsterdam butter.

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

sleepy.) Don't know where it is. French Sailor Beat thy belly, then,
and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I say; merry's the word; hurrah! Damn
me, won't you dance? Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop into the
double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs! Legs! Iceland Sailor I don't
like your floor, maty; it's too springy to my taste. I'm used to
ice-floors. I'm sorry to throw cold water on the subject; but excuse
me. Maltese Sailor Me too; where's your girls? Who but a fool would
take his left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d'ye do?
Partners! I must have partners! Sicilian Sailor Aye; girls and a
green!—then I'll hop with ye; yea, turn grasshopper! Long-Island Sailor
Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more of us. Hoe corn when you
may, I say. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here

comes the music; now for it! Azore Sailor ( Ascending, and pitching the

tambourine up the scuttle.)

Here you are, Pip; and there's the windlass-bitts; up you mount! Now,
boys! ( The half of them dance to the tambourine; some go below; some

sleep or lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.) Azore Sailor
( Dancing.) Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it,
quig it, bell-boy; Make fire-flies; break the jinglers! Pip Jinglers,
you say?—there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so. China Sailor
Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of thyself.
French Sailor Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it!
split jibs! tear yourselves! Tashtego ( Quietly smoking.) That's a
white man; he calls that fun: humph! I save my sweat. Old Manx Sailor I
wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are dancing
over. I'll dance over your grave, I will—that's the bitterest threat of
your night-women, that beat head-winds round corners. O Christ! to
think of the green navies and the green-skulled crews! Well, well;
belike the whole world's a ball, as you scholars have it; and so 'tis
right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you're young; I was
once. 3d Nantucket Sailor Spell oh!—whew! this is worse than pulling
after whales in a calm—give us a whiff, Tash. ( They cease dancing, and
gather in clusters.

Meantime the sky darkens—the wind rises.)

Lascar Sailor By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The sky-born,
high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!
Maltese Sailor ( Reclining and shaking his cap.) It's the waves—the
snow's caps turn to jig it now. They'll shake their tassels soon. Now
would all the waves were women, then I'd go drown, and chassee with
them evermore! There's naught so sweet on earth—heaven may not match
it!—as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the
over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes. Sicilian Sailor (
Reclining.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad—fleet interlacings of the
limbs—lithe swayings—coyings—flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all graze:
unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come satiety. Eh,
Pagan? ( Nudging.) Tahitan Sailor ( Reclining on a mat.) Hail, holy
nakedness of our dancing girls!—the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high
palmed Tahiti! I still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid!
I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! green the first day i brought ye
thence; now worn and wilted quite. Ah me!—not thou nor I can bear the
change! How then, if so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring
streams from Pirohitee's peak of spears, when they leap down the crags
and drown the villages?—The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (
Leaps to his feet.) Portuguese Sailor How the sea rolls swashing
'gainst the side! Stand by for reefing, hearties! the winds are just
crossing swords, pell-mell they'll go lunging presently. Danish Sailor
Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest! Well
done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He's no more

afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic
with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes! 4th Nantucket
Sailor He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell him he
must always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a
pistol—fire your ship right into it! English Sailor Blood! but that old
man's a grand old cove! We are the lads to hunt him up his whale! All
Aye! aye! Old Manx Sailor How the three pines shake! Pines are the
hardest sort of tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here
there's none but the crew's cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This
is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls
split at sea. Our captain has his birth-mark; look yonder, boys,
there's another in the sky—lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.
Daggoo What of that? Who's afraid of black's afraid of me! I'm quarried
out of it! Spanish Sailor ( Aside.) He wants to bully, ah!—the old
grudge makes me touchy. ( Advancing.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the
undeniable dark side of mankind—devilish dark at that. No offence.
Daggoo ( grimly) None. St. Jago's Sailor That Spaniard's mad or drunk.
But that can't be, or else in his one case our old Mogul's fire-waters
are somewhat long in working. 5th Nantucket Sailor What's that I
saw—lightning? Yes.

Spanish Sailor No; Daggoo showing his teeth. Daggoo ( springing)
Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver! Spanish Sailor (
meeting him) Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit! All A row! a
row! a row! Tashtego ( with a whiff) A row a'low, and a row aloft—Gods
and men—both brawlers! Humph! Belfast Sailor A row! arrah a row! The
Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge in with ye! English Sailor Fair play!
Snatch the Spaniard's knife! A ring, a ring! Old Manx Sailor Ready
formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring Cain struck Abel. Sweet
work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad'st thou the ring? Mate's Voice
from the Quarter Deck Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails!
Stand by to reef topsails! All The squall! the squall! jump, my
jollies! ( They scatter.) Pip ( shrinking

under the windlass) Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish, crash!
there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes
the royal yard! It's worse than being in the whirled woods, the last
day of the year; Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now? But there they
go, all cursing, and here I don't. Fine prospects to 'em; they're on
the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But those
chaps there are worse yet—they are your white squalls, they. White
squalls? white whale, shirr!

shirr! Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the white
whale—shirr! shirr!—but spoken of once! and only this evening—it makes
me jingle all over like my tambourine—that anaconda of an old man swore
'em in to hunt him! Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon
darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him
from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!



CHAPTER XLI. MOBY DICK


I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest;
my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more
did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A
wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud
seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous
monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of
violence and revenge. For some time past, though at intervals only, the
unaccompanied, secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas
mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them
knew of his existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly
seen him; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given
battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of
whale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire
watery circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest
along solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth
or more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any
sort; the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the irregularity
of the times of sailing from home; all these, with other circumstances,
direct and indirect, long obstructed

the spread through the whole world-wide whaling-fleet of the special
individualizing tidings concerning Moby Dick. It was hardly to be
doubted, that several vessels reported to have encountered, at such or
such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of uncommon
magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great mischief to his
assailants, had completely escaped them; to some minds it was not an
unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in question must have been no
other than moby Dick. Yet as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been
marked by various and not unfrequent instances of great ferocity,
cunning, and malice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that
those who by accident ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such
hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were content to ascribe the
peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to the perils of the Sperm
Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause. In that way,
mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and the whale had
hitherto been popularly regarded. And as for those who, previously
hearing of the White Whale, by chance caught sight of him; in the
beginning of the thing they had every one of them, almost, as boldly
and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any other whale of that species.
But at length, such calamities did ensue in these assaults—not
restricted to sprained wrists and ancles, broken limbs, or devouring
amputations—but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those repeated
disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon
Moby Dick; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many
brave hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually
come. Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still
the more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not
only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all
surprising terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its
fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma,
wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to
cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the
whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the
wonderfulness and fearfulness of the

rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen as a
body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to
all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly
brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the
sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to
jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that though
you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would
not come to any chiselled hearthstone, or aught hospitable beneath that
part of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a
calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending
to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth. No wonder, then,
that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over the widest watery
spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale did in the end
incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and half-formed
foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which eventually invested
Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything that visibly
appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally strike, that
few who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White Whale, few of
those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his jaw. But
there were still other and more vital practical influences at work. Not
even at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm Whale,
as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the leviathan,
died out of the minds of the whalemen

as a body. There are those this day among them, who, though intelligent
and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right
whale, would perhaps—either from professional inexperience, or
incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at
any rate, there are plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling
nations not sailing under the American flag, who have never hostilely
encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan
is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the North;
seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a childish
fire-side interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of

Southern whaling. Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great
Sperm Whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of
those prows which stem him. And as if the now tested reality of his
might had in former legendary times thrown its shadow before it; we
find some book naturalists—Olassen and Povelson—declaring the Sperm
Whale not only to be a consternation to every other creature in the
sea, but also to be so incredibly ferocious as continually to be
athirst for human blood. Nor even down to so late a time as Cuvier's,
were these or almost similar impressions effaced. For in his Natural
History, the Baron himself affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale,
all fish (sharks included) are struck with the most lively terrors, and
often in the precipitancy of their flight dash themselves against the
rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous death. And however
the general experiences in the fishery may amend such reports as these;
yet in their full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty item of
Povelson, the superstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of
their vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters. So that overawed
by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a few of the fishermen
recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier days of the Sperm
Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to induce long practised
Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring warfare;
such men protesting that although other leviathans might be hopefully
pursued, yet to chase and point lance at such an apparition as the
Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it, would be
inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity. on this head, there

are some remarkable documents that may be consulted. Nevertheless, some
there were, who even in the face of these things were ready to give
chase to Moby Dick; and a still greater number who, chancing only to
hear of him distantly and vaguely, without the specific details of any
certain calamity, and without superstitious accompaniments, were
sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if offered. One of the
wild suggestings referred to, as at last coming to be linked with the
White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the
unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was

ubiquitous; that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes
at one and the same instant of time. Nor, credulous as such minds must
have been, was this conceit altogether without some faint show of
superstitious probability. For as the secrets of the currents in the
seas have never yet been divulged, even to the most erudite research;
so the hidden ways of the Sperm Whale when beneath the surface remain,
in great part, unaccountable to his pursuers; and from time to time
have originated the most curious and contradictory speculations
regarding them, especially concerning the mystic modes whereby, after
sounding to a great depth, he transports himself with such vast
swiftness to the most widely distant points. It is a thing well known
to both American and English whale-ships, and as well a thing placed
upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby, that some whales have
been captured far north in the Pacific, in whose bodies have been found
the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas. Nor is it to be
gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has been declared that the
interval of time between the two assaults could not have exceeded very
many days. Hence, by inference, it has been believed by some whalemen,
that the nor' west passage, so long a problem to man, was never a
problem to the whale. So that here, in the real living experience of
living men, the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello
mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in
which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface); and that still
more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose
waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land by an underground
passage); these fabulous narrations are almost fully equalled by the
realities of the whaleman. Forced into familiarity, then, with such
prodigies as these; and knowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults,
the White Whale had escaped alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise
that some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions;
declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality
is but ubiquity in time); that though groves of spears should be
planted in his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed;

or if indeed he should ever be made to spout thick

blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for again in
unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his unsullied jet would
once more be seen. But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings,
there was enough in the earthly make and incontestable character of the
monster to strike the imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not
so much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other
sperm whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown out—a peculiar snow-white
wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his
prominent features; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless,
uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those
who knew him. The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and
marbled with the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had

gained his distinctive appellation of the white Whale; a name, indeed,
literally justified by his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon
through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all
spangled with golden gleamings. Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor
his remarkable hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much
invested the whale with natural terror, as that unexampled, intelligent
malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had over and over
again evinced in his assaults. More than all, his treacherous retreats
struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else. For, when swimming
before his exulting pursuers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he
had several times been known to turn around suddenly, and, bearing down
upon them, either stave their boats to splinters, or drive them back in
consternation to their ship. Already several fatalities had attended
his chase. But though similar disasters, however little bruited ashore,
were by no means unusual in the fishery; yet, in most instances, such
seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every
dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having
been inflicted by an unintelligent agent. Judge, then, to what pitches
of inflamed, distracted fury the

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

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

stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its
concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost
his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold
more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one
reasonable object. This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part
remains unhinted. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is
profound. Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked
Hotel de Cluny where we here stand—however grand and wonderful, now
quit it;—and take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast
Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's
upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in
bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities, and throned on
torsoes! So with a broken throne, the great gods mock that captive
king; so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow
the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder
souls! question that proud, sad king! A family likeness! aye, he did
beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from your grim sire only will
the old State-secret come. Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of
this, namely: all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet
without power to kill, or change, or shun the fact; he likewise knew
that to mankind he did now long dissemble; in some sort, did still. But
that thing of his dissembling was only subject to his perceptibility,
not to his will determinate. Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in
that dissembling, that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last,
no Nantucketer thought him otherwise than but naturally grieved, and
that to the quick, with the terrible casualty which had overtaken him.
The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly
ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added moodiness which
always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the pequod on the
present voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely,
that far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on
account of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent
isle were inclined to

harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons he was all the better
qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness
as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorched without, with
the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one,
could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift
his lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any
reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an
one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his
underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is,
that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in
him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one
only and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one
of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking
in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have
wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on
profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the
mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural
revenge. Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing
with curses a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too,
chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and
cannibals—morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided
virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of
indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in
Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by
some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it
was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man's ire—by what
evil magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed
almost theirs; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his;
how all this came to be—what the White Whale was to them, or how to
their unconscious understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way,
he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,—all
this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go. The
subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads
his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not
feel the

irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand
still? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the
place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see
naught in that brute but the deadliest ill.



CHAPTER XLII. THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE


What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he
was to me, as yet remains unsaid. Aside from those more obvious
considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally
awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there was another thought, or
rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its
intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and
well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a
comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all
things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet,
in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters
might be naught. Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly
enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in
marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some
way recognised a certain royal pre-eminence in this hue; even the
barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title Lord of the White
Elephants above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion;
and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in
the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a
snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to
overlording Rome, having for the imperial color the same imperial hue;
and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself,
giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and
though, besides all this, whiteness has been

even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone
marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and
symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble
things—the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the
Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the
deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the
majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the
daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even
in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made
the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire
worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the
altar;

and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself made incarnate in a
snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter
sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of
their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest
envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of
their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white,
all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred
vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among
the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the
celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St.
John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty
elders stand clothed in white before the great white throne, and the
Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these
accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and
sublime,

there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue,
which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which
affrights in blood.

This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when
divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object
terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds.
Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the
tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the
transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which
imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even

more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So
that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger
courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark. Bethink thee of the
albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale
dread, in which that white phantom sails in all imaginations? Not
Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great, unflattering
laureate, Nature.

Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the
White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,
large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a
thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the
elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those
days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. At
their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which
every evening leads on the hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his
mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more
resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him. A
most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, western
world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the
glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a god,
bluff-bowed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid
his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly
streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his
circumambient subjects browsing

all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed them
with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness; in whatever
aspect he presented himself, always to the bravest Indians he was the
object of trembling reverence and awe. Nor can it be questioned from
what stands on legendary record of

this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so
clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it
which, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain
nameless terror. But there are other instances where this whiteness
loses all that accessory and strange glory which invests it in the
White Steed and Albatross.

What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks
the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It is
that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he
bears. The Albino is as well made as other men—has no substantive
deformity—and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him
more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be
so? Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but
not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces this
crowning attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the
gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas has been denominated the White
Squall. Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice
omitted so potent an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of
that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of their
faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the
market-place! Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary
experience of all mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism
of this hue. It cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in
the aspect of the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble
pallor lingering there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the
badge of consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation
here. And from that pallor of the dead,

we borrow the expressive hue of the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor
even in our superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle
round our phantoms; all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog—Yea, while
these terrors seize us, let us add, that even the king of terrors, when
personified by the evangelist, rides on his pallid horse. Therefore, in
his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or

gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its
profoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to
the soul. But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal
man to account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we,
then, by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of
whiteness—though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped
of all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful,
but, nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however
modified;—can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us
to the hidden cause we seek? Let us try. But in a matter like this,
subtlety appeals to subtlety, and without imagination no man can follow
another into these halls. And though, doubtless, some at least of the
imaginative impressions about to be presented may have been shared by
most men, yet few perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time,
and therefore may not be able to recall them now. Why to the man of
untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely acquainted with the
peculiar character of the day, does the bare mention of Whitsuntide
marshal in the fancy such long, dreary, speechless processions of
slow-pacing pilgrims, downcast and hooded with new-fallen snow? Or, to
the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of the Middle American States,
why does the passing mention of a White Friar or a White Nun, evoke
such an eyeless statue in the soul? Or what is there apart from the
traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings (which will not wholly
account for it) that makes the White Tower of London tell so much more
strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American, than those
other storied structures, its neighbors—the Byward Tower, or even the
Bloody? And those sublimer towers, the White Mountains of New
Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness
over the soul at the bare mention of that name, while the thought of
Virginia's Blue Ridge is full of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or
why, irrespective of all latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the
White Sea exert such a spectralness

over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal
thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, followed by
the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly
unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading
the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does the tall pale man of the
Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrestingly glides through the
green of the groves—why is this phantom more terrible than all the
whooping imps of the Blocksburg? Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance
of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her
frantic seas: nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor
the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones,
and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her
suburban avenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed
pack of cards;—it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima,
the strangest, saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the
white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe.
Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not
the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken
ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own
distortions. I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon
of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the
terror of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is
there aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another
mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when
exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or
universality. What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be
respectively elucidated by the following examples. First: The mariner,
when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if by night he hear the
roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just enough of
trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely similar
circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view his ship
sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness—as if from encircling
headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round him, then he
feels

a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded phantom of the whitened
waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the lead assures him
he is still off soundings; heart and helm they both go down; he never
rests till blue water is under him again. Yet where is the mariner who
will tell thee, Sir, it was not so much the fear of striking hidden
rocks, as the fear of that hideous whiteness that so stirred me?
Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the
snow-howdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the
mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast
altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to
lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the
backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an
unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig
to break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding
the scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal
trick of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and
half shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his
misery, views what seems a boundless church-yard grinning upon him with
its lean ice monuments and splintered crosses. But thou sayest,
methinks this white-lead chapter about whiteness is but a white flag
hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael. Tell
me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley of
Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey—why is it that upon the
sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that
he cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness—why
will he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in
phrensies of affright? There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of
wild creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange
muskiness he smells

cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience of former
perils; for what knows he, this New England colt, of the black bisons
of distant oregon? no: but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute,
the instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world. Though

thousands of miles from Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk,
the rending, goring bison herds are as present as to the deserted wild
foal of the prairies, which this instant they may be trampling into
dust. Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak
rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings
of the windrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the
shaking of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt! Though neither
knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic sign gives
forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere those things
must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems
formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright. But not
yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why
it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more
portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol
of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and
yet should be as it

is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind. Is
it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and
immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the
thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky
way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as
the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all
colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness,
full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colorless, all-color of
atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of
the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues—every stately or
lovely emblazoning—the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and
the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young
girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in
substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature
absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but
the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider
that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the
great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in
itself, and if

operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even
tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge—pondering all this, the
palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in
Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their
eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental
white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these
things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery
hunt?

With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him who
would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the
whiteness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable
hideousness of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness,
it might be said, only arises from the circumstance, that the
irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in the
fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringing together
two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us
with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be true;
yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified
terror. As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose
in that creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies
with the same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most
vividly hit by the French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The
Romish mass for the dead begins with Requiem eternam (eternal rest),
whence Requiem denominating the mass itself, and any other funereal
music. Now, in allusion to the white, silent stillness of death in this
shark, and the mild deadliness of his habits, the French call him
Requin. I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a

prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my
forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there,
dashed upon the

main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and
with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its
vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous
flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered
cries, as some king's ghost in supernatural distress. Through its
inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took
hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white
thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled
waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of
towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only
hint, the things that darted through me

then. But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was
this.

A goney, he replied. Goney! I never had heard that name before; is it
conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore!
never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman's name
for albatross. So that by no possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme
have had

aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw
that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor
knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but
indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and
the poet. I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the
bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in
this, that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey
albatrosses; and these I have frequently seen, but never with such
emotions as when I beheld the Antarctic fowl. But how had the mystic
thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will

tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea.
At

last the Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern tally
round its neck, with the ship's time and place; and then letting it
escape.

But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in
Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the
invoking, and adoring cherubim!



CHAPTER XLIII. HARK


! Hist! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco? It was the middle-watch; a
fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a cordon, extending from
one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the scuttle-butt near the
taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill the
scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts of
the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet.
From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence, only broken
by the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly
advancing keel. It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of
the cordon, whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his
neighbor, a Cholo, the words above. Hist! did you hear that noise,
Cabaco? Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d'ye mean? There it
is again—under the hatches—don't you hear it—a cough—it sounded like a
cough. Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket. There
again—there it is!—it sounds like two or three sleepers turning over,
now! Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? It's the three soaked
biscuits ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye—nothing else. Look
to the bucket!

Say what ye will, shipmate; I've sharp ears. Aye, you are the chap,
ain't ye, that heard the hum of the old Quakeress's knitting-needles
fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; you're the chap. Grin away; we'll
see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody down in the
after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I suspect our old
Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask, one morning
watch, that there was something of that sort in the wind. Tish! the
bucket!



CHAPTER XLIV. THE CHART


Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that
took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his
purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the
transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea
charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating
himself before it, you would have seen him intently study the various
lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady
pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At
intervals, he would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein
were set down the seasons and places in which, on various former
voyages of various ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen. While
thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his head,
continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw
shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it
almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses
on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines
and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead. But it was
not this night in particular that, in the solitude of

his cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they
were brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced,
and others were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans
before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a
view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of
his soul. Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the
leviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out
one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so
did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and
thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food; and, also,
calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in
particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost
approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon
this or that ground in search of his prey. So assured, indeed, is the
fact concerning the periodicalness of the sperm whale's resorting to
given waters, that many hunters believe that, could he be closely
observed and studied throughout the world; were the logs for one voyage
of the entire whale fleet carefully collated, then the migrations of
the sperm whale would be found to correspond in invariability to those
of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows. On this hint,
attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory charts of the
sperm whale. Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to

another, the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct—say,
rather, secret intelligence from the Deity—mostly swim in

veins, as they are called; continuing their way along a given
ocean-line with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed
her course, by any chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision.
Though, in these cases, the direction taken by any one whale be
straight as a surveyor's parallel, and though the line of advance be
strictly confined to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet the
arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said to swim, generally
embraces some few miles in width (more or less, as the vein is presumed
to expand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweep from the
whale-ship's mast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic
zone. The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth and
along that path, migrating whales may with great confidence be looked
for. And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known
separate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in
crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could,
by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to
be wholly without prospect of a meeting. There was a circumstance which
at first sight seemed to entangle his delirious but still methodical
scheme. But not so in the reality, perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm
whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds, yet in
general you cannot conclude that the herds which hunted such and such a
latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn out to be identically
the same with those that were found there the preceding season; though
there are peculiar and unquestionable instances where the contrary of
this has proved true. In general, the same remark, only within a less
wide limit, applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured,
aged sperm whales. So that though Moby Dick had in a former year been
seen, for example, on what is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian
ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet it did not follow,
that were the pequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequent
corresponding season,

she would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some other
feeding grounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all these
seemed only his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not
his places of prolonged abode. And where Ahab's chances of
accomplishing

his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made to
whatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a
particular set time or place were attained, when all possibilities
would become probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every
possibility the next thing to a certainty. That particular set time and
place were conjoined in the one technical phrase—the
Season-on-the-Line. For there and then, for several consecutive years,
Moby Dick had been periodically descried, lingering in those waters for
awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted
interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of
the deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place; there the
waves were storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot
where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his
vengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering
vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering
hunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one
crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those
hopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his
unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest. Now, the Pequod had
sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the Season-on-the-Line.
No possible endeavor then could enable her commander to make the great
passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then running down sixty
degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time to cruise
there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the
premature hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps, been correctly
selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of things.
Because, an interval of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights
was before him; an interval which, instead of impatiently enduring
ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance the White
Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote from his periodical
feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf,
or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by
his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor-Westers, Harmattans, Trades;
any wind but the Levanter and Simoom, might blow Moby Dick into

the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake.
But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it
not but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one
solitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of
individual recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti
in the thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar
snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could not but be
unmistakable. And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab would mutter to
himself, as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he
would throw himself back in reveries—tallied him, and shall he escape?
His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep's ear!
And here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race; till a
weariness and faintness of pondering came over him; and in the open air
of the deck he would seek to recover his strength. Ah, God! what
trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one
unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes
with his own bloody nails in his palms. often, when forced from his
hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which,
resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid
a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round in his
blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became
insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these
spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm
seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up,

and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this
hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through
the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room,
as though escaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these, perhaps,
instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness,
or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its
intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly
steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his
hammock, was not the agent that so caused

him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal,
living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time
dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed
it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from
the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time,
it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless
leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's
case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme
purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced
itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent
being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common
vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the
unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that
glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room,
was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being,
a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and
therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts
have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus
makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that
vulture the very creature he creates.

Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an
official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National
Observatory, Washington, April 16th, . By that circular, it appears
that precisely such a chart is in course of completion; and portions of
it are presented in

the circular. This chart divides the ocean into districts of five
degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude; perpendicularly
through each of which districts are twelve columns for the twelve
months; and horizontally through each of which districts are three
lines; one to show the number of days that have been spent in each
month in every district, and the two others to show the number of days
in which whales, sperm or right, have been seen.



CHAPTER XLV. THE AFFIDAVIT


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

induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main points of
this affair. I care not to perform this part of my task methodically;
but shall be content to produce the desired impression by separate
citations of items, practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman;
and from these citations, I take it—the conclusion aimed at will
naturally follow of itself. First: I have personally known three
instances where a whale, after receiving a harpoon, has effected a
complete escape; and, after an interval (in one instance of three
years), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain; when the two
irons, both marked by the same private cypher, have been taken from the
body. In the instance where three years intervened between the flinging
of the two harpoons; and I think it may have been something more than
that; the man who darted them happening, in the interval, to go in a
trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore there, joined a
discovery party, and penetrated far into the interior, where he
travelled for a period of nearly two years, often endangered by
serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous

miasmas, with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the
heart of unknown regions. Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also
have been on its travels; no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the
globe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa; but to no
purpose. This man and this whale again came together, and the one
vanquished the other. I say I, myself, have known three instances
similar to this; that is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and,
upon the second attack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut
in them, afterwards taken from the dead fish. In the three-year
instance, it so fell out that I was in the boat both times, first and
last, and the last time distinctly recognized a peculiar sort of huge
mole under the whale's eye, which I had observed there three years
previous.

I say three years, but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are
three instances, then, which I personally know the truth of; but I have
heard of many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter
there is no good ground to impeach. secondly: It is well known in the
Sperm Whale Fishery,

however ignorant the world ashore may be of it, that there have been
several memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the
ocean has been at distant times and places popularly cognisable. Why
such a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing
to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for
however peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put
an end to his peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a
peculiarly valuable oil. No: the reason was this: that from the fatal
experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of
perilousness about such a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini,
insomuch that most fishermen were content to recognise him by merely
touching their tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them
on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance.
Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great
man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street,
lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a
summary thump for their presumption. But not only did each of these
famous whales enjoy great individual celebrity—nay, you may call it an
ocean-wide renown; not only was he famous in life and now is immortal
in forecastle stories after death, but he was admitted into all the
rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name; had as much a name
indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was it not so, O Timor Tom! thou famed
leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long did'st lurk in the
Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft seen from the palmy
beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack! thou terror of all
cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land?
Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at
times assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky?

Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old
tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain prose, here
are four whales as well known to the students of Cetacean History as
Marius or Sylla to the classic scholar. But this is not all. New
Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at various times creating great havoc
among the boats of different

vessels, were finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out,
chased and killed by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their
anchors with that express object as much in view, as in setting out
through the Narragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had it in his
mind to capture that notorious murderous savage Annawon, the headmost
warrior of the Indian King Philip. I do not know where I can find a
better place than just here, to make mention of one or two other
things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in
all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale,
more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening
instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error.

So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable
wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts,
historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick
as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and
intolerable allegory. First: Though most men have some vague flitting
ideas of the general perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing
like a fixed, vivid conception of those perils, and the frequency with
which they recur. One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the
actual disasters and deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a
public record at home, however transient and immediately forgotten that
record. Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, who this moment
perhaps caught by the whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being
carried down to the bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan—do you
suppose that that poor fellow's name will appear in the newspaper
obituary you will read to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because the
mails are very irregular between here and New Guinea. In fact, did you
ever hear what might be called regular news direct or indirect from New
Guinea? Yet I tell you that upon one particular voyage which I made to
the Pacific, among many others we spoke thirty different ships, every
one of which had had a death by a whale, some of them more than one,
and three that had each lost a boat's crew. For God's sake, be
economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at
least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.

Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale
is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that
when narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold
enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my
facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of
being facetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of the plagues of
Egypt. But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established
upon testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The
Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and
judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly
destroy, and sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale has
done it. First: In the year

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

Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year

totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic
particulars of this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter,
though from the whale hunters I have now and then heard casual
allusions to it. Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore
J—-then commanding an American sloop-of-war of the first class,
happened to be dining with a party of whaling captains, on board a
Nantucket ship in the harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation
turning upon whales, the Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching
the amazing strength ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen
present. He peremptorily denied for example, that any whale could so
smite his stout sloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so much as a
thimbleful. Very good; but there is more coming. Some weeks after, the
commodore set sail in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he was
stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale, that begged a few moments'
confidential business with him. that business consisted in fetching the
Commodore's craft

such a thwack, that with all his pumps going he made straight for the
nearest port to heave down and repair. I am not superstitious, but I
consider the Commodore's interview with that whale as providential. Was
not Saul of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright? I tell
you, the sperm whale will

stand no nonsense. I will now refer you to Langsdorff's Voyages for a
little

circumstance in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof.
Langsdorff, you must know by the way, was attached to the Russian
Admiral Krusenstern's famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of
the present century. Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth
chapter. By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the
next day we were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The
weather was very clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were
obliged to keep on our fur clothing. For some days we had very little
wind; it was not till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the
northwest sprang up. An uncommon large whale, the body of which was
larger than the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of the water,
but was not perceived by any one on board till the moment when the
ship, which was in full sail, was almost upon him, so that it was
impossible to prevent its striking against him. We were thus placed in
the most imminent danger, as this gigantic creature, setting up its
back, raised the ship three feet at least out of the water. The masts
reeled, and the sails fell altogether, while we who were below all
sprang instantly upon the deck, concluding that we had struck upon some
rock; instead of this we saw the monster sailing off with the utmost
gravity and solemnity. Captain D'Wolf applied immediately to the pumps
to examine whether or not the vessel had received any damage from the
shock, but we found that very happily it had escaped entirely
uninjured. now, the captain d'wolf here alluded to as commanding the
ship in question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual
adventures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of
Dorchester near Boston. I have the honor of being a nephew of his. I
have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff.
He substantiates every word.

The ship, however, was by no means a large one: a Russian craft built
on the Siberian coast, and purchased by my uncle after bartering away
the vessel in which he sailed from home. In that up and down manly book
of old-fashioned adventure, so full, too, of honest wonders—the voyage
of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient Dampier's old chums—I found a little
matter set down so like that just quoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot
forbear inserting it here for a corroborative example, if such be
needed. Lionel, it seems, was on his way to John Ferdinando, as he
calls the modern Juan Fernandes. In our way thither, he says, about
four o'clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty
leagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which
put our men in such consternation that they could hardly tell where
they were or what to think; but every one began to prepare for death.
And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent, that we took it

for granted the ship had struck against a rock; but when the amazement
was a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no ground.
The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages, and
several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks. Captain Davis,
who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his cabin! Lionel
then goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake, and seems to
substantiate the imputation by stating that a great earthquake,
somewhere about that time, did actually do great mischief along the
spanish land. but i should not much wonder if, in the darkness of that
early hour of the morning, the shock was after all caused by an unseen
whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath. I might proceed with
several more examples, one way or another known to me, of the great
power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more than one
instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats back
to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand all
the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship Pusie Hall
can tell a story on that head; and, as for his strength, let me say,
that there have been examples where the lines attached to

a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship,
and secured there; the whale towing her great hull through the water,
as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed
that, if the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he
then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate
designs of destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying
some eloquent indication of his character, that upon being attacked he
will frequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion
for several consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one
more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant
one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most
marvellous event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the
present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere
repetitions of the ages; so that for the millionth time we say amen
with Solomon—Verily there is nothing new under the sun. In the sixth
Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate of
Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius
general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work
every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always
been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except
in some one or two particulars, not at all affecting the matter
presently to be mentioned. Now, in this history of his, Procopius
mentions that, during the term of his prefecture at Constantinople, a
great sea-monster was captured in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of
Marmora, after having destroyed vessels at intervals in those waters
for a period of more than fifty years. A fact thus set down in
substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any reason
it should be. Of what precise species this sea-monster was, is not
mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he
must have been a whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm
whale. And I will tell you why. For a long time I fancied that the
sperm whale had been always unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep
waters connecting with it. Even now I am certain that those seas are
not, and perhaps never can be, in the present constitution of

things, a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further
investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern times there
have been isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the
Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that on the Barbary coast,
a Commodore Davis of the British navy found the skeleton of a sperm
whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes through the Dardanelles,
hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass out of the
Mediterranean into the Propontis. In the Propontis, as far as I can
learn, none of that peculiar substance called brit is to be found, the
aliment of the right whale. But I have every reason to believe that the
food of the sperm whale—squid or cuttle-fish—lurks at the bottom of
that sea, because large creatures, but by no means the largest of that
sort, have been found at its surface. If, then, you properly put these
statements together, and reason upon them a bit,

you will clearly perceive that, according to all human reasoning,
Procopius's sea-monster, that for half a century stove the ships of a
Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm whale.

The following are extracts from Chace's narrative: Every fact seemed to
warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which directed
his operations; he made two several attacks upon the ship, at a short
interval between them, both of which, according to their direction,
were calculated to do us the most injury, by being made ahead, and
thereby

combining the speed of the two objects for the shock; to effect which,
the exact manoeuvres which he made were necessary. His aspect was most
horrible, and such as indicated resentment and fury. He came directly
from the shoal which we had just before entered, and in which we had
struck three of his companions, as if fired with revenge for their
sufferings. Again: At all events, the whole circumstances taken
together, all happening before my own eyes, and producing, at the time,
impressions in my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the part of
the whale (many of which impressions I cannot now recall), induce me to
be satisfied that I am correct in my opinion. Here are his reflections
some time after quitting the ship, during a black night in an open
boat, when almost despairing of reaching any hospitable shore. The dark
ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the fears of being swallowed up
by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden

rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation,
seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's thought; the dismal looking
wreck, and the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale, wholly engrossed
my reflections, until day again made its appearance. In another
place—p. 45,—he speaks of the mysterious and mortal attack of the
animal.



CHAPTER XLVI. SURMISES


Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his
thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby
Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that
one passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and
long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways, altogether
to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if
this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more
influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even
considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards

the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to
all sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the
more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale
would prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be
indeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which,
though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling
passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him. To accomplish
his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of
the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for example,
that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over
Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man
any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual
mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in
a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced
will were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain;
still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred
his captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself
from it, or even frustrate it. it might be that a long interval would
elapse ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck
would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his
captain's leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial
influences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle
insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly
manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing
that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that
strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the
full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure
background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted
meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night
watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of
than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had
hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are
more or less capricious and unreliable—they live in the varying outer
weather, and they inhale its fickleness—and when retained

for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of
life and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that
temporary interests and employment should intervene and hold them
healthily suspended for the final dash. Nor was Ahab unmindful of
another thing. In times of strong emotion mankind disdain all base
considerations; but such times are evanescent. The permanent
constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is
sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts of
this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds a
certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of
it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their
more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric
Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles
of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing
burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the
way. Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic
object—that final and romantic object, too many would have turned from
in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of
cash—aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by, and
no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same quiescent cash
all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab.
Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related
to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps
somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the
Pequod's voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he
had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of
usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew
if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further
obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From
even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible
consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must
of course have been most anxious to protect himself.

That protection could only consist in his own predominating brain and
heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating

attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible
for his crew to be subjected to. For all these reasons then, and others
perhaps too analytic to be verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw
that he must still in a good degree continue true to the natural,
nominal purpose of the Pequod's voyage; observe all customary usages;
and not only that, but force himself to evince all his well known
passionate interest in the general pursuit of his profession. be all
this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three
mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit
reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.



CHAPTER XLVII. THE MAT-MAKER


It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging
about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored waters.
Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,
for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet
somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of revery
lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own
invisible self. I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at
the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline
between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle,
and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken
sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water,
carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a
dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea,
only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed
as if this

were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving
and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed

threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning,
unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the
crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed
necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle
and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,
Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof
slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;
and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding
contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage's
sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and
woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free
will, and necessity—no wise incompatible—all interweavingly working
together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its
ultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending
to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;
and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of
necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though
thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the
last featuring blow at events. Thus we were weaving and weaving away
when I started at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild
and unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I
stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing.
High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His
body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand,
and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries. To be sure the
same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas,
from hundreds of whalemen's look-outs perched as high in the air; but
from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such
a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian's. As he stood
hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering
towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer
beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their
coming. There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!

Where-away? On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!
Instantly all was commotion. The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks,
with the same undeviating and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen
distinguish this fish from other tribes of his genus. There go flukes!
was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales disappeared. Quick,
steward! cried Ahab.

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



CHAPTER XLVIII. THE FIRST LOWERING


The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side
of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the
tackles and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always
been deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the
captain's, on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The
figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white
tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese
jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black
trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning his ebonness
was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and
coiled round and round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the
companions of this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexion
peculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas;—a race
notorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by some honest white
mariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents
on the water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose
to be elsewhere. While yet the wondering ship's company were gazing
upon these strangers, Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned old man at
their head, All ready there, Fedallah? Ready, was the half-hissed
reply. Lower away then; d'ye hear? shouting across the deck. Lower away
there, I say. Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their
amazement the men sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in
the blocks; with a wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while,
with a dexterous, off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the
sailors, goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship's side into the tossed
boats below. Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship's lee, when

a fourth keel, coming from the windward side, pulled round under the
stern, and showed the five strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect
in the stern, loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread
themselves widely, so as to cover a large expanse of water. but with
all their eyes again riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, the
inmates of the other boats obeyed not the command. Captain Ahab?—said
Starbuck. Spread yourselves, cried Ahab;

give way, all four boats. Thou, Flask, pull out more to leeward! Aye,
aye, sir, cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his great
steering oar. Lay back! addressing his crew. There!—there!—there again!
There she blows right ahead, boys!—lay back! Never heed yonder yellow
boys, Archy. Oh, I don't mind 'em, sir, said Archy; I knew it all
before now. Didn't I hear 'em in the hold? And didn't I tell Cabaco
here of it? What say ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask. Pull,
pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little ones,
drawingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom still
showed signs of uneasiness. Why don't you break your backbones, my
boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They
are only five more hands come to help us—never mind from where—the more
the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone—devils are
good fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that's the stroke for a
thousand pounds; that's the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the
gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men—all hearts alive!
Easy, easy; don't be in a hurry—don't

be in a hurry. Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite
something, you dogs! So, so, so, then;—softly, softly! That's it—that's
it! long and strong. Give way there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye
ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers,
and pull. Pull, will ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the
name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don't ye pull?—pull and break
something! pull, and start your

eyes out! Here! whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; every
mother's son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his
teeth.

That's it—that's it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my
steel-bits. Start her—start her, my silver-spoons! Start her,
marling-spikes! Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large,
because

he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and
especially in inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not
suppose from this specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into
downright passions with his congregation. Not at all; and therein
consisted his chief peculiarity. He would say the most terrific things
to his crew, in a tone so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the
fury seemed so calculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman
could hear such queer invocations without pulling for dear life, and
yet pulling for the mere joke of the thing. Besides he all the time
looked so easy and indolent himself, so loungingly managed his
steering-oar, and so broadly gaped—open-mouthed at times—that the mere
sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer force of contrast, acted
like a charm upon the crew. Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort
of humorists, whose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to
put all inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them. In
obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely
across Stubb's bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were
pretty near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate. Mr. Starbuck!
larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye please! Halloa!
returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he spoke; still
earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set like a flint
from Stubb's. What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!

Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,
boys! )

in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: A sad business,
Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind, Mr.
Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what will.
(Spring, my men, spring!)

There's hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came
for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm's the play! This at least is duty;
duty and profit hand in hand! Aye, aye, I thought as much, soliloquized
Stubb, when the boats diverged, as soon as I clapt eye on 'em, I
thought so. Aye, and that's what he went into the after hold for, so
often, as Dough-Boy long suspected. They were hidden down there. The
White Whale's at the bottom of it. Well, well, so be it! Can't be
helped! All right! Give way, men! It ain't the White Whale to-day! Give
way! Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical
instant as the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not
unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in

some of the ship's company; but Archy's fancied discovery having some
time previous got abroad among them, though indeed not credited then,
this had in some small measure prepared them for the event. It took off
the extreme edge of their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb's
confident way of accounting for their appearance, they were for the
time freed from superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left
abundant room for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's
precise agency in the matter from the beginning. For me, I silently
recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod
during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of
the unaccountable Elijah. Meantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his
officers, having sided the furthest to windward, was still ranging
ahead of the other boats; a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew
was pulling him. those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel
and whale-bone; like five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular
strokes of strength, which periodically started the boat along the
water like a horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As
for Fedallah, who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown
aside his black jacket, and displayed his naked chest with the whole
part of his body above the gunwale, clearly cut against the alternating
depressions of the watery horizon; while at the other end of the boat
Ahab, with one

arm, like a fencer's, thrown half backward into the air, as if to
counterbalance any tendency to trip: Ahab was seen steadily managing
his steering oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale
had torn him.

All at once the out-stretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then
remained fixed, while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously
peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three
spread boats in the rear paused on their way. The whales had
irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly
discernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab
had observed it. Every man look out along his oars! cried Starbuck.
Thou, Queequeg, stand up! Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised
box in the bow, the savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager
eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last been descried.
Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also
triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was
seen coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of
his chip of a craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.
Not very far distant Flask's boat was also lying breathlessly still;
its commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a
stout sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above
the level of the stern platform. it is used for catching turns with the
whale line. Its top is not more spacious than the palm of a man's hand,
and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perched at the
mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks. But little
King-Post was small and short, and at the same time little King-Post
was full of a large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead
stand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post. I can't see three
seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to that. Upon this,
Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way, swiftly
slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders for
a pedestal.

Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount? That I will, and thank ye
very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you fifty feet taller. Whereupon
planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the boat, the
gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to Flask's
foot, and then putting Flask's hand on his hearse-plumed head and
bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous fling
landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was Flask
now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a
breast-band to lean against and steady himself by. At any time it is a
strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous habitude of
unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect posture in his
boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously perverse and
cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily perched upon
the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the sight of
little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for
sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of,
barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously
rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired flask seemed a
snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider. Though truly
vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now and then
stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to
the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping
the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and
her seasons for that. Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such
far-gazing solicitudes. The whales might have made one of their regular
soundings, not a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were the
case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to
solace the languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his
hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it,
and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had he
ignited his match across the rough sand-paper of his hand, when
Tashtego, his harpooneer,

whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly
dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat,

crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry, Down, down all, and give
way!—there they are! To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a
herring, would have been visible at that moment; nothing but a troubled
bit of greenish white water, and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering
over it, and suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud
from white rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and
tingled, as it were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron.
Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling,

and partially beneath a thin layer of water, also, the whales were
swimming. Seen in advance of all the other indications, the puffs of
vapor they spouted, seemed their forerunning couriers and detached
flying outriders. All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one
spot of troubled water and air. But it bade far to outstrip them; it
flew on and on, as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid
stream from the hills. Pull, pull, my good boys, said Starbuck, in the
lowest possible but intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while
the sharp fixed glance from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow,
almost seemed as two visible needles in two unerring binnacle
compasses. He did not say much to his crew, though, nor did his crew
say anything to him. Only the silence of the boat was at intervals
startlingly pierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh with
command, now soft with entreaty. How different the loud little
King-Post.

Sing out and say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my
thunderbolts! Beach me, beach me on their black backs, boys; only do
that for me, and I'll sign over to you my Martha's Vineyard plantation,
boys; including wife and children, boys. Lay me on—lay me on! O Lord,
Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad: See! see that white water! And
so shouting, he pulled his hat from his head, and stamped up and down
on it; then picking it up, flirted it

far off upon the sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the
boat's stern like a crazed colt from the prairie. Look at that chap
now, philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his unlighted short pipe,
mechanically retained between his teeth, at a short distance, followed
after—He's got fits, that

Flask has. Fits? yes, give him fits—that's the very word—pitch fits
into 'em. Merrily, merrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you
know;—merry's the word. Pull, babes—pull, sucklings—pull, all. But what
the devil are you hurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men.
Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing more. Crack all your backbones,
and bite your knives in two—that's all. Take it easy—why don't ye take
it easy, I say, and burst all your livers and lungs! But what it was
that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of his—these were
words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed light of the
evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may
give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red
murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey. Meanwhile, all
the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of Flask to that
whale, as he called the fictitious monster which he declared to be
incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its tail—these allusions of
his were at times so vivid and life-like, that they would cause some
one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder. But
this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must put out their eyes, and
ram a skewer through their necks; usage pronouncing that they must have
no organs but ears, and no limbs but arms, in these critical moments.
It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the
omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled
along the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless
bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip
for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost
seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the
watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the
top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other
side;—all these, with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and
the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the
ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like
a wild hen after her screaming brood;—all this was thrilling. Not the
raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of
his first battle; not the dead man's ghost encountering

the first unknown phantom in the other world;—neither of these can feel
stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first
time finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the
hunted sperm whale. The dancing white water made by the chase was now
becoming more and more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the
dun cloud-shadows flung upon the sea. The jets of vapor no longer
blended, but tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed
separating their wakes. The boats were pulled more apart; Starbuck
giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward. Our sail was now
set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along; the boat going
with such madness through the water, that the lee oars could scarcely
be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from the row-locks. Soon
we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship nor
boat to be seen. Give way, men, whispered Starbuck, drawing still
further aft the sheet of his sail; there is time to kill a fish yet
before the squall comes. There's white water again!—close to! Spring!
Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted
that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, when
with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: Stand up! and
Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet. Though not one of the
oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them
ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in
the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come;
they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants
stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through
the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected
crests of enraged serpents. That's his hump. There, there, give it to
him! whispered Starbuck. A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat;
it was the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion
came an invisible push from astern, while forward the boat seemed
striking on a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a

gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled
like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as
they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the
squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the
whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped,
the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the
floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled back to our
places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea,

the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing
eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the
bottom of the ocean. The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed
their bucklers together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled
around us like a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we
were burning; immortal in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the
other boats; as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a
flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the
driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night; no
sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to
bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now
the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the
water-proof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite
the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it
to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then,
he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty
forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without
faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. Wet,
drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat, we
lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over the
sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat. Suddenly
Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all
heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by the
storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were dimly
parted by

a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship
at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within a distance
of not much more than its length. Floating on the waves we saw the
abandoned boat, as for one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the
ship's bows like a chip at the base of a cataract; and then the vast
hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more till it came up weltering
astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed against it by the seas, and
were at last taken up and safely landed on board. Ere the squall came
close to, the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to
the ship in good time. The ship had given us up, but was still
cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our perishing,—an
oar or a lance pole.



CHAPTER XLIX. THE HYENA


There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed
affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe

for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly
discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense
but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while
disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and
persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how
knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun
flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of
sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself,
seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side
bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of
wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of
extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so
that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous,
now seems but a part of the general

joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free
and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now
regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its
object. Queequeg, said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to
the deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the
water; Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?
Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he gave me to
understand that such things did often happen. Mr. Stubb, said I,
turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his oil-jacket, was now
calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; Mr. Stubb, I think I have heard
you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief mate, Mr.
Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then, that
going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is
the height of a whaleman's discretion? Certain. I've lowered for whales
from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape Horn. Mr. Flask, said I, turning
to little King-Post, who was standing close by; you are experienced in
these things, and I am not. Will you tell me whether it is an
unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his
own back pulling himself back-foremost into death's jaws? Can't you
twist that smaller? said Flask.

Yes, that's the law. I should like to see a boat's crew backing water
up to a whale face foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint
for squint, mind that! here then, from three impartial witnesses, i had
a deliberate statement of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that
squalls and capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the
deep, were matters of common occurrence in this kind of life;
considering that at the superlatively critical instant of going on to
the whale I must resign my life into the hands of him who steered the
boat—oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his
impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own
frantic stampings; considering that the particular disaster to our own
particular boat was chiefly to be

imputed to Starbuck's driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a
squall,

and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his
great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to this
uncommonly prudent Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a
devil's chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all
things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and make a
rough draft of my will.

Queequeg, said I, come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor, and
legatee. It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be
tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people
in the world more fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in
my nautical life that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was
concluded upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was
rolled away from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live
would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection;
a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might
be. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest.
I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a
clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault. now
then, thought i, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock, here
goes a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the devil
fetch the hindmost.



CHAPTER L. AHAB'S BOAT AND CREW. FEDALLAH


Who would have thought it, Flask! cried Stubb; if I had but one leg you
would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with
my timber toe. Oh! he's a wonderful old man! I don't think it so
strange, after all, on that account, said

Flask. If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different
thing. That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of
the other left, you know. I don't know that, my little man; I never yet
saw him kneel. Among whale-wise people it has often been argued
whether, considering the paramount importance of his life to the
success of the voyage, it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize
that life in the active perils of the chase. So Tamerlane's soldiers
often argued with tears in their eyes, whether that invaluable life of
his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight. But with Ahab
the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that with two legs
man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger; considering that
the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary
difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a
peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter
a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of the
Pequod must have plainly thought not. Ahab well knew that although his
friends at home would think little of his entering a boat in certain
comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the chase, for the sake of being
near the scene of action and giving his orders in person, yet for
Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him as a regular
headsman in the hunt—above all for Captain Ahab to be supplied with
five extra men, as that same boat's crew, he well knew that such
generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod.
Therefore he had not solicited a boat's crew from them, nor had he in
any way hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken
private measures of his own touching all that matter. Until Cabaco's
published discovery, the sailors had little foreseen it, though to be
sure when, after being a little while out of port, all hands had
concluded the customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service;
when some time after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring
himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his own hands

for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even
solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the

line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all
this was observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an
extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it
better withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the
anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat,
as it is sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for
bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it
was observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee
fixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the
carpenter's chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a
little there; all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and
curiosity at the time. But almost everybody supposed that this
particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to
the ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his
intention to hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition
did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat's crew
being assigned to that boat. now, with the subordinate phantoms, what
wonder remained soon waned away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane.
Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange
nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to
man these floating outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often
pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea
on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whale-boats, canoes, blown-off Japanese
junks, and what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and
step down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not
create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle. But be all this as
it may, certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms soon found
their place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct
from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery
to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this, by what sort
of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with Ahab's
peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted
influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even authority over
him; all this none knew. But one cannot sustain

an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as
civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide
among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles
to the east of the continent—those

insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these
modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of
earth's primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a
distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he
came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the
moon why they were created and to what end; when though, according to
genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the
devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours.



CHAPTER LI. THE SPIRIT-SPOUT


Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off
the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of
the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery
locality, southerly from St. Helena. It was while gliding through these
latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves
rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing
seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude: on such
a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white
bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed
some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea. Fedallah first
descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to
mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same
precision as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of whales were
seen by night, not one whaleman

in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what
emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at
such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But
when, after spending his uniform interval there for several successive
nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence,
his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet,
every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit
had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. There she
blows! Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered
more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. for though it was
a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously
exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a
lowering. Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab
commanded the t'gallant sails and royals to be set,

and every stunsail spread. The best man in the ship must take the helm.
Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled down
before the wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the
taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant,
hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed
along, as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her—one to
mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal
goal. And had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have
thought that in him also two different things were warring. While his
one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his
dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old

man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every
eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no
more seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a
second time. This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing,
when, some days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again
announced: again it was descried by all; but upon making sail to
overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it had never been. And so
it served us night after night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at
it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight,

or starlight, as the case might be; disappearing again for one whole
day, or two days, or three; and somehow seeming at every distinct
repetition to be advancing still further and further in our van, this
solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on. Nor with the immemorial
superstition of their race, and in accordance with the
preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested the
Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever
and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however far apart
latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one
self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned,
too, a

sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were
treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might
turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage
seas. These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a
wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in
which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a
devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so
wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful
errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow. But,
at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling
around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are
there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and
gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver
chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate
vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than
before. Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and
thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable
sea-ravens. And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these
birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately
clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting,
uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit
roosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still
unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a
conscience; and the great

mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering
it had bred. Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape
Tormentoto, as called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious
silences that before had attended us, we found ourselves launched into
this tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowls
and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any
haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon. But calm,
snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain of feathers to
the sky; still beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet would at
times be descried. During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab,
though assuming for the time the almost continual command of the
drenched and dangerous deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more
seldom than ever addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these,
after everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be
done but passively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and
crew become practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into
its accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab
for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an
occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very
eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part of
the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,
stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to
guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened
belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by
painted sailors in

wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness
of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before
the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in
the bowlines; still wordless ahab stood up to the blast. Even when
wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that repose in
his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one
night going down into the cabin to mark how the

barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his
floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from
which he had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the
unremoved hat and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of
those charts of tides and currents which have previously been spoken
of. His lantern swung from his

tightly clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown
back so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the
tell-tale that swung from a beam in the ceiling. Terrible old man!
thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this gale, still thou
steadfastly eyest thy purpose.



CHAPTER LII. THE ALBATROSS


South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising
ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross)
by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the
fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro
in the far ocean fisheries—a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the
skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral
appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all
her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred
over with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it
was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They
seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment
that had survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops
nailed to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea;

and though, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six
men in the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have
leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet,
those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said
not one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was
being heard from below. Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale? But as
the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the act
of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand into
the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make
himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the
distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod
were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first
mere mention of the White Whale's name to another ship, Ahab for a
moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat
to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking
advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and
knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and
shortly bound home, he loudly hailed—Ahoy there! This is the Pequod,
bound round the world! Tell them to address all future letters to the
Pacific ocean! and this time three years, if I am not at home, tell
them to address them to——-At that moment the two wakes were fairly
crossed, and instantly, then, in accordance with their singular ways,
shoals of small harmless fish, that for some days before had been
placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what seemed shuddering
fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with the stranger's flanks.
Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before
have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest
trifles capriciously carry meanings. Swim away from me, do ye? murmured
Ahab, gazing over into the water. There seemed but little in the words,
but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old
man had ever before evinced. But turning to the steersman, who thus far
had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish

her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,—Up helm! Keep her off
round the world! Round the world! There is much in that sound to
inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation
conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we
started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time
before us. Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we
could for ever reach new distances,

and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands
of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit
of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon
phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while
chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren
mazes or midway leave us whelmed.

The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the
compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of
the course of the ship.



CHAPTER LIII. THE GAM


The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had
spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had this
not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded
her—judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions—if so it had
been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer
to the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, he cared not
to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain, except he
could contribute some of that information he so absorbingly sought. But
all this might remain inadequately estimated, were not something said
here of the peculiar usages of whaling-vessels when meeting each other
in foreign seas, and especially on a common cruising-ground. If two
strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the equally
desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if

casually encountering each other in such inhospitable wilds, these
twain, for the life of them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and
stopping for a moment to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting
down for a while and resting in concert: then, how much more natural
that upon the illimitable Pine

Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels descrying
each other at the ends of the earth—off lone Fanning's Island, or the
far away King's Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under such
circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, but come
into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And especially
would this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels owned
in one seaport, and whose captains, officers, and not a few of the men
are personally known to each other; and consequently, have all sorts of
dear domestic things to talk about. For the long absent ship, the
outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on board; at any rate, she will
be sure to let her have some papers of a date a year or two later than
the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files. And in return for
that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the latest whaling
intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a
thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this will
hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the
cruising-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent from
home. for one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some
third, and now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for
the people of the

ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and
have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the
sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar
congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared
privations and perils. Nor would difference of country make any very
essential difference; that is, so long as both parties speak one
language, as is the case with Americans and English. Though, to be
sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings do not
very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort
of shyness between them; for your Englishman is rather

reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in
anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a
kind of metropolitan superiority over the American whalers; regarding
the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a
sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority in the English whalemen
does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees
in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English,
collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the
English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to
heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles himself.
So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the
whalers have most reason to be sociable—and they are so. Whereas, some
merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic, will
oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition,
mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies
in Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism
upon each other's rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at
sea, they first go through such a string of silly bowings and
scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be
much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As
touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry,
they run away from each other as soon as possible.

And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other's cross-bones,
the first hail is—How many skulls?—the same way that whalers hail—How
many barrels? And that question once answered, pirates straightway
steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don't
like to see overmuch of each other's villanous likenesses. But look at
the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy
whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any
sort of decent weather? She has a Gam, a thing so utterly unknown to
all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by
chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat
gamesome stuff about spouters and blubber-boilers,

and such like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen,
and also all

Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a
scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be
hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to
know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it.
It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the
gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he
has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude,
that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that
assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on. but what is a gam?
you might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of
dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson never attained to
that erudition; Noah Webster's ark does not hold it.

Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in
constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly
it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon.
With that view, let me learnedly define it. Gam. Noun—A social meeting
of two (or more) Whale-ships, generally on a cruising-ground; when,
after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats' crews: the two
captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two
chief mates on the other. There is another little item about Gamming
which must not be forgotten here. All professions have their own little
peculiarities of detail; so has the whale fishery. In a pirate,
man-of-war, or slave ship, when the captain is rowed anywhere in his
boat, he always sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable, sometimes
cushioned seat there, and often steers himself with a pretty little

milliner's tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons. But the
whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no
tiller at all. High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled
about the water on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs.
And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such
effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a

complete boat's crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer
or harpooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon
the occasion, and the captain, having no

place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pine
tree. And often you will notice that being conscious of the eyes of the
whole visible world resting on him from the sides of the two ships,
this standing captain is all alive to the importance of sustaining his
dignity by maintaining his legs. nor is this any very easy matter; for
in his rear is the immense projecting steering oar hitting him now and
then in the small of his back, the after-oar reciprocating by rapping
his knees in front. He is thus completely wedged before and behind, and
can only expand himself sideways by settling down on his stretched
legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far to
topple him, because length of foundation is nothing without
corresponding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two poles, and you
cannot stand them up. Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of
the world's riveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this straddling
captain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particle by catching
hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire,
buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers'
pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he
carries them there for ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred
instances, well authenticated ones too, where the captain has been
known for an uncommonly critical moment or two, in a sudden squall
say—to seize hold of the nearest oarsman's hair, and hold on there like
grim death.



CHAPTER LIV. THE TOWN-HO'S STORY


( As told at the Golden Inn.) The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery
region round about there, is much like some noted four corners of a
great highway, where you meet more travellers than in any other part.
It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another
homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned
almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us
strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White
Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's
story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain
wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of
God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter
circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may
be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never
reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of
the story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the
private property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of
whom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of
secresy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and
revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could
not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did
this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full
knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were
they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among
themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast.
Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as
publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now
proceed to put on lasting record. For my humor's sake, I shall preserve
the style in which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of
my Spanish friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled
piazza of the Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons,
Pedro and Sebastian, were on the closer terms with me; and hence the
interluding questions they occasionally put, and which are duly
answered at the time. Some two years prior to my first learning the
events which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho,
Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very
many days' sail westward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She
was somewhere to the northward of the Line. One morning upon handling
the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more
water in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed
her, gentlemen. But the captain, having some unusual reason for
believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and
therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then
considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it
after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy
weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working
at the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more
days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it
sensibly increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the
captain, making all sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the
islands, there to have his hull hove out and repaired. Though no small
passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance favored, he did
not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way, because his
pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at them, those
six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free; never mind
if the leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this
passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all
but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port without the
occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal
overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly
provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo.
"Lakeman!—Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?" said
Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass. On the eastern
shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but—I crave your courtesy—may be, you
shall soon hear further of all that. Now, gentlemen, in square-sail
brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as large and stout as any that
ever sailed out of your old Callao to far manilla; this lakeman, in the
land-locked heart of our America, had yet been nurtured by all those
agrarian freebooting impressions popularly connected with the open
ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate, those grand fresh-water
seas of ours—Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and
Michigan,—possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's
noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of
climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the
Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by two great
contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long maritime
approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, dotted
all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon by batteries,
and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have heard the
fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their
beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out
their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient
and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines
of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric
beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to
Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and
Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the
full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer,
and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as
direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks
are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full
many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen,
though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean
nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney,
though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket
beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long
followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was
he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods
seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives. Yet
was this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this
Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by
inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human
recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this
Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he
had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and
Steelkilt—but, gentlemen, you shall hear. It was not more than a day or
two at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven, that
the Town-Ho's leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require
an hour or more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled
and civilized ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think
little of pumping their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy
night, should the officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that
respect, the probability would be that he and his shipmates would never
again remember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the
bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the
westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep
clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of
considerable length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible
coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only
when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those
waters, some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel
a little anxious. Much this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when
her leak was found gaining once more, there was in truth some small
concern manifested by several of her company; especially by radney the
mate. He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home
anew, and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose,
was as little of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of
nervous apprehensiveness touching his own person as any fearless,
unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can conveniently
imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude about
the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only on
account of his being a part owner in her. So when they were working
that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness
slily going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually
overflowed by the rippling clear water; clear as any mountain spring,
gentlemen—that bubbling from the pumps ran across the deck, and poured
itself out in steady spouts at the lee scupper-holes. Now, as you well
know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional world of
ours—watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command over his
fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his superior in
general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives an
unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance he will
pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap
of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all
events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman,
and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last
viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in
him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born
son to Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule;
yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and
Steelkilt knew it. Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at
the pump with the rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but
unawed, went on with his gay banterings. "Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's
a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of ye, and let's have a taste.
By the Lord, it's worth bottling! I tell ye what, men, old Rad's
investment must go for it! he had best cut away his part of the hull
and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish only began the job;
he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters, saw-fish, and
file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of 'em are now hard at
work cutting and slashing at the bottom; making improvements, I
suppose. If old Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump overboard and
scatter 'em. They're playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him.
But he's a simple old soul,—Rad, and a beauty too. Boys, they say the
rest of his property is invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd
give a poor devil like me the model of his nose." "Damn your eyes!
what's that pump stopping for?" roared Radney, pretending not to have
heard the sailors' talk. "Thunder away at it!"

"Aye, aye, sir," said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. "Lively, boys,
lively, now!" And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines;
the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping
of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life's
utmost energies. Quitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band,
the Lakeman went forward all panting, and sat himself down on the
windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the
profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen,
that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally
exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding
along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down
the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters
consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large. Now, gentlemen,
sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all
times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has
been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the
time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the
instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not
willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels
this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys
there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that
had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the
most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned
captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should have been freed
from any trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties,
such being the case with his comrades. I mention all these particulars
so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood between the
two men. But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was
almost as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney
had spat in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will
understand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman
fully comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat
still for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's
malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him
and the slow-match silently burning along towards them; as he
instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness
to stir up the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being—a
repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even when
aggrieved—this nameless phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over
Steelkilt. Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the
bodily exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that
sweeping the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. and
then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads
as the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had
done little or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath,
in a most domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating
his command; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an
uplifted cooper's club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near
by. Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps,
for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating
Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow
still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he
remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney
shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding
him to do his bidding. Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the
windlass, steadily followed by the mate with his menacing hammer,
deliberately repeated his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that
his forbearance had not the slightest effect, by an awful and
unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish
and infatuated man; but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two
went once slowly round the windlass; when, resolved at last no longer
to retreat, bethinking him that he had now forborne as much as
comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus
spoke to the officer: "Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that
hammer away, or look to yourself." But the predestinated mate coming
still closer to him, where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy
hammer within an inch of his teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of
insufferable maledictions. Retreating not the thousandth part of an
inch; stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his
glance, steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly
drawing it back, told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his
cheek he (Steelkilt) would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had
been branded for the slaughter by the gods. Immediately the hammer
touched the cheek; the next instant the lower jaw of the mate was stove
in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale. Ere the
cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays leading far
aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their mast-heads. They
were both Canallers. "Canallers!" cried Don Pedro, "We have seen many
whale-ships in our harbors, but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon:
who and what are they?" "Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to
our grand Erie Canal. You must have heard of it." "Nay, Senor;
hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we know
but little of your vigorous North." "Aye? Well then, Don, refill my
cup. Your chicha's very fine; and ere proceeding further I will tell ye
what our Canallers are; for such information may throw side-light upon
my story." For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the
entire breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous
cities and most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited
swamps, and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by
billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great
forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by
happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of
those noble Mohawk counties; and especially, by rows of snow-white
chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one continual
stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's your true
Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your pagans; where you ever find them,
next door to you; under the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronizing
lee of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of
your metropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of
justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities. "Is
that a friar passing?" said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the
crowded plazza, with humorous concern. "Well for our northern friend,
Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima," laughed Don Sebastian.
"Proceed, Senor." "A moment! Pardon!" cried another of the company. "In
the name of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor,
that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting
present Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not
bow and look surprised; you know the proverb all along this
coast—Corrupt as Lima. It but bears out your saying, too; churches more
plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open—and Corrupt as Lima.
So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed
evangelist, St. Mark!—St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I
refill; now, you pour out again." Freely depicted in his own vocation,
gentlemen, the Canaller would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly
and picturesquely wicked is he. Like Mark Antony, for days and days
along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly
toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon
the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The
brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and
gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling
innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swart visage and
bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own
canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I thank
him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the
prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has
as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a
wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life
is, is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery
contains so many of its most finished graduates, and that scarce any
race of mankind, except Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our
whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish the curiousness of this
matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and young men born
along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the
sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field, and
recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas. "I see! I
see! " impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha upon his
silvery ruffles. "No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I had
thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold
and holy as the hills.—But the story." I left off, gentlemen, where the
Lakeman shook the back-stay. Hardly had he done so, when he was
surrounded by the three junior mates and the four harpooneers, who all
crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like baleful
comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag
their man out of it towards the forecastle. Others of the sailors
joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while
standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down with
a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious
scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck. At intervals, he
ran close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into
the heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his
resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them
all; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily
slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass,
these sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade. "come
out of that, ye pirates!" roared the captain, now menacing them with a
pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. "Come out of
that, ye cut-throats!" Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding
up and down there, defied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the
captain to understand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt's) death would be
the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in
his heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little
desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to
their duty. "Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?" demanded
their ringleader. "Turn to! turn to!—I make no promise;—to your duty!
Do you want to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn
to!" and he once more raised a pistol. "Sink the ship?" cried
Steelkilt. "Aye, let her sink. Not a man of us turns to, unless you
swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What say ye, men?" turning
to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response. The Lakeman now
patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye on the Captain,
and jerking out such sentences as these:—"It's not our fault; we didn't
want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy's business; he
might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I
believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those
mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those
handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the
word; don't be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to turn to; treat us
decently, and we're your men; but we won't be flogged." "Turn to! I
make no promises, turn to, I say!" "Look ye, now," cried the Lakeman,
flinging out his arm towards him. "there are a few of us here (and I am
one of them) who have shipped for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you well
know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so
we don't want a row; it's not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we
are ready to work, but we won't be flogged." "Turn to!" roared the
Captain. Steelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:—"I tell
you what it is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such
a shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us;
but till you say the word about not flogging us, we won't do a hand's
turn." "Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I'll keep ye there
till ye're sick of it. Down ye go." "Shall we?" cried the ringleader to
his men. Most of them were against it; but at length, in obedience to
Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark den, growlingly
disappearing, like bears into a cave. As the Lakeman's bare head was
just level with the planks, the Captain and his posse leaped the
barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide of the scuttle, planted
their group of hands upon it, and loudly called for the steward to
bring the heavy brass padlock, belonging to the companion-way. Then
opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something down the
crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them—ten in number—leaving on
deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained neutral. All night
a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and aft,
especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which
last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking
through the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace;
the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps,
whose clinking and clanking at intervals through the dreary night
dismally resounded through the ship. at sunrise the captain went
forward, and knocking on the deck, summoned the prisoners to work; but
with a yell they refused. Water was then lowered down to them, and a
couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it; when again turning
the key upon them and pocketing it, the Captain returned to the
quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days this was repeated; but on
the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was
heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly four men
burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. The
fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to
some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender
at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to
the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his
babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning
three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate
arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left. "Better
turn to, now?" said the Captain with a heartless jeer. "Shut us up
again, will ye!" cried Steelkilt. "Oh! certainly," said the Captain and
the key clicked. It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the
defection of seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking
voice that had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in
a place as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt
proposed to the two Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with
him, to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison;
and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy
implements with a handle at each end) run a muck from the bowsprit to
the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize
the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined
him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that den. but
the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two; they
swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad thing, for
anything in short but a surrender. And what was more, they each
insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make the
rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely objected,
reserving that priority for himself; particularly as his two comrades
would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and both of them
could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one man at a time.
And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must come out.
Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own
separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece
of treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be
the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; and
thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might
merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead
them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of
villany, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their
leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in
three sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with
cords; and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight. Thinking murder at
hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and all his armed
mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a few minutes the
scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling
ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who at
once claimed the honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe for
murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along the deck like
dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the mizen rigging,
like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till morning. "Damn
ye," cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them, "the vultures
would not touch ye, ye villains!" At sunrise he summoned all hands; and
separating those who had rebelled from those who had taken no part in
the mutiny, he told the former that he had a good mind to flog them all
round—thought, upon the whole, he would do so—he ought to—justice
demanded it; but for the present, considering their timely surrender,
he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly
administered in the vernacular. "But as for you, ye carrion rogues,"
turning to the three men in the rigging—"for you, I mean to mince ye up
for the try-pots;" and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his
might to the backs of the two traitors, till they yelled no more, but
lifelessly hung their heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are
drawn. "My wrist is sprained with ye!" he cried, at last; "but there is
still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up.
Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for
himself." For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion
of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said
in a sort of hiss, "What I say is this—and mind it well—-if you flog
me, I murder you!" "Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me"—and the
Captain drew off with the rope to strike. "Best not," hissed the
Lakeman. "But I must,"—and the rope was once more drawn back for the
stroke. Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the
Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the
deck rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his
rope, said,"I won't do it—let him go—cut him down: d'ye hear?" But as
the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale man, with a
bandaged head, arrested them—Radney the chief mate. Ever since the
blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the tumult on
the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole scene.
Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak; but
mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the
captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his
pinioned foe. "You are a coward!" hissed the Lakeman. "So I am, but
take that." The mate was in the very act of striking, when another hiss
stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing no more, made good
his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat, whatever that might have been.
The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned to, and,
sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as before.
Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor
was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up,
besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.
Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own
instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still, no
sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed,
that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain
the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the
ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the
speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing—namely,
not to sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For,
spite of her leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still
maintained her mast-heads, and her captain was just as willing to lower
for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the
cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his
berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the
vital jaw of the whale. But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen
to adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own
counsel (at least till all was over) concerning his own proper and
private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles of his
heart. He was in Radney the chief mate's watch; and as if the
infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom, after
the scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of
the captain, upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this,
and one or two other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the
plan of his revenge. During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way
of sitting on the bulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm
upon the gunwale of the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above
the ship's side. In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes
dozed. There was a considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship,
and down between this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and
found that his next trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock,
in the morning of the third day from that in which he had been
betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding
something very carefully in his watches below. "What are you making
there?" said a shipmate. "What do you think? what does it look like?"
"Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me." "Yes,
rather oddish," said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length before
him; "but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough
twine,—have you any?" But there was none in the forecastle. "Then I
must get some from old Rad;" and he rose to go aft. "You don't mean to
go a begging to him!" said a sailor. "Why not? Do you think he won't do
me a turn, when it's to help himself in the end, shipmate?" and going
to the mate, he looked at him quietly, and asked him for some twine to
mend his hammock. It was given him—neither twine nor lanyard were seen
again; but the next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled
from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the
coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick
at the silent helm—nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave
always ready dug to the seaman's hand—that fatal hour was then to come;
and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark
and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in. But,
gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed he
had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the
avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in
to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have
done. It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the
second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid
Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted
out, "There she rolls! there she rolls!" Jesu, what a whale! It was
Moby Dick. "Moby Dick!" cried Don Sebastian; "St. Dominic! Sir sailor,
but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?" "A very
white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;—but that
would be too long a story." "How? how!" cried all the young Spaniards,
crowding. "Nay, Dons, Dons—nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me
get more into the air, Sirs." "The chicha! the chicha!" cried Don
Pedro; "our vigorous friend looks faint;—fill up his empty glass!" No
need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.—Now, gentlemen, so suddenly
perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship—forgetful of
the compact among the crew—in the excitement of the moment, the
Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for
the monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly
beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy. "The
White Whale—the White Whale!" was the cry from captain, mates, and
harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumors, were all anxious to
capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed
askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass,
that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a
living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality
pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out
before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of
the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him,
while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or
slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats
were lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely
with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a
stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney
sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat.
And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back.
Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding
foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat
struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the
standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back,
the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was
tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck
out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that
veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But
the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer
between his jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again,
and went down. Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the
Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the
whirlpool; calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a
sudden, terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his
knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some
distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red
woollen shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four
boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly
disappeared. In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port—a savage,
solitary place—where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by
the Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremast-men deliberately
deserted among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large
double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other
harbor. The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain
called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of
heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance
over their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated,
both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they
underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in
such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them
in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he
anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his
two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning
the Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man
with him, and setting the sail of his best whale-boat, steered straight
before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a
reinforcement to his crew. On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe
was descried, which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He
steered away from it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon
the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him
under water. the captain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow
of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him
that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in
bubbles and foam. "What do you want of me? cried the captain. "Where
are you bound? and for what are you bound?" demanded Steelkilt; "no
lies." "I am bound to Tahiti for more men." "Very good. Let me board
you a moment—I come in peace." With that he leaped from the canoe, swam
to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the
captain. "Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after
me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on
yonder island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings
strike me!" "A pretty scholar," laughed the Lakeman."Adios, Senor!" and
leaping into the sea, he swam back to his comrades. Watching the boat
till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa-nut
trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived at Tahiti,
his own place of destination. There, luck befriended him; two ships
were about to sail for France, and were providentially in want of
precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They embarked;
and so for ever got the start of their former captain, had he been at
all minded to work them legal retribution. Some ten days after the
French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived, and the captain was forced
to enlist some of the more civilized Tahitians, who had been somewhat
used to the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he returned with
them to his vessel; and finding all right there, again resumed his
cruisings. Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the
island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which
refuses to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale
that destroyed him. "Are you through?" said Don Sebastian, quietly. "I
am, Don." "Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own
convictions, this story is in substance really true? It is so passing
wonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me
if I seem to press." "Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all
join in Don Sebastian's suit," cried the company, with exceeding
interest. "Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn,
gentlemen?" "Nay," said Don Sebastian; "but I know a worthy priest near
by, who will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well
advised? this may grow too serious." "Will you be so good as to bring
the priest also, Don?" "Though there are no Auto-da-Fes in Lima now,"
said one of the company to another: "I fear our sailor friend runs risk
of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I
see no need for this." "Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian;
but may I also beg that you will be particular in procuring the largest
sized Evangelists you can." "This is the priest, he brings you the
Evangelists," said Don Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and
solemn figure. "Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further
into the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it."
"So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye,
gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be
true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I
have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney."

The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head,
still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.



CHAPTER LV. OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES


I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the
eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored
alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there.
It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious
imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day
confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the
world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong. It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial
delusions will be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian
sculptures. For ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when
on the marble panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on
shields, medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales
of chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St. George's;
ever since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed,
not only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific
presentations of him. Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant
portrait anyways purporting to be the whale's, is to be found in the
famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that
in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the
trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were
prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being. No wonder
then, that in some sort our noble profession

of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale
referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the
incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the
Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so
as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him
is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than
the broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes. But go to the old
Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter's portrait of this
fish; for he succeeds no better than the

antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing
Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model
of such a strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the
same scene in his own Perseus Descending, make out one whit better. The
huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface,
scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its
back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows are
rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' Gate leading from the Thames
by water into the Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus whales of the
old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as depicted in the prints of old
Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said of these? As for
the book-binder's whale winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a
descending anchor—as stamped and gilded on the backs and title-pages of
many books both old and new—that is a very picturesque but purely
fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on
antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless
call this book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so
intended when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an
old Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the
Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a
comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a
species of the Leviathan. In the vignettes and other embellishments of
some ancient books you will at times meet with very curious touches at
the whale, where all manner of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and
cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his

unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the original edition of the

Advancement of Learning you will find some curious whales. But quitting
all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those pictures of
leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by those who
know. In old Harris's collection of voyages there are some plates of
whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A. D. , entitled A
Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter
Peterson of Friesland, master. In one of those plates the whales, like
great rafts of logs, are represented lying among ice-isles, with white
bears running over their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious
blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes.
Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain
Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled

A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of
extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries. In this book is an outline
purporting to be a Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by
scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, , and hoisted on
deck. I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for the
benefit of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let me say
that it has an eye which applied, according to the accompanying scale,
to a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale a
bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not
give us Jonah looking out of that eye! Nor are the most conscientious
compilations of Natural History for the benefit of the young and
tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake. Look at that popular
work Goldsmith's Animated Nature. In the abridged London edition of

, there are plates of an alleged whale and a narwhale. I do not wish to
seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated
sow;

and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one,
that in this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for
genuine upon any

intelligent public of schoolboys. Then, again, in , Bernard Germain,
Count de Lacepede,

a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book,
wherein are several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan.
All these are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or
Greenland whale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a
long experienced man as touching that species, declares not to have its
counterpart in nature. But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this
blundering business was reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier,
brother to the famous Baron. In , he published a Natural History of
Whales, in which he gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale.
Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide
for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier's
Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had
the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he
derived that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific
predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic
abortions; that is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively
lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers
inform us. As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging
over the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are
generally Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage;
breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of
mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue
paint. but these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so
very surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings
have been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct
as a drawing of a wrecked ship,

with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in
all its undashed pride of hull and spars. Though elephants have stood
for their full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly
floated himself for his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty
and significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and
afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched
line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a thing eternally
impossible for mortal man to hoist

him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and
undulations. And, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of
contour between a young sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian
Leviathan; yet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales
hoisted to a ship's deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like,
limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil
himself could not catch. But it may be fancied, that from the naked
skeleton of the stranded whale, accurate hints may be derived touching
his true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more curious things
about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very little idea of his
general shape. Though Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for
candelabra in the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys
the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's
other leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could
be inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones. In fact, as the
great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same
relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the insect does to
the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is
strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will be
incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in the side
fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the human
hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the
index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently
lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial
covering. However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us, said
humorous Stubb one day, he can never be truly said to handle us without
mittens. For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you
must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in
the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait
may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any
very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of
finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only
mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living
contour, is by

going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of
being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you
had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this
Leviathan.



CHAPTER LVI. OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES, AND THE TRUE


PICTURES OF WHALING SCENES In connexion with the monstrous pictures of
whales, I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more
monstrous stories of them which are to be found in certain books, both
ancient and modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris,
Cuvier, etc. But I pass that matter by. i know of only four published
outlines of the great Sperm

Whale; Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's. In the
previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins's is
far better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best. All
Beale's drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in
the picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second
chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no
doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is
admirably correct and life-like in its general effect. Some of the
Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour;
but they are wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though. Of the
Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they are
drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has but
one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because it
is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you can derive
anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living
hunters. But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some
details not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling

scenes to be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well
executed, and taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they
represent attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving
a noble Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen
beneath the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high
in the air upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The
prow of the boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing
upon the monster's spine; and standing in that prow, for that one
single incomputable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded
by the incensed boiling spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping,
as if from a precipice. The action of the whole thing is wonderfully
good and true. The half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened sea;
the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads
of the swimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting
expressions of affright; while in the black stormy distance the ship is
bearing down upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the
anatomical details of this whale, but let that pass; since, for the
life of me, I could not draw so good a one. In the second engraving,
the boat is in the act of drawing alongside the barnacled flank of a
large running Right Whale, that rolls his black weedy bulk in the sea
like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian cliffs. His jets are
erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so abounding a smoke in
the chimney, you would think there must be a brave supper cooking in
the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small crabs,
shell-fish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale
sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the
thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of
tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock
in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean
steamer. Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; but behind, in
admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the
drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of
a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture lazily
hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole.

Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he
was either practically conversant with his subject, or else
marvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the
lads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings in Europe,
and where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing
commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the
beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great
battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern
Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a
charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that
gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery. The natural aptitude
of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be
peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of their
whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England's experience in the
fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they
have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only finished
sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt.
For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen seem
entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things, such
as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of
effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a
pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after
giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four
delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series
of classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels;
and with the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the
inspection of a shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified
Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager
(I honor him for a veteran), but in so important a matter it was
certainly an oversight not to have procured for every crystal a sworn
affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace. In addition to
those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other French
engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes himself h.
durand. one of them, though not precisely

adapted to our present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other
accounts. It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a
French whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on
board; the loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms
in the background, both drooping together in the breezeless air. The
effect is very fine, when considered with reference to its presenting
the hardy fishermen under one of their few aspects of oriental repose.
The other engraving is quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon
the open sea, and in the very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a
Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act of cutting-in) hove over
to the monster as if to a quay; and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from
this scene of activity, is about giving chase to whales in the
distance. The harpoons and lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen
are just setting the mast in its hole; while from a sudden roll of the
sea, the little craft stands half-erect out of the water, like a
rearing horse. From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling
whale is going up like the smoke over a village of smithies; and to
windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains,
seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.



CHAPTER LVII. OF WHALES IN PAINT; IN TEETH; IN WOOD; IN


SHEET-IRON; IN STONE; IN MOUNTAINS; IN STARS On Tower-hill, as you go
down to the London docks, you may have seen a crippled beggar (or
kedger, as the sailors say) holding a painted board before him,
representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg. There are three
whales and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed to contain the
missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched by the
jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years, they tell me, has
that man held up that picture, and exhibited

that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification
has now come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever
published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a
stump as any you will find in the western clearings. But, though for
ever mounted on that stump, never a stump-speech does the poor whaleman
make; but, with downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating his own
amputation. Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New
Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales
and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm
Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and
other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous
little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough
material, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little
boxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the
skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with their
jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor,
they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner's
fancy. Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores
a man to that condition in which God placed him, i. e. what is called
savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I
myself am a savage; owning no allegiance but to the King of the
Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him. Now, one of
the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic hours, is
his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian war-club or
spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is
as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with
but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark's tooth, that miraculous
intricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has cost steady
years of steady application. As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the
white sailor-savage. With the same marvellous patience, and with the
same single shark's tooth, of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve
you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite as workmanlike, but as close

packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's
shield; and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints
of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer. Wooden whales, or whales
cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea
war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of American
whalers. Some of them are done with much accuracy. At some old
gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by the tail
for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy, the
anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom
remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned
churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for weather-cocks;
but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all intents and
purposes so labelled with Hands off! you cannot examine them closely
enough to decide upon their merit. In bony, ribby regions of the earth,
where at the base of high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in
fantastic groupings upon the plain, you will often discover images as
of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which
of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges. Then,
again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually
girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky
point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales
defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough
whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you wish to
return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact
intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else so
chance-like are such observations of the hills, that your precise,
previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery; like the
Solomon islands, which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed
Mendanna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them. Nor when
expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to

trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of
them; as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw
armies locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I
chased Leviathan round and round

the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined
him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the
Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond
the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish. With a frigate's
anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I
could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the
fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped
beyond my mortal sight!



CHAPTER LVIII. BRIT


Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows
of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale
largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us,

so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and
golden wheat. On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen,
who, secure from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with
open jaws sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the
fringing fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in
that manner separated from the water that escaped at the lip. As
morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their
scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these
monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving
behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.

But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at
all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when
they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms
looked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in
the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance will
sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing them
to be such, taking them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil;
even so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this species
of the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at last, their
immense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that such
bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with
the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse. Indeed, in other
respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep with the same
feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old
naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are of their
kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the thing,
this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for example,
does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to the
sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any
generic respect be said to bear comparative analogy to him. But though,
to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever
been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though
we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus
sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial
western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal
disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and
hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though
but a moment's consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag
of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future,
that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the
crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the
stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the
continual repetition of these

very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the
sea which aboriginally belongs to it. The first boat we read of,
floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese vengeance had whelmed a whole
world without leaving so much as a widow. That same ocean rolls now;
that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships of last year. Yea, foolish
mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world
it yet covers. Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon
one is not a miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon
the Hebrews, when under the feet of Korah and his company the live
ground opened and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever
sets, but in precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships
and crews. But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to
it, but it is also a fiend to its own offspring; worse than the Persian
host who murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which
itself hath spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle
overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales
against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split
wrecks of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting
and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the
masterless ocean overruns the globe. Consider the subtleness of the
sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for
the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of
azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its
most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many
species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of
the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal
war since the world began. Consider all this; and then turn to this
green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and
the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in
yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in
the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy,
but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!

That part of the sea known among whalemen as the Brazil Banks does not
bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there being
shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable
meadow-like appearance,

caused by the vast drifts of brit continually floating in those
latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.



CHAPTER LIX. SQUID


Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her
way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling
her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering
masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a
plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely,
alluring jet would be seen. But one transparent blue morning, when a
stillness almost preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended
with any stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters
seemed a golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secresy; when
the slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran on; in this
profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by
Daggoo from the main-mast-head. In the distance, a great white mass
lazily rose, and rising higher and higher, and disentangling itself
from the azure, at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slide, new
slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a moment, as slowly it
subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and silently gleamed. It
seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo. Again
the phantom went down, but on re-appearing once more, with a
stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the negro
yelled out—There! there again! there she breaches! right ahead! The
White Whale, the White Whale! Upon this, the seamen rushed to the
yard-arms, as in swarming-time the bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed
in the sultry sun, Ahab stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed
far behind in readiness to wave his orders to the helmsman, cast

his eager glance in the direction indicated aloft by the outstretched
motionless arm of Daggoo. Whether the flitting attendance of the one
still and solitary jet had gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was
now prepared to connect the ideas of mildness and repose with the first
sight of the particular whale he pursued; however this was, or whether
his eagerness betrayed him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner
did he distinctly perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity
he instantly gave orders for lowering. The four boats were soon on the
water; Ahab's in advance, and all swiftly pulling towards their prey.
Soon it went down, and while, with oars suspended, we were awaiting its
reappearance, lo! in the same spot where it sank, once more it slowly
rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we
now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have
hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and
breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water,
innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and
twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any
hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have;
no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated
there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of
life. As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck
still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild
voice exclaimed—Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than
to have seen thee, thou white ghost!

What was it, Sir? said Flask. The great live squid, which they say, few
whale-ships ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it. But
Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel; the
rest as silently following. Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen
in general have connected with the sight of this object, certain it is,
that a glimpse of it being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone
far to invest it with portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that
though one and all of them declare it to be the largest animated thing
in the ocean, yet very few of them have any but

the most vague ideas concerning its true nature and form;
notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to the sperm whale his only
food. For though other species of whales find their food above water,
and may be seen by man in the act of feeding, the spermaceti whale
obtains his whole food in unknown zones below the surface; and only by
inference is it that any one can tell of what, precisely, that food
consists. At times, when closely pursued, he will disgorge what are
supposed to be the detached arms of the squid; some of them thus
exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet in length. They fancy that
the monster to which these arms belonged ordinarily clings by them to
the bed of the ocean; and that the sperm whale, unlike other species,
is supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it. There seems some
ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop Pontoppodan may
ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in which the Bishop
describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with some other
particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond. But much
abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he assigns
it. By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of
cuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would
seem to belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe.



CHAPTER LX. THE LINE


With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as
for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented,
I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line. The
line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly
vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the

case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the
hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself
more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would
the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close
coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning
to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or
strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss. Of late
years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely
superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so
durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I
will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things), is much more
handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark
fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian
to behold. The whale line is only two thirds of an inch in thickness.
At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By
experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one
hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain
nearly equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line
measures something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the
boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a
still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of
densely bedded sheaves, or layers of concentric spiralizations, without
any hollow but the heart, or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of
the cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in
running out, infallibly take somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off,
the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some
harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this business,
carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a
block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all
possible wrinkles and twists. In the English boats two tubs are used
instead of one; the same line being continuously coiled in both tubs.
There is some advantage in this; because these twin-tubs being so small
they fit more readily into the boat, and do not strain it so much;
whereas, the American tub, nearly three feet in diameter and

of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a craft whose
planks are but one half-inch in thickness; for the bottom of the
whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up a considerable
distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated one. When the
painted canvas cover is clapped on the american line-tub, the boat
looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great wedding-cake to
present to the whales. Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end
terminating in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against
the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged
from everything. This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two
accounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an
additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale
should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line
originally attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of
course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to
the other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its
consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common safety's
sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the
boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in
a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there,
for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the
profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find
her again. Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the
line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the logger-head
there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting
crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs
against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they
alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or
grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or
skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From
the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then
passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called
box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way
to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then

attached to the short-warp—the rope which is immediately connected with
the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes
through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail. Thus the
whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and
writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are
involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the
landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes
sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for
the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while
straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown
instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions
be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced
without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in
him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit
accomplish?—Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter
repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over
the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in
hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King
Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death,
with a halter around every neck, as you may say. Perhaps a very little
thought will now enable you to account for those repeated whaling
disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of this man or that
man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the
line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being
seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full
play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It
is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils,
because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way
and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain
self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action,
can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the
all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out. Again: as the
profound calm which only apparently precedes

and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm
itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the
storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds
the fatal powder,

and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as
it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into
actual play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any
other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live
enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks;
but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that
mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if
you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at
heart feel one whit more of

terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and
not a harpoon, by your side.



CHAPTER LXI. STUBB KILLS A WHALE


If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to
Queequeg it was quite a different object. When you see him 'quid, said
the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoisted boat, then you
quick see him 'parm whale. The next day was exceedingly still and
sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod's crew
could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea.
For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging
is not what whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer
glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious
denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata,
or the in-shore ground off Peru. It was my turn to stand at the
foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened
royal shrouds, to and

fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could
withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my
soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a
pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.
Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the
seamen at the main and mizen mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at
last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every
swing that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering
helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the
wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my
hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved
me; with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not
forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like
the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian
hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating
in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his
vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of
a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck
by some enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all
at once started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from
all parts of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from
aloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and
regularly spouted the sparkling brine into the air. clear away the
boats! luff! cried Ahab. And obeying his own order, he dashed the helm
down before the helmsman could handle the spokes. The sudden
exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and ere the boats
were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the leeward, but with
such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam, that
thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave orders
that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in whispers.
So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats,

we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the
noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the
monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and
then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up. There go flukes! was
the cry, an announcement immediately followed by Stubb's producing his
match and igniting his pipe, for now a respite was granted. After the
full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose again, and
being now in advance of the smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than
to any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honor of the capture. It
was obvious, now, that the whale had at length become aware of his
pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was therefore no longer of use.
Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And still puffing
at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault. Yes, a mighty
change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy, he was going
head out; that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he
brewed. Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry yourselves; take
plenty of time—but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all,
cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. start her, now;
give 'em the long and strong stroke, tashtego. Start her, Tash, my
boy—start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool—cucumbers is the
word—easy, easy—only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and
raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys—that's
all. Start her! Woo-hoo! Wa-hee! screamed the Gay-Header in reply,
raising some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the
strained boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous
leading stroke which the eager Indian gave.

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. Kee-hee!
Kee-hee! yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat,
like a pacing tiger in his cage. Ka-la! Koo-loo! howled Queequeg, as if
smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with
oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his
place in the van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while
puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they
strained, till the welcome cry was heard—Stand up, Tashtego!—give it to
him! The harpoon was hurled. Stern all! The oarsmen backed water; the
same moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their
wrists. It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly
caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by
reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted
up and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed
round and round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that
point, it blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's
hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas
sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like
holding an enemy's sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy
all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch. Wet the line! wet
the line! cried stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated by the tub) who,
snatching off his hat, dashed the sea-water into it. More turns were
taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew
through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego
here changed places—stem for stern—a staggering business truly in that
rocking commotion. From the vibrating line extending the entire length
of the upper part of the boat, and from its now being more tight than a
harpstring, you would have thought the craft had two keels—one cleaving
the water, the other the air—as the boat churned

on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played
at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the
slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the
vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the
sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his
seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of
Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring
down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed
as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened
his flight. Haul in—haul in! cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing
round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him,
while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank,
Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after
dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately
sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then
ranging up for another fling. The red tide now poured from all sides of
the monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in
brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in
their wake. The slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea,
sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to
each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jet of white
smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement
puff after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every
dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it),
Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the
gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale. Pull up—pull up!
he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale relaxed in his wrath.
Pull up!—close to! and the boat ranged along the fish's flank. When
reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance
into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as
if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale
might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could
hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of
the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting

from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his flurry, the
monster horribly wallowed in his blood, over-wrapped himself in
impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft,
instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from
that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day. And now abating
in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from
side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole,
with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush
of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine,
shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down
his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst! He's dead, Mr.
Stubb, said Daggoo. Yes; both pipes smoked out! and withdrawing his own
from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for
a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.

It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the
entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists. Though
apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about
him. So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does
so when going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the
upper part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water
formation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he
thereby may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish
galliot into a sharp-pointed New York pilot-boat.

Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be
stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the
running line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or
bailer, is set apart for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most
convenient.



CHAPTER LXII. THE DART


A word concerning an incident in the last chapter. According to the
invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes off from the
ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary steersman, and the
harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar, the one known as
the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to strike the
first iron into the fish; for often, in what is called a long dart, the
heavy implement has to be flung to the distance of twenty or thirty
feet. But however prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is
expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed, he is
expected to set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not only
by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations;
and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's compass, while all
the other

muscles are strained and half started—what that is none know but those
who have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work very
recklessly at one and the same time. In this straining, bawling state,
then, with his back to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer
hears the exciting cry—Stand up, and give it to him! He now has to drop
and secure his oar, turn round on his centre half way, seize his
harpoon from the crotch, and with what little strength may remain, he
essays to pitch it somehow into the whale. No wonder, taking the whole
fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart,
not five are successful; no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are
madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some of them actually burst
their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm whalemen are
absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many ship
owners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer that
makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how can
you expect to find it there when most wanted! Again, if the dart be
successful, then at the second critical instant, that is, when the
whale starts to run, the boat-header and harpooneer likewise start to
running fore and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of themselves and every
one else. It is then they change places; and the headsman, the chief
officer of the little craft, takes his proper station in the bows of
the boat. Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is
both foolish and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from
first to last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no
rowing whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances
obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a
slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various
whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so
much the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the
harpooneer that has caused them. To insure the greatest efficiency in
the dart, the harpooneers of this world must start to their feet from
out of idleness, and not from out of toil.



CHAPTER LXIII. THE CROTCH


Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in
productive subjects, grow the chapters. The crotch alluded to on a
previous page deserves independent mention. It is a notched stick of a
peculiar form, some two feet in length, which is perpendicularly
inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for the purpose of
furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoon, whose other
naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow. Thereby the weapon
is instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from
its rest as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is
customary to have two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively
called the first and second irons. But these two harpoons, each by its
own cord, are both connected with the line; the object being this: to
dart them both, if possible, one instantly after the other into the
same whale; so that if, in the coming drag, one should draw out, the
other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling of the chances. But it
very often happens that owing to the instantaneous, violent, convulsive
running of the whale upon receiving the first iron, it becomes
impossible for the harpooneer, however lightning-like in his movements,
to pitch the second iron into him. Nevertheless, as the second iron is
already connected with the line, and the line is running, hence that
weapon must, at all events, be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat,
somehow and somewhere; else the most terrible jeopardy would involve
all hands. Tumbled into the water, it accordingly is in such cases; the
spare coils of box line (mentioned in a preceding chapter) making this
feat, in most instances, prudently practicable. But this critical act
is not always unattended with the saddest and most fatal casualties.
Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged

terror, skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the
lines, or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all
directions. Nor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until
the whale is fairly captured and a corpse. Consider, now, how it must
be in the case of four boats all engaging one unusually strong, active,
and knowing whale; when owing to these qualities in him, as well as to
the thousand concurring accidents of such an audacious enterprise,
eight or ten loose second irons may be simultaneously dangling about
him. For, of course, each boat is supplied with several harpoons to
bend on to the line should the first one be ineffectually darted
without recovery. All these particulars are faithfully narrated here,
as they will not fail to elucidate several most important, however
intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be painted.



CHAPTER LXIV. STUBB'S SUPPER


Stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a
calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow
business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen
men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and
fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse
in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long
intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of
the mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever
they call it, in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will
draw a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but this
grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if laden with pig-lead
in bulk. Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod's
main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab
dropping one of several more lanterns over the

bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the
usual orders for securing it for the night, and then handing his
lantern to a seaman, went his way into the cabin, and did not come
forward again until morning. Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this
whale, Captain Ahab had evinced his customary activity, to call it so;
yet now that the creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or
impatience, or despair, seemed working in him; as if the sight of that
dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a
thousand other whales were brought to his ship,

all that would not one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object. Very
soon you would have thought from the sound on the Pequod's decks, that
all hands were preparing to cast anchor in the deep; for heavy chains
are being dragged along the deck, and thrust rattling out of the
port-holes. But by those clanking links, the vast corpse itself, not
the ship, is to be moored. Tied by the head to the stern, and by the
tail to the bows, the whale now lies with its black hull close to the
vessel's, and seen through the darkness of the night, which obscured
the spars and rigging aloft, the two—ship and whale, seemed yoked
together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines while the other
remains standing. If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far
as could be known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with
conquest, betrayed an unusual but still good-natured excitement. Such
an unwonted bustle was he in that the staid Starbuck, his

official superior, quietly resigned to him for the time the sole
management of affairs. One small, helping cause of all this liveliness
in Stubb, was soon made strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver; he
was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to
his palate. A steak,

a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut me one
from his small! Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do
not, as a general thing, and according to the great military maxim,
make the enemy defray the current expenses of the war (at least before
realizing the proceeds of the voyage), yet now and then you find some
of these Nantucketers who have a genuine relish for that particular
part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering
extremity of the body. About midnight that steak was cut and cooked;
and lighted by two lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his
spermaceti supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a
sideboard. Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on whale's flesh that
night. Mingling their mumblings with his own mastications,

thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan,
smackingly feasted on its fatness. The few sleepers below in their
bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping of their tails against
the hull, within a few inches of the sleepers' hearts. Peering over the
side you could just see them (as before you heard them) wallowing in
the sullen, black waters, and turning over on their backs as they
scooped out huge globular pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human
head. This particular feat of the shark seems all but miraculous. How,
at such an apparently unassailable surface, they contrive to gouge out
such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the universal problem of
all things. The mark they thus leave on the whale, may best be likened
to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a screw. Though
amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will
be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round
a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed
man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over
the deck-table are

thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all
gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths,
are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and
though, were you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still
be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish
business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the
invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic,
systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to
be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though
one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set
terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate,
and most hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or
occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in
gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by
night to a whale-ship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then
suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the
expediency of conciliating the devil. But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the
mumblings of the banquet that was going on so nigh him, no more than
the sharks heeded the smacking of his own epicurean lips. Cook,
cook!—where's that old Fleece? he cried at length, widening his legs
still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper; and, at
the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his
lance; cook, you cook!—sail this way, cook! the old black, not in any
very high glee at having been previously routed from his warm hammock
at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley, for,
like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his
knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this
old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along,
assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were
made of straightened iron hoops; this old Ebony floundered along, and
in obedience to the word of command, came to a dead stop on the
opposite side of Stubb's sideboard; when,

with both hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane,
he bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways
inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play. Cook, said
Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his mouth, don't you
think this steak is rather overdone? You've been beating this steak too
much, cook; it's too tender. Don't I always say that to be good, a
whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks now over the side,
don't you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they are
kicking up! Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are welcome to help
themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast
me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and deliver my message.
Here, take this lantern, snatching one from his sideboard; now then, go
and preach to 'em! Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece
limped across the deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand
dropping his light low over the sea, so as to get a good view of his
congregation, with the other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and
leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing the
sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was
said.

Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam
noise dare. you hear? stop dat dam smackin' ob de lip! massa Stubb say
dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you
must stop dat dam racket! Cook, here interposed Stubb, accompanying the
word with a sudden slap on the shoulder,—Cook! why, damn your eyes, you
mustn't swear that way when you're preaching. That's no way to convert
sinners, Cook!

Who dat? Den preach to him yourself, sullenly turning to go. No, Cook;
go on, go on. Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:—Right! exclaimed
Stubb, approvingly, coax 'em to it; try that, and Fleece continued. Do
you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I

zay to you, fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness—'top dat dam
slappin' ob de tail! How you tink to hear, 'spose you keep up such a
dam slappin' and bitin' dare? Cook, cried Stubb, collaring him, I wont
have that swearing.

Talk to 'em gentlemanly. Once more the sermon proceeded. Your
woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for; dat is
natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de
pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den
you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned.
Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping
yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber out your
neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat
whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale
belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout,
brigger dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small
bellies; so dat de brigness ob de mout is not to swallar wid, but to
bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de
scrouge to help demselves. Well done, old Fleece! cried Stubb, that's
Christianity; go on. No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a
scrougin' and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word;
no use a-preachin' to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare
bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get em
full, dey wont hear you den; for den dey sink in de sea, go fast to
sleep on de coral, and can't hear not'ing at all, no more, for eber and
eber. Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the
benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to my supper. Upon this, Fleece,
holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his shrill voice, and
cried—Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can;
fill your dam' bellies 'till dey bust—and den die.

Now, cook, said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; Stand just
where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular
attention.

All dention, said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the
desired position. Well, said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; I
shall now go back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how
old are you, cook? What dat do wid de 'teak, said the old black,
testily.

Silence! How old are you, cook? 'Bout ninety, dey say, he gloomily
muttered. And have you lived in this world hard upon one hundred years,
cook, and don't know yet how to cook a whale-steak? rapidly bolting
another mouthful at the last word, so that that morsel seemed a
continuation of the question. Where were you born, cook? 'Hind de
hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roanoke. Born in a ferry-boat!
That's queer, too. But I want to know what country you were born in,
cook? Didn't I say de Roanoke country? he cried, sharply. No, you
didn't, cook; but I'll tell you what I'm coming to, cook. You must go
home and be born over again; you don't know how to cook a whale-steak
yet. Bress my soul, if I cook noder one, he growled, angrily, turning
round to depart. Come back, cook;—here, hand me those tongs;—now take
that bit of steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as
it should be? Take it, I say—holding the tongs towards him—take it, and
taste it. Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the
old negro muttered, Best cooked 'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy.
Cook, said Stubb, squaring himself once more; do you belong to the
church? Passed one once in Cape-Down, said the old man sullenly. And
you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town, where you
doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his beloved
fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here, and tell me
such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh? said Stubb. Where do you
expect to go to, cook?

Go to bed berry soon, he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke. Avast!
heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It's an awful question. Now what's
your answer? When dis old brack man dies, said the negro slowly,
changing his whole air and demeanor, he hisself won't go nowhere; but
some bressed angel will come and fetch him. Fetch him? How? In a coach
and four, as they fetched Elijah? And fetch him where? Up dere, said
Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and keeping it there
very solemnly. So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you,
cook, when you are dead? But don't you know the higher you climb, the
colder it gets? Main-top, eh?

Didn't say dat t'all, said Fleece, again in the sulks. You said up
there, didn't you, and now look yourself, and see where your tongs are
pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by crawling
through the lubber's hole, cook; but no, no, cook, you don't get there,
except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It's a ticklish
business, but must be done, or else it's no go. But none of us are in
heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my orders. Do ye hear? Hold
your hat in one hand, and clap t'other a'top of your heart, when I'm
giving my orders, cook. What! that your heart, there?—that's your
gizzard! Aloft! aloft!—that's it—now you have it. Hold it there now,
and pay attention. All 'dention, said the old black, with both hands
placed as desired, vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get
both ears in front at one and the same time.

Well then, cook; you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad,
that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that,
don't you? Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for
my private table here, the capstan, I'll tell you what to do so as not
to spoil it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live
coal to it with the other; that done, dish it; d'ye hear? And now
to-morrow, cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure you stand by
to get the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle. As for the ends
of the flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now ye may go.

But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled. Cook,
give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch. D'ye hear?
away you sail, then.—Halloa! stop! make a bow before you go.—Avast
heaving again!

Whale-balls for breakfast—don't forget. Wish, by gor! whale eat him,
'stead of him eat whale. I'm bressed if he ain't more of shark dan
Massa Shark hisself, muttered the old man, limping away; with which
sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.

A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside,
is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is
relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its
flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface;
so that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to
put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a
small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end,
and a weight in its middle, while the

other end is secured to the ship. By adroit management the wooden float
is

to rise on the other side of the mass, so that now having girdled the
made whale, the chain is readily made to follow suit; and being slipped
along the

body, is at last locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at
the point of junction with its broad flukes or lobes.



CHAPTER LXV. THE WHALE AS A DISH


That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and,
like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so
outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and
philosophy of it. It is upon record, that three centuries ago the
tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and
commanded large prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a
certain cook of the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an
admirable sauce to be eaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you
remember, are a species of whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day
considered fine eating. The meat is made into balls about the size of
billiard balls, and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for
turtle-balls or veal balls.

The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a great
porpoise grant from the crown. The fact is, that among his hunters at
least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were
there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a
meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite.
Only the most unprejudiced of men like Stubb, nowadays partake of

cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious. We all know how
they live upon whales, and have rare old vintages of prime old train
oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous doctors, recommends strips of
blubber for infants, as being exceedingly juicy and nourishing. And
this reminds me that certain Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally
left in Greenland by a whaling vessel—that these men actually lived for
several months on the mouldy scraps of whales which had been left
ashore after trying out the blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen these
scraps are called fritters; which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being
brown and crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam housewives'
dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh.

They have such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can
hardly keep his hands off. But what further depreciates the whale as a
civilized dish, is his exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of
the sea, too fat to be delicately good. Look at his hump, which would
be as fine eating as the buffalo's (which is esteemed a rare dish),
were it not such a solid pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how
bland and creamy that is; like the transparent, half-jellied, white
meat of a cocoanut in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich
to supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a
method of absorbing it into some other substance, and then partaking of
it. In the long try watches of the night it is a common thing for the
seamen to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them
fry there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made. In the case of a
small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The casket of
the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes
being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are
then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in
flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish among
some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the
epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to
have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's
head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon
discrimination. And that is the reason why

a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's head before him, is
somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of
reproachfully at him, with an Et tu Brute! expression. It is not,
perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that
landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears
to result, in some way, from the

consideration before mentioned: i. e. that a man should eat a newly
murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no
doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a
murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by
oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any
murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the
crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds.
Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals?
who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the
Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming
famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in
the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand,
who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in
thy pate-de-foie-gras. But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light,
does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your
knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off
that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the
brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth
with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl.
And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the
Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is
only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution
to patronize nothing but steel pens.



CHAPTER LXVI. THE SHARK MASSACRE


When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and
weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general
thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting
him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very
soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the
common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a'lee; and then send
every one below to his hammock till daylight, with the reservation
that, until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept; that is, two and
two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the deck
to see that all goes well. But sometimes, especially upon the Line in
the Pacific, this plan will not answer at all; because such
incalculable hosts of sharks gather round the moored carcase, that were
he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more than the
skeleton would be visible by morning. In most other parts of the ocean,
however, where these fish do not so largely abound, their wondrous
voracity can be at times considerably diminished, by vigorously
stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a procedure
notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them
into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case
with the Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to
such sights, to have looked over her side that night, would have almost
thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the
maggots in it. nevertheless, upon stubb setting the anchor-watch after
his supper was concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a
forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among
the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the
side, and lowering three lanterns, so

that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these

two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant
murdering of the sharks, by striking the keen steel deep into their
skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of
their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit
their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible
ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's
disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own;
till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same
mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all.
It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures.
A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very
joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had
departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of
these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to
shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw. Queequeg no care what god
made him shark, said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and
down; wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must
be one dam Ingin.

The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel;
is about the bigness of a man's spread hand; and in general shape,
corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its
sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than
the lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when
being used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a
stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.



CHAPTER LXVII. CUTTING IN


It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio
professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was
turned into what seemed a shamble;

every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offering up ten
thousand red oxen to the sea gods. In the first place, the enormous
cutting tackles, among other ponderous things comprising a cluster of
blocks generally painted green, and which no single man can possibly
lift—this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up to the main-top and firmly
lashed to the lower mast-head,

the strongest point anywhere above a ship's deck. The end of the
hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted
to the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over
the whale; to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one
hundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages over the
side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, armed with their long spades,
began cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just
above the nearest of the two side-fins. This done,

a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted,
and the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence
heaving in one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire
ship careens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the
nail-heads of an old house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers,
and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans
over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is
answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift,
startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and
backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight
dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of
blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind
does an orange, so is it stripped off from the body precisely as an
orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For the strain
constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps the whale rolling
over and over in the water, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly
peels off along the line called the

scarf, simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the
mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that
very act itself,

it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper
end grazes the main-top; the men at the windlass then cease heaving,
and for a moment

or two the prodigious blood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let
down from the sky, and every one present must take good heed to dodge
it when it swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him headlong
overboard. One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long,
keen weapon called a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he
dexterously slices out a considerable hole in the lower part of the
swaying mass. Into this hole, the end of the second alternating great
tackle is then hooked so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order
to prepare for what follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman,
warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at
the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate, lunging slicings, severs
it completely in twain; so that while the short lower part is still
fast, the long upper strip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and
is all ready for lowering. The heavers forward now resume their song,
and while the one tackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from
the whale, the other is slowly slackened away, and down goes the first
strip through the main hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished
parlor called the blubber-room. Into this twilight apartment sundry
nimble hands keep coiling away the long blanket-piece as if it were a
great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus the work proceeds; the
two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale and
windlass heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen
coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing
occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction.



CHAPTER LXVIII. THE BLANKET


I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin
of the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced
whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore.

My original opinion remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion. The
question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you know
what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence of
firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and
ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.
Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any
creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet
in point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption;
because you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the
whale's body but that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer
of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin?
True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with
your hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat
resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as
flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to being dried, when it
not only contracts and thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle. I
have several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books.
It is transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the printed
page, I have sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a
magnifying influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales
through their own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at
here is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I
admit, invests the entire body of the whale, is not so much to be
regarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to
speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of
the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the skin of a
new-born child. But no more of this. Assuming the blubber to be the
skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large
Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and,
when it is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in
its expressed state, is only three fourths, and not the entire
substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had of the enormousness
of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere

integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels
to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters
of the stuff of the whale's skin. In life, the visible surface of the
Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost
invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with
numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the
finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be
impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be
seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is
this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear
marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other
delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those
mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is
the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory
of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much
struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on
the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper
Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale
remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of
another thing. Besides all the other phenomena which the exterior of
the Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the back, and more
especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear
appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches, altogether of an
irregular, random aspect. I should say that those New England rocks on
the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent
scraping contact with vast floating icebergs—I should say, that those
rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular. It
also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made by
hostile contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them in the
large, full-grown bulls of the species. A word or two more concerning
this matter of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been
said, that it is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces.
Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. For the
whale is

indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or,
still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his
extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that
the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in
all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale,
say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the north, if unsupplied with his
cosy surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those
Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded,
lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that
warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter
would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs
and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies. How wonderful is it
then—except after explanation—that this great monster, to whom
corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful
that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those
Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes
found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of
fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is
it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar
whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer. It does seem to
me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a

strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the
rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself
after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too,
live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep
thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and
like the great whale, retain,

O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own. But how easy and how
hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections, how few are domed
like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!



CHAPTER LXIX. THE FUNERAL


Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern! The vast tackles have
now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale
flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not
perceptibly lost anything in bulk. it is still colossal. slowly it
floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the
insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of
screaming

fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale.
The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the
ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks
and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and
hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen.
Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the
pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death
floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives. There's a most
doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious
mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In
life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if
peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they
most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which
not the mightiest whale is free. Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the
body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied
by some timid man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when
the distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the
white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high
against it; straightway the whale's unharming corpse, with trembling
fingers is set down in the log—shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts:
beware! And for years afterwards,

perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over
a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was
held. There's your law of precedents; there's your utility of
traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs
never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air!
There's orthodoxy! Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have
been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a
powerless panic to a world. Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend?
There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than
Doctor Johnson who believe in them.



CHAPTER LXX. THE SPHYNX


It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping
the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the
Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced
whale surgeons very much pride themselves; and not without reason.
Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck;
on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that
very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the
surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening
between him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a
discolored, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear
in mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut
many feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without
so much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus
made, he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts,
and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion
into the skull. Do you not marvel,

then, at Stubb's boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to behead a
sperm whale? When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held
there by a cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to
a small whale it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of.
But, with a full grown leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm
whale's head embraces nearly one third of his entire bulk, and
completely to suspend such a burden as that, even by the immense
tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a
Dutch barn in jewellers' scales The Pequod's whale being decapitated
and the body stripped, the head was hoisted against the ship's
side—about half way out of the sea, so that it might yet in great part
be buoyed up by its native element. And there with the strained craft
steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the enormous downward drag
from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on that side projecting
like a crane over the waves; there, that blood-dripping head hung to
the Pequod's waist like the giant Holofernes's from the girdle of
Judith. When this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the
seamen went below to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before
tumultuous but now deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a
universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless
measureless leaves upon the sea. A short space elapsed, and up into
this noiselessness came Ahab alone from his cabin. Taking a few turns
on the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze over the side, then slowly
getting into the main-chains he took Stubb's long spade—still remaining
there after the whale's decapitation—and striking it into the lower
part of the half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under
one arm, and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this
head. It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of
so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. Speak, thou
vast and venerable head, muttered Ahab, which, though ungarnished with
a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty
head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou
hast dived the deepest.

that head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this
world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold
hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth
is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that
awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been
where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side,
where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou
saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to
heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when
heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed
by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper
midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on
unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that
would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O
head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of
Abraham, and not one syllable is thine! Sail ho! cried a triumphant
voice from the main-masthead. Aye? Well, now, that's cheering, cried
Ahab, suddenly erecting himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside
from his brow.

That lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better
man.—Where away? Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing
down her breeze to us! Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would
come along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O
Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked
analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its
cunning duplicate in mind.



CHAPTER LXXI. THE JEROBOAM'S STORY


Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than
the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock. By and by, through the
glass the stranger's boats and manned mast-heads proved her a
whale-ship. but as she was so far to windward, and shooting by,
apparently making a passage to some other ground, the Pequod could not
hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what response would be
made. Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the
ships of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which
signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective
vessels attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale
commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at
considerable distances, and with no small facility. The Pequod's signal
was at last responded to by the stranger's setting her own; which
proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring her yards,
she bore down, ranged abeam under the Pequod's lee, and lowered a boat;
it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was being rigged by
Starbuck's order to accommodate the visiting captain, the stranger in
question waved his hand from his boat's stern in token of that
proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that the Jeroboam
had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her captain, was
fearful of infecting the Pequod's company. For, though himself and
boat's crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half a
rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing
between; yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the
land, he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the
Pequod. But this did by no means prevent all communication. Preserving
an interval of some few yards between itself and the

ship, the Jeroboam's boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived
to keep parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea
(for by this time it blew very fresh), with her main-topsail aback;
though, indeed, at times by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave,
the boat would be pushed some way ahead; but would be soon skilfully
brought to her proper bearings again. Subject to this, and other the
like interruptions now and then, a conversation was sustained between
the two parties; but at intervals not without still another
interruption of a very different sort. Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's
boat, was a man of a singular appearance, even in that wild whaling
life where individual notabilities make up all totalities. He was a
small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles,
and wearing redundant yellow hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut
coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of
which were rolled up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium
was in his eyes. So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb
had exclaimed—That's he! that's he! the long-togged scaramouch the
Town-Ho's company told us of!

Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a
certain man among her crew, some time previous when the Pequod spoke
the Town-Ho. According to this account and what was subsequently
learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in question had gained a
wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the Jeroboam. His story
was this: He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of
Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked,
secret meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way
of a trap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial,
which he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing
gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange,
apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket,
where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady,
common sense exterior and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for
the Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him;

but straightway upon the ship's getting out of sight of land, his
insanity broke out in a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel
Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard. He published his
manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles
of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching
earnestness with which he declared these things;—the dark, daring play
of his sleepless, excited imagination, and all the preternatural
terrors of real delirium, united to invest this Gabriel in the minds of
the majority of the ignorant crew, with an atmosphere of sacredness.
Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such a man, however, was not of
much practical use in the ship, especially as he refused to work except
when he pleased, the incredulous captain would fain have been rid of
him; but apprised that that individual's intention was to land him in
the first convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals
and vials—devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition,
in case this intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon
his disciples among the crew, that at last in a body they went to the
captain and told him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of
them would remain. He was therefore forced to relinquish his plan. Nor
would they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated, say or do what he
would; so that it came to pass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of
the ship. The consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared
little or nothing for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had
broken out, he carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the
plague, as he called it, was at his sole command; nor should it be
stayed but according to his good pleasure. The sailors, mostly poor
devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before him; in obedience to
his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a god.
Such things may seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true.
Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the
measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless
power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But it is time to
return to the Pequod. I fear not thy epidemic, man, said Ahab from the
bulwarks

to Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern; come on board. But
now Gabriel started to his feet. Think, think of the fevers, yellow and
bilious! Beware of the horrible plague! Gabriel, Gabriel! cried Captain
Mayhew;

thou must either—But that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far
ahead, and its seethings drowned all speech. Hast thou seen the White
Whale? demanded Ahab, when the boat drifted back. Think, think of thy
whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the horrible tail! I tell thee
again, Gabriel, that—But again the boat tore ahead as if dragged by
fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a succession of
riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional caprices of
the seas were tumbling, not heaving it.

Meantime, the hoisted sperm whale's head jogged about very violently,
and Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than
his archangel nature seemed to warrant. When this interlude was over,
Captain Mayhew began a dark story concerning Moby Dick; not, however,
without frequent interruptions from Gabriel, whenever his name was
mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed leagued with him. It seemed
that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking a
whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby
Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence,
Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the white whale,
in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering insanity,
pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God
incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some year or two
afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey,
the chief mate, burned with ardor to encounter him; and the captain
himself being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite
all the archangel's denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in
persuading five men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and,
after

much weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last
succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the
main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and
hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants
of his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his
boat's bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting
his wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance
for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by
its quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the
bodies of the oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of
furious life, was smitten bodily into the air,

and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the distance
of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of
any oarsman's head; but the mate for ever sank. It is well to
parenthesize here,

that of the fatal accidents in the Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is
perhaps almost as frequent as any. Sometimes, nothing is injured but
the man who is thus annihilated; oftener the boat's bow is knocked off,
or the thigh-board, in which the headsman stands, is torn from its
place and accompanies the body. But strangest of all is the
circumstance, that in more instances than one, when the body has been
recovered, not a single mark of violence is discernible; the man being
stark dead. The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was
plainly descried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek—The vial! the
vial! Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further
hunting of the whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with
added influence; because his credulous disciples believed that he had
specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general
prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one
of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror
to the ship. Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such
questions to him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring
whether he intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should
offer. To which Ahab answered—Aye. Straightway, then, Gabriel once more
started to his feet, glaring

upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with downward pointed
finger—Think, think of the blasphemer—dead, and down there!—beware of
the blasphemer's end! Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew,

Captain, I have just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter
for one of thy officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag.
Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various
ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,
depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans.
Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received
after attaining an age of two or three years or more. Soon Starbuck
returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely tumbled, damp, and
covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in consequence of being kept
in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might
well have been the post-boy. Can'st not read it? cried ahab. give it
me, man. aye, aye it's but a dim scrawl;—what's this? As he was
studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his
knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that
way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to the ship.
Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, Mr. Har—yes, Mr. Harry—(a
woman's pinny hand,—the man's wife, I'll wager)—Aye—Mr. Harry Macey,
Ship Jeroboam;—why it's Macey, and he's dead! Poor fellow! poor fellow!
and from his wife, sighed Mayhew; but let me have it. Nay, keep it
thyself, cried Gabriel to Ahab; thou art soon going that way. Curses
throttle thee! yelled Ahab.

Captain Mayhew, stand by now to receive it; and taking the fatal
missive from Starbuck's hands, he caught it in the slit of the pole,
and reached it over towards the boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen
expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat drifted a little towards the
ship's stern; so that, as if by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along
with Gabriel's eager hand. He clutched it in an instant, seized the
boat-knife, and impaling the letter on it, sent it thus loaded back
into the ship. It fell at Ahab's feet. Then Gabriel

shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that
manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod. As, after
this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of the
whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild
affair.



CHAPTER LXII. THE MONKEY-ROPE


In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale,
there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands
are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no
staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has
to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the
description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was
mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale's back, the
blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the
spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that
same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my
particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to
descend upon the monster's back for the special purpose referred to.
But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall
remain on the whale till the whole tensing or stripping operation is
concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged,
excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten
feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about,
half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like
a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured
in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at
least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better
chance to observe him, as will presently be seen. Being the savage's
bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the
second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him
while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale's back.
You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord.
Just so, from the ship's steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in
the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope,
attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist. It was a
humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed
further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends;
fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather
one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were
wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage
and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag
me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us.
Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get
rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed. So
strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that
while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive
that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of
two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another's
mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster
and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in
Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an
injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and
then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam
him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine
was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most
cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a
plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your
apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True,
you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these
and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg's
monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I
came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do
what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.*

*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod
that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This
improvement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man
than Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest
possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his
monkey-rope holder.

I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the
whale and the ship—where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant
rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy
he was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the
night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before
pent blood which began to flow from the carcass—the rabid creatures
swarmed round it like bees in a beehive. And right in among those
sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them aside with his floundering
feet. A thing altogether incredible were it not that attracted by such
prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneously carnivorous shark
will seldom touch a man. Nevertheless, it may well be believed that
since they have such a ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but
wise to look sharp to them. Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with
which I now and then jerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity
to the maw of what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark—he was provided
with still another protection. Suspended over the side in one of the
stages, Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a
couple of keen whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks
as they could reach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very
disinterested and benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg's best
happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from
the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half hidden
by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet spades of theirs would
come nearer amputating a leg than a tall. But poor Queequeg, I suppose,
straining and gasping there with that great iron hook—poor Queequeg, I
suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands
of his gods. Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I,
as I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the
sea—what matters it, after all? Are you not the precious image of each
and all of us men in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp
in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and
what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor
lad. But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg. For
now, as with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last
climbs up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily
trembling over the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent,
consolatory glance hands him—what? Some hot Cognac? No! hands him, ye
gods! hands him a cup of tepid ginger and water! "Ginger? Do I smell
ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb, coming near. "Yes, this must be
ginger," peering into the as yet untasted cup. Then standing as if
incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards the astonished
steward slowly saying, "Ginger? ginger? and will you have the goodness
to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of ginger? Ginger! is
ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to kindle a fire in this
shivering cannibal? Ginger!—what the devil is ginger? Sea-coal?
firewood?—lucifer matches?—tinder?—gunpowder?—what the devil is ginger,
I say, that you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg here." "There is
some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this business," he
suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just come from
forward. "Will you look at that kannakin, sir; smell of it, if you
please." Then watching the mate's countenance, he added, "The steward,
Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap to Queequeg,
there, this instant off the whale. Is the steward an apothecary, sir?
and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters by which he blows
back the life into a half-drowned man?" "I trust not," said Starbuck,
"it is poor stuff enough." "Aye, aye, steward," cried Stubb, "we'll
teach you to drug it harpooneer; none of your apothecary's medicine
here; you want to poison us, do ye? You have got out insurances on our
lives and want to murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?" "It
was not me," cried Dough-Boy, "it was Aunt Charity that brought the
ginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits,
but only this ginger-jub—so she called it." "Ginger-jub! you gingerly
rascal! take that! and run along with ye to the lockers, and get
something better. I hope I do no wrong, Mr. Starbuck. It is the
captain's orders—grog for the harpooneer on a whale." "Enough," replied
Starbuck, "only don't hit him again, but—" "Oh, I never hurt when I
hit, except when I hit a whale or something of that sort; and this
fellow's a weazel. What were you about saying, sir?" "Only this: go
down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself." When Stubb
reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and a sort of
tea-caddy in the other. The first contained strong spirits, and was
handed to Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity's gift, and that was
freely given to the waves.



CHAPTER LXXIII. STUBB AND FLASK KILL A RIGHT WHALE; AND THEN HAVE


A TALK OVER HIM It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a
Sperm Whale's prodigious head hanging to the Pequod's side. But we must
let it continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to
attend to it. For the present other matters press, and the best we can
do now for the head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold. Now,
during the past night and forenoon,

the Pequod had gradually drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional
patches of

yellow brit, gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a
species of the Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular
time lurking anywhere near. And though all hands commonly disdained the
capture of those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not
commissioned to cruise for them at all, and though she had passed
numbers of them near the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that
a Sperm Whale had been brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise
of all, the announcement was made that a Right Whale should be captured
that day, if opportunity offered. Nor was this long wanting. Tall
spouts were seen to leeward; and two boats, Stubb's and Flask's, were
detached in pursuit. Pulling further and further away, they at last
became almost invisible to the men at the mast-head. But suddenly in
the distance, they saw a great heap of tumultuous white water, and soon
after news came from aloft that one or both the boats must be fast. An
interval passed and the boats were in plain sight, in the act of being
dragged right towards the ship by the towing whale. So close did the
monster come to the hull, that at first it seemed as if he meant it
malice; but suddenly going down in a maelstrom, within three rods of
the planks, he wholly disappeared from view, as if diving under the
keel. Cut, cut! was the cry from the ship to the boats, which, for one
instant, seemed on the point of being brought with a deadly dash
against the vessel's side. But having plenty of line yet in the tubs,
and the whale not sounding very rapidly, they paid out abundance of
rope, and at the same time pulled with all their might so as to get
ahead of the ship. For a few minutes the struggle was intensely
critical; for while they still slacked out the tightened line in one
direction, and still plied their oars in another, the contending strain
threatened to take them under. But it was only a few feet advance they
sought to gain. And they stuck to it till they did gain it; when
instantly, a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the
keel,

as the strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view
under her bows, snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its
drippings, that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water,
while the whale beyond also rose to sight, and once more the boats were
free

to fly. But the fagged whale abated his speed, and blindly altering his
course, went round the stern of the ship towing the two boats after
him, so that they performed a complete circuit. Meantime, they hauled
more and more upon their lines, till close flanking him on both sides,
Stubb answered Flask with lance for lance; and thus round and round the
Pequod the battle went, while the multitudes of sharks that had before
swum round the Sperm Whale's body, rushed to the fresh blood that was
spilled, thirstily drinking at every new gash, as the eager Israelites
did at the new bursting fountains that poured from the smitten rock. At
last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he
turned upon his back a corpse. While the two headsmen were engaged in
making fast cords to his flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in
readiness for towing, some conversation ensued between them. I wonder
what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard, said Stubb, not
without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so ignoble a
leviathan. Wants with it? said Flask, coiling some spare line in the
boat's bow, did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm
Whale's head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a
Right Whale's on the larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that
ship can never afterwards capsize? Why not? I don't know, but I heard
that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so, and he seems to know all
about ships' charms. But I sometimes think he'll charm the ship to no
good at last. I don't half like that chap, Stubb. Did you ever notice
how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snake's head, Stubb?
Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of a
dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by; look
down there, Flask—pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of both
hands—Aye, will I! Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in
disguise. Do you believe that cock and bull story about his having been
stowed away on board ship? He's the devil, I say. The reason why you
don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight; he carries
it

coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now that I think of it,
he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots. He
sleeps in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've seen
him lay of nights in a coil of rigging. No doubt, and it's because of
his cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye see, in the eye of the
rigging. What's the old man have so much to do with him for? Striking
up a swap or a bargain, I suppose. Bargain?—about what? Why, do ye see,
the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and the devil there is
trying to come round him, and

get him to swap away his silver watch, or his soul, or something of
that sort, and then he'll surrender Moby Dick. Pooh! Stubb, you are
skylarking; how can Fedallah do that? I don't know, Flask, but the
devil is a curious chap, and a wicked one, I tell ye. Why, they say as
how he went a sauntering into the old flag-ship once, switching his
tail about devilish easy and gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old
governor was at home. Well, he was at home, and asked the devil what he
wanted. The devil, switching his hoofs, up and says, "I want John."
"What for?" says the old governor, "What business is that of yours,"
says the devil, getting mad,—"I want to use him." "Take him," says the
governor—and by the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn't give John the
Asiatic cholera before he got through with him, I'll eat this whale in
one mouthful. But look sharp—aint you all ready there? Well, then, pull
ahead, and let's get the whale alongside. I think I remember some such
story as you were telling, said Flask, when at last the two boats were
slowly advancing with their burden towards the ship, but I can't
remember where. Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three
bloody-minded soldadoes? Did ye read it there, Flask? I guess ye did?
No;

never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell me, Stubb, do
you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now, was the same
you say is now on board the Pequod?

Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn't the devil live
for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see any
parson a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a
latch-key to get into the admiral's cabin, don't you suppose he can
crawl into a port-hole? Tell me that, Mr. Flask? How old do you suppose
Fedallah is, Stubb? Do you see that mainmast there? pointing to the
ship; well, that's the figure one; now take all the hoops in the
Pequod's hold, and string 'em along in a row with that mast, for
oughts, do you see; well, that wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's age. Nor
all the coopers in creation couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts
enough. but see here, stubb, i thought you a little boasted just now,
that you meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance.
Now, if he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is
going to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him
overboard—tell me that? Give him a good ducking, anyhow. But he'd crawl
back. Duck him again; and keep ducking him. Suppose he should take it
into his head to duck you, though—yes, and drown you—what then? I
should like to see him try it; I'd give him such a pair of black eyes
that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's cabin again for
a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he lives, and
hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil,
Flask; do you suppose I'm afraid of the devil? Who's afraid of him,
except the old governor who daresn't catch him and put him in
double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping
people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people the devil
kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor! Do you suppose
Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab? Do I suppose it? You'll know it
before long, Flask. But I am going now to keep a sharp look-out on him;
and if I see anything very suspicious going on, I'll just take him by
the nape of his neck, and say—Look here, Beelzebub, you don't do

it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord I'll make a grab into his
pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan, and give him such a
wrenching and heaving, that his tail will come short off at the
stump—do you see; and then, I rather guess when he finds himself docked
in that queer fashion, he'll sneak off without the poor satisfaction of
feeling his tail between his legs. And what will you do with the tail,
Stubb? Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;—what else?
Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along, stubb?
Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship. The boats were here hailed,
to tow the whale on the larboard side, where fluke chains and other
necessaries were already prepared for securing him. Didn't I tell you
so? said Flask; yes, you'll soon see this right whale's head hoisted up
opposite that parmacetti's. In good time, Flask's saying proved true.
As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's
head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even
keel; though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one
side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the
other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor
plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish!
throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light
and right. In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought
alongside the ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take
place as in the case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance,
the head is cut off whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are
separately removed and hoisted on deck, with all the well known black
bone attached to what is called the crown-piece. But nothing like this,
in the present case, had been done. The carcases of both whales had
dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule
carrying a pair of overburdening panniers. Meantime, Fedallah was
calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever and anon glancing from
the deep wrinkles there to the

lines in his own hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee
occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it
seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's. As the crew toiled on,
Laplandish speculations were bandied among them, concerning all these
passing things.



CHAPTER LXXIV. THE SPERM WHALE'S HEAD—CONTRASTED VIEW


Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us
join them, and lay together our own. Of the grand order of folio
leviathans, the Sperm Whale and

the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only
whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the
two extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external
difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a
head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we
may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across the
deck:—where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better chance to
study practical cetology than here? In the first place, you are struck
by the general contrast between these heads. Both are massive enough in
all conscience; but there is a certain mathematical symmetry in the
Sperm Whale's which the Right Whale's sadly lacks. There is more
character in the Sperm Whale's head. As you behold it, you
involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point of
pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is
heightened by the pepper and salt color of his head at the summit,
giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short, he is what
the fishermen technically call a

grey-headed whale. Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these
heads—namely, the two most important organs, the eye and the ear.

Far back on the side of the head, and low down, near the angle of
either whale's jaw, if you narrowly search, you will at last see a
lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of
all proportion is it to the magnitude of the head. Now, from this
peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes, it is plain that he can
never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more than he can one
exactly astern. in a word, the position of the whale's eyes corresponds
to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy, for yourself, how it would
fare with you, did you sideways survey objects through your ears. You
would find that you could only command some thirty degrees of vision in
advance of the straight side-line of sight; and about thirty more
behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you,
with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be able to see him,
any more than if he were stealing upon you from behind. In a word, you
would have two backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also, two
fronts (side fronts): for what is it that makes the front of a
man—what, indeed, but his eyes? Moreover, while in most other animals
that I can now think of, the eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to
blend their visual power, so as to produce one picture and not two to
the brain; the peculiar position of the whale's eyes, effectually
divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers
between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys;
this, of course, must wholly separate the impressions which each
independent organ imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct
picture on this side, and another distinct picture on that side; while
all between must be profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man may,
in effect, be said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with two
joined sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two sashes are
separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing
the view. This peculiarity of the whale's eyes is a thing always to be
borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in
some subsequent scenes. A curious and most puzzling question might be
started concerning

this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content
with a hint. so long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of
seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing
whatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one's experience
will teach him, that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of
things at one glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and
completely, to examine any two things—however large or however small—at
one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side by side
and touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two
objects, and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in
order to see one of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to
bear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary
consciousness. How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in
themselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more
comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the
same moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on
one side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he
can, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able
simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct
problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any
incongruity in this comparison. It may be but an idle whim, but it has
always seemed to me, that the extraordinary vacillations of movement
displayed by some whales when beset by three or four boats; the
timidity and liability to queer frights, so common to such whales;

I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the helpless perplexity
of volition, in which their divided and diametrically opposite powers
of vision must involve them. But the ear of the whale is full as
curious as the eye. If you are an entire stranger to their race, you
might hunt over these two heads for hours, and never discover that
organ. The ear has no external leaf whatever; and into the hole itself
you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously minute is it. It is lodged
a little behind the eye. With respect to their ears, this important
difference is to be observed between the sperm whale and the

right. While the ear of the former has an external opening, that of the
latter is entirely and evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be
quite imperceptible from without. Is it not curious, that so vast a
being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and
hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if
his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his
ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any
longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try
to enlarge your mind? Subtilize it. Let us now with whatever levers and
steam-engines we have at hand, cant over the sperm whale's head, so
that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending by a ladder to the summit,
have a peep down the mouth; and were it not that the body is now
completely separated from it, with a lantern we might descend

into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach. But let us hold on
here by this tooth, and look about us where we are. What a really
beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling, lined, or
rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal
satins. But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which
seems like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with a hinge at
one end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it
overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis;
and such, alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon
whom these spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it
to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky whale,
floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet
long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the
world like a ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only
dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that
the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly
sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt,
imprecate lock-jaws upon him. In most cases this lower jaw—being easily
unhinged by a practised artist—is disengaged and hoisted on deck for
the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of

that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of
curious articles, including canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to
riding-whips. With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as
if it were an anchor; and when the proper time comes—some few days
after the other work—Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all
accomplished dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen
cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to
ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these
teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild wood-lands.
There are generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn
down, but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw
is afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building
houses.



CHAPTER LXXV. 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 mouth; another,
hogs' bristles; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following
elegant language: There are about two hundred

and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over
his tongue on each side of his mouth. 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.

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.



CHAPTER LXXVI. 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 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 Sais?



CHAPTER LXXVII. THE GREAT HEIDELBURGH TUN


Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must
know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated
upon. Regarding the Sperm whale's head as a solid oblong, you may, on
an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins, whereof the
lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the
upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones;

its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead
of the whale. At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this
upper quoin,

and then you have two almost equal parts, which before were naturally
divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance. 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. 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.

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.



CHAPTER LXXVIII. 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
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. 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?



CHAPTER LXXIX. THE PRAIRE


To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this
Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has
as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would

seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to have 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. 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.



CHAPTER LXXX. THE NUT


If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist
his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to
square. In the 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 vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing
rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit,
that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious
external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first men to
perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton
of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was inlaying,
in a sort of basso-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. As it
passes through the remaining vertebrae the canal tapers in size, but
for a considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now, of course,
this

canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance—the
spinal cord—as the brain; and directly communicates with the brain. And
what is still more, for many feet after emerging from the brain's
cavity, the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal
to that of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be
unreasonable to survey and map out the whale's spine phrenologically?
For, viewed in this light, the wonderful comparative smallness of his
brain proper is more than compensated by the wonderful comparative
magnitude of his spinal cord. But leaving this hint to operate as it
may with the phrenologists, I would merely assume the spinal theory for
a moment, in reference to the sperm whale's hump. This august hump, if
I mistake not, rises over one of the larger vertebrae, and is,
therefore, in some sort, the outer convex mould of it. From its
relative situation then, I should call this high hump the organ of
firmness or indomitableness in the Sperm Whale. And that the great
monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason to know.



CHAPTER LXXXI. THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIN


The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau,
Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen. At one time the greatest whaling
people in the world, the Dutch and Germans are now among the least; but
here and there at very wide intervals of latitude and longitude, you
still occasionally meet with their flag in the Pacific. For some
reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects. While yet
some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping a boat, her
captain was impelled 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, 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. 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! 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 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 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 gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of
rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to look for
it when it shall have ascended again. It was not long after the sinking
of the body that a cry was heard from the Pequod's mast-heads,
announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the
only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species of
uncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of swimming.
Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's,
that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And
consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiant chase of this
unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made after her four
young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward, still in
bold, hopeful chase. Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the
Dericks, my friend.



CHAPTER LXXXII. 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, 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 versa; certainly they are very similar. If I claim the
demigod then, why not the prophet?

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole
roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like
royal kings of old times, we find the headwaters of our fraternity in
nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental
story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread
Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives
us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;—Vishnoo, who, by the first
of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified
the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved
to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave
birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work;

but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been
indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and which
therefore must have contained something in the shape of practical hints
to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the
waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in
him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this
Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a
horseman? Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a
member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like
that?



CHAPTER LXXXIII. JONAH HISTORICALLY REGARDED


Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in
the preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this
historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some
sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans
of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale,
and Arion and the dolphin;

and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those traditions
one whit the less facts, for all that. One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's
chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this:—He had one of
those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious,
unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonah's whale with two
spouts in his head—a peculiarity only true with respect to a species of
the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the varieties of that order),
concerning which the fishermen have this saying,

A penny roll would choke him; his swallow is so very small. But, to
this,

Bishop Jebb's anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary, hints
the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whale's belly, but
as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And this seems
reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale's
mouth would accommodate a couple of whist tables, and comfortably seat
all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have ensconced himself in a
hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right Whale is toothless.
Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his
want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely in
reference to his incarcerated body and the whale's gastric juices. But
this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist
supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a
dead whale—even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned
their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them. Besides, it has
been divined by other continental commentators, that when Jonah was
thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his
escape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a
figure-head;

and, I would add, possibly called The Whale, as some craft are nowadays
christened the Shark, the Gull, the Eagle. Nor have there been wanting
learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned in the book
of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver—an inflated bag of wind—which
the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom.
Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But he had still
another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I remember right:
Jonah was

swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three days
he was vomited up somewhere within three days' journey of Nineveh, a
city on the Tigris, very much more than three days' journey across from
the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast. How is that? But was
there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within that short
distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him round by the way of
the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak of the passage through the
whole length of the Mediterranean, and another passage up the Persian
Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would involve the complete
circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to speak of the
Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any
whale to swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape of
Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honor of the discovery of
that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and
so make modern history a liar. But all these foolish arguments of old
Sag-Harbor only evinced his foolish pride of reason—a thing still more
reprehensible in him, seeing that he had but little learning except
what he had picked up from the sun and the sea. I say it only shows his
foolish, impious pride, and abominable, devilish rebellion against the
reverend clergy. For by a Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of
Jonah's going to Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a
signal magnification of the general miracle. And so it was. Besides, to
this day, the highly enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the
historical story of Jonah. And some three centuries ago, an English
traveller in old Harris's Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in
honor of Jonah, in which mosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt
without any oil.



CHAPTER LXXXIV. PITCHPOLING


To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are
anointed; and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an
analogous operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it
to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly
be of no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and water are
hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to
make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in anointing
his boat, and one morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau
disappeared, took more than customary pains in that occupation;
crawling under its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in
the unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair
from the craft's bald keel. He seemed to be working in obedience to
some particular presentiment. Nor did it remain unwarranted by the
event. Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed
down to them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a
disordered flight, as of Cleopatra's barges from Actium. Nevertheless,
the boats pursued, and Stubb's was foremost. By great exertion,
Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but the stricken
whale, without at all sounding, still continued his horizontal flight,
with added fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the planted
iron must sooner or later inevitably extract it. It became imperative
to lance the flying whale,

or be content to lose him. But to haul the boat up to his flank was
impossible, he swam so fast and furious. What then remained? Of all the
wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and countless
subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced, none
exceed that fine manoeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small
sword, or broad sword, in all its

exercises boasts nothing like it. It is only indispensable with an
inveterate running whale; its grand fact and feature is the wonderful
distance to which the long lance is accurately darted from a violently
rocking, jerking boat, under extreme headway. Steel and wood included,
the entire spear is some ten or twelve feet in length; the staff is
much slighter than that of the harpoon, and also of a lighter
material—pine. It is furnished with a small rope called a warp, of
considerable length, by which it can be hauled back to the hand after
darting. But before going further, it is important to mention here,
that though the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the
lance, yet it is seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently
successful, on account of the greater weight and inferior length of the
harpoon as compared with the lance, which in effect become serious
drawbacks. As a general thing, therefore, you must first get 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. 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.



CHAPTER LXXXV. THE FOUNTAIN


That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of ages
before—the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and
sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many
sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back,
thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the
whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings—that all this should
be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter
minutes past one o'clock P. M. of this sixteenth day of December, A. D.
), 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 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-hole fissure, which is countersunk
into the summit of the whale's head? For even when tranquilly swimming
through the mid-day

sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary's in the
desert; even then, the whale always carries a small basin of water on
his head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity in a
rock filled up with rain. Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be
over curious touching the precise nature of the whale spout. It will
not do for him to be peering into it, and putting his face in it. You
cannot go with your pitcher to this fountain and fill it, and bring it
away. For even when coming into slight contact with the outer, vapory
shreds of the jet, which will often happen, your skin will feverishly
smart, from the acridness of the thing so touching it. And I know one,
who coming into still closer contact with the spout, whether with some
scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled
off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the spout is
deemed poisonous; they try to evade it. Another thing; I have heard it
said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted
into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator
can do then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone. Still,
we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My
hypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides
other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations
touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I
account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed
fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other
whales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am
convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as
Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes
up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep
thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity,

I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw
reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the
atmosphere over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while
plunged in deep thought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled
attic, of an August noon; this seems an additional argument for the
above supposition. And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty,
misty

monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea;
his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his
incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor—as you will sometimes see
it—glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon
his thoughts. For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they
only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim
doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my
fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts;
many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions.
Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly;
this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man
who regards them both with equal eye.



CHAPTER LXXXVI. THE TAIL


Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope,
and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial,
I celebrate a tail. Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale's tail to
begin at that point of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of
a man, it comprises upon its upper surface alone, an area of at least
fifty square feet. The compact round body of its root expands into two
broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less than
an inch in thickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly
overlap, then sideways recede from each other like wings, leaving a
wide vacancy between. In no living thing are the lines of beauty more
exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At
its utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the tail will
considerably exceed twenty feet across. The entire member seems a dense
webbed bed of welded

sinews; but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata
compose it:—upper, middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower
layers, are long and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short,
and running crosswise between the outside layers. This triune
structure, as much as anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the
student of old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious
parallel to the thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone
in those wonderful relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly
contribute so much to the great strength of the masonry. But as if this
vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough, the whole bulk
of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of muscular fibres
and filaments, which passing on either side the loins and running down
into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely contribute to
their might; so that in the tail the confluent measureless force of the
whole whale seems concentrated to a point. Could annihilation occur to
matter, this were the thing to do it. Nor does this—its amazing
strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful flexion of its motions;
where infantileness of ease undulates through a Titanism of power. On
the contrary, those motions derive their most appalling beauty from it.
Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it;
and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with
the magic. Take away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from
the marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As
devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe,
he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a
Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in human
form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of
the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian
pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied; these
pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of
any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and
endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar
practical virtues of his teachings. Such is the subtle elasticity of
the organ I treat of, that

whether wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the
mood it be in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace.
Therein no fairy's arm can transcend it. Five great motions are
peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for progression; Second, when
used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping; Fourth, in lobtailing;
Fifth, in peaking flukes. First:

Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in a
different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never
wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the
whale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled
forwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is
this which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster
when furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer by. Second:
It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only fights
another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in his
conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In
striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the
blow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed
air, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke is then simply
irresistible.

No ribs of man or boat can withstand it. Your only salvation lies in
eluding it; but if it comes sideways through the opposing water, then
partly owing to the light buoyancy of the 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 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. 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.

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.



CHAPTER LXXXVII. 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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.

To gally, or gallow, is to frighten excessively—to confound with
fright. It is an old Saxon word. It occurs once in Shakespeare:—The
wrathful skies

Gallow the very wanderers of the dark And make them keep their caves.
To common language, the word is now completely obsolete. When the
polite landsman first hears it from the gaunt Nantucketer, he is apt to
set it down as one of the whaleman's self-derived savageries. Much the
same is it with many other sinewy Saxonisms of this sort, which
emigrated to New-England rocks with the noble brawn of the old English
emigrants in the time of the Commonwealth. Thus, some of the best and
furthest-descended English words—the etymological Howards and
Percys—are now democratised, nay, plebeianised—so to speak—in the New
World.

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.



CHAPTER LXXXVIII. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS


The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm
Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those
vast aggregations. Now, though such great bodies are at times
encountered, yet,

as must have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands
are occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals
each. Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts;
those composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but
young vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated. In
cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a
male of 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 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.



CHAPTER LXXXIX. 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. . 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 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 pounds seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of
thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven without any of
Savesoul's help) what is that globular 100,000 but a Fast-Fish? What
are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish?
What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland, but a
Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas
but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these, is not Possession the whole
of the law? But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally
applicable, the kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so.
That is internationally and universally applicable. What was America in

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?



CHAPTER XC. 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
pounds from the precious oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea
with their wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strength of
their respective shares; up steps a very learned and most Christian and
charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm; and
laying it upon the whale's head, he says—Hands off! this fish, my
masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden's. Upon this the
poor mariners in their respectful consternation—so truly
English—knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their
heads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the
stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the
hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone. At
length one of them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made
bold to speak. Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden? The Duke. But the
duke had nothing to do with taking this fish? It is his. We have been
at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is all that to go to
the Duke's benefit; we getting nothing at all for our pains but our
blisters? It is his. Is the duke so very poor as to be forced to this
desperate mode of getting a livelihood? It is his. I thought to relieve
my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of this whale. It is his.
Won't the Duke be content with a quarter or a half? It is his. In a
word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of
Wellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular
lights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be
deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, 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.



CHAPTER XCI. 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, 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. 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.

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 were
obtained; but more was unavoidably lost in the sea, and still more,
perhaps, might have been secured were it not for impatient Ahab's loud
command to Stubb to desist, and come on board, else the ship would bid
them good bye.



CHAPTER XCII. AMBERGRIS


Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an
article of commerce, that in

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. 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?



CHAPTER XCIII. THE CASTAWAY


It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most
significant event befell the most insignificant of the 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; 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 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.



CHAPTER XCIV. 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 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.



CHAPTER XCV. 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 archbishoprick, what a lad for a Pope were this
mincer!

Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates
to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as
thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of
boiling out the

oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased,
besides perhaps improving it in quality.



CHAPTER XCVI. 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
illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek
fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to
some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the
bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad
sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the turkish frigates, and
folded them in conflagrations. The hatch, removed from the top of the
works, now afforded a wide hearth in front of them. Standing on this
were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers,

always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched
hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the
fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors
to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To
every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which
seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of
the works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the
windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not
otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their
eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all
begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting
barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed
in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they

narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror
told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards
out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their
front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged
forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the
ship groaned and dived, and

yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the
blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white
bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the
rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and
burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed
the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul. So seemed
it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided
the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval, in
darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the
ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before
me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat
kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that
unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight
helm. But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since
inexplicable) thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing
sleep, I was horribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The
jaw-bone tiller smote my side, which leaned against it; in my ears was
the low hum of sails, just beginning to shake in the wind; I thought my
eyes were open; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids
and mechanically stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all
this, I could see no compass before me to steer by;

though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the card, by
the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but
a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost
was the impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was
not so much bound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern.
A stark, bewildered feeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my
hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller
was, somehow,

in some enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter with me?
thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was
fronting the ship's stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In
an instant I faced

back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind,
and very probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief
from this unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal
contingency of being brought by the lee! look not too long in the face
of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy
back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller;
believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look
ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those
who glared like devils in the forking flames,

the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the
glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's
accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of
deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean,
which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this
earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow
in him, that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped. With
books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the
truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered
steel of woe. All is vanity. ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold
of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and
jails, and walks fast crossing 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.



CHAPTER XCVII. 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.



CHAPTER XCVIII. 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 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!



CHAPTER XCIX. 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; all
are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe,
which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but
mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for
those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks
now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the
sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out
of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born
in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So
be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then. No
fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws 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 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 wont smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars,
and here's nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to
spy 'em out. Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really
wise it has a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then
has it a sort of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old
Manxman—the old 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.

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!



CHAPTER C. LEG AND ARM THE PEQUOD, OF NANTUCKET, MEETS THE SAMUEL


ENDERBY, OF LONDON Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale? So cried
Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English 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 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 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. 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.

But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks

to take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cutting-tackle
towards him, commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower. In a
moment he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men were
springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With
back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab
stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.



CHAPTER CI. THE DECANTER


Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she
hailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby,
merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of
enderby and 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 0083 , this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous
fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year ( ) it fitted out
the first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale;
though for some score of years previous (ever since ) 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 , 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 0084 , the same house fitted
out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on a tasting cruise to
the remote waters of Japan. That ship—well called the

Syren—made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great
Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The Syren in this
famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer. All
honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to the
present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have
slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world. The ship
named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very fast sailer and a
noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight somewhere off the
Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the forecastle. It was a
fine gam we had, and they were all trumps—every soul on board. A short
life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine gam I had—long, very
long after old Ahab touched her planks with his ivory heel—it minds me
of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that ship; and may my parson
forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip?
Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten
gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it's squally off there
by Patagonia), and all hands—visitors and all—were called to reef
topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in
bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into

the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a
warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts did not go
overboard; and by and 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.
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: 0084400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork.
150,000 lbs. of stock fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of
soft bread. 2,800 firkins of butter. 20,000 lbs. of Texel and Leyden
cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article). 550 ankers
of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of beer. Most statistical tables are
parchingly dry in the reading; not so in the present case, however,
where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts, and
gills of good gin and good cheer. At the time, I devoted three days to
the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which
many profound

thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental
and Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary
tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, 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.



CHAPTER CII. A BOWER IN THE ARSACIDES


Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly
dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail
upon some few interior structural features. But to a large and thorough
sweeping comprehension of him, it behoves me now to unbutton him still
further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters,
and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost
bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his
unconditional skeleton. But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a
mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the
subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your
capstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of
the windlass, hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself,
Ishmael. Can you land a 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 vertu, had
brought together in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of
his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of

wonderful devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles,
aromatic canoes; and all these distributed among whatever natural
wonders, the wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon
his shores. Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which,
after an unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded,
with his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted
droopings seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been
stripped of its 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 vertebrae were carved with Arsacidean
annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests kept up an
unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth
its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw
vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so
affrighted damocles. it was a wondrous sight. the wood was green as
mosses of the icy Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their
living sap; the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with
a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the
warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with
all their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the
message-carrying air; all

these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the leaves, the
great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh,
busy weaver! unseen weaver!—pause!—one word!—whither flows the fabric?
what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak,
weaver!—stay thy hand!—but one single word with thee! Nay—the shuttle
flies—the figures

float from forth the loom; the 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 vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests should
swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced before this
skeleton—brushed the 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
possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no
means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's. In both
cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons belonged, were
originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar grounds. King
Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he
was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir Clifford's whale has
been articulated throughout; so that, like a great chest of drawers,
you can open and shut him, in all his bony cavities—spread out his ribs
like a gigantic fan—and swing all day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to
be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will
show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir
Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering
gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow
of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his
forehead. The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are

copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my
wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of
preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space,
and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem
I was then composing—at least, what untattooed parts might remain—I did
not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at
all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.



CHAPTER CIII. 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, 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
vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are not locked together. They
mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire, forming
solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in width
something less than three feet, and in depth more than four. The
smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches
in width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. I was told
that there were still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some
little cannibal urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to
play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of
living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.



CHAPTER CIV. THE FOSSIL WHALE


From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon
to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not
compress him. By good rights he

should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again his
furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the
waist; only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where
they lie in him like great cables and 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 archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view.
Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a
flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably
grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered.
Fain am I to stagger to this 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

was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street opening
almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; and bones disinterred
in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's time. Cuvier
pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknown
Leviathanic species. But by far the most wonderful of all cetacean
relics was the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster,
found in the year , on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The
awe-stricken credulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of
one of the fallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge
reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some
specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to owen, the english
anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though
of a departed species.

A significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in
this book,

that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape
of his fully invested body. So Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon;
and in his paper read before the London Geological Society, pronounced
it, in substance, one of the most extraordinary creatures which the
mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence. When I stand
among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and
vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing
breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand
similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their
incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous
period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with
man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim,
shuddering

glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice
pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles
of this world's circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of
land was visible.

Then the whole world was the whale's; and, king of creation, he left
his wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who
can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood
than the Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems a 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 have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historians
affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy'd of Mahomet, came from this
Temple, and some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was
cast forth by the Whale at the Base of the Temple. In this Afric Temple
of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a Nantucketer, and a
whaleman, you will silently worship

there.



CHAPTER CV. 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 Lacepede, the French
naturalist, in his

elaborate history of whales, in the very beginning of his work (page
3), sets down the Right Whale at one hundred metres, three hundred and
twenty-eight feet. And this work was published so late as A. D. . 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 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 he
tells us that at one hunting the King of Siam took

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.



CHAPTER CVI. 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
casualty—remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab—invested
itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the land of spirits
and of wails. So that, through their zeal for him, they had all
conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up the knowledge of this
thing from others; and hence it was, that not till a considerable
interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the Pequod's decks. But be
all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air, or the
vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not with
earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain
practical procedures;—he called the carpenter. And when that
functionary appeared before him, he bade him without delay set about
making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him supplied with all
the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which had thus far been
accumulated

on the voyage, in order that a careful selection of the stoutest,
clearest-grained stuff might be secured. This done, the carpenter
received orders to have the leg completed that night; and to provide
all the fittings for it, independent of those pertaining to the
distrusted one in use. Moreover, the ship's forge was ordered to be
hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and, to accelerate
the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at once to the
forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.



CHAPTER CVII. THE CARPENTER


Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high
abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But
from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they
seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.
But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of
the high, humane abstraction; the 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 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.



CHAPTER CVIII. 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? 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? Perhaps an hour, sir.
Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me (turns to go). Oh, Life!
Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this
blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal
inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free
as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I could
have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction
of the Roman empire (which was the world's); and yet I owe for the
flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens! I'll get a crucible, and
into it, and dissolve myself down to one small, compendious vertebra.
So. Carpenter ( resuming

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!



CHAPTER CIX. AHAB AND STARBUCK IN THE CABIN


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

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. 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.

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.



CHAPTER CX. QUEEQUEG IN HIS COFFIN


Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold
were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it
being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the
slumbers of the huge 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. 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. 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 been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by
those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory
of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of
attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle
to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even
himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and
these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with
the living parchment whereon they were inscribed,

and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been
which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning
turning away from surveying poor Queequeg—Oh, devilish tantalization of
the gods!



CHAPTER CXI. THE PACIFIC


When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great
South Sea; were it not for other things, I could have

greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long
supplication of my youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled
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!



CHAPTER CXII. 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. 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.



CHAPTER CXIII. 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 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—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!



CHAPTER CXIV. 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 though 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:—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!



CHAPTER CXV. THE PEQUOD MEETS THE BACHELOR


And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down
before the wind, some few weeks after 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 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.



CHAPTER CXVI. THE DYING WHALE


Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favorites
sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the
rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed
it with the Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor,
whales were seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab. It was
far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of

the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and
sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness
and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy
air, that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent
valleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned
sailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns. Soothed
again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned off from
the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from the now
tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm
whales dying—the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring—that
strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab
conveyed a wondrousness unknown before. He turns and turns him to
it,—how slowly, but how steadfastly, his homage-rendering and invoking
brow, with his last dying motions. He too worships fire; most faithful,
broad, baronial vassal of the sun!—Oh that these too-favoring eyes
should see these too-favoring sights. Look! here, far water-locked;
beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in these most candid and impartial
seas; where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets; where for long
Chinese ages, the billows have still rolled on speechless and unspoken
to, as stars that shine upon the Niger's unknown source; here, too,
life dies sunwards full of

faith; but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and
it heads some other way.—Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of
drowned bones hast builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart
of these unverdured seas; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too
truly speakest to me in the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed
burial of its after calm.

Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone
round again, without a lesson to me. Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip
of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet!—that one strivest, this one
jettest all in

vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon
all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again.
Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith.
All thy unnamable imminglings, float beneath me here; I am buoyed by
breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now. Then
hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl
finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though hill
and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!



CHAPTER CXVII. THE WHALE WATCH


The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to
windward; one, less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These
last three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one
could not be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay
by its side all night; and that boat was Ahab's. The waif-pole was
thrust upright into the dead whale's spout-hole; and the lantern
hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare upon the black,
glossy back, and far out upon the

midnight waves, which gently chafed the whale's broad flank, like soft
surf upon a beach. Ahab and all his boat's crew seemed asleep but the
Parsee; who crouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that
spectrally played round the whale, and tapped the light cedar planks
with their tails. A sound like the moaning in squadrons over
Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of Gomorrah, ran shuddering through
the air. Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee;
and hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in
a flooded world. I have dreamed it again, said he. Of the hearses? Have
I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor coffin can be thine? And
who are hearsed that die on the sea? But I said, old man, that ere thou
couldst die on this voyage, two hearses must verily be seen by thee on
the sea; the first not made by mortal hands; and the visible wood of
the last one must be grown in America. Aye, aye! a strange sight that,
Parsee:—a hearse and its plumes floating over the ocean with the waves
for the pall-bearers. Ha! Such a sight we shall not soon see. Believe
it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man. And what was
that saying about thyself? Though it come to the last, I shall still go
before thee thy pilot. And when thou art so gone before—if that ever
befall—then ere I can follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me
still?—Was it not so?

Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two
pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it. Take another
pledge, old man, said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up like
fire-flies in the gloom,—Hemp only can kill thee. The gallows, ye
mean.—I am immortal then, on land and on sea, cried Ahab, with a laugh
of derision;—Immortal on land and on sea! Both were silent again, as
one man. The grey dawn came on, and the slumbering crew arose from the
boat's bottom, and ere noon the dead whale was brought to the ship.



CHAPTER CXVIII. THE QUADRANT


The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Ahab,
coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would
ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to
the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed
on the nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point the 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 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!



CHAPTER CXIX. THE CANDLES


Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal
crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most
effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows
tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in
these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of
all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that
cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
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? 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. 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. [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! t'is an ill voyage! ill
begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man,
and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than
this. Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to
the braces—though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the
aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry.
But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the
burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to
transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end.
Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart
that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:—All
your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and heart,
soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye may know
to what tune this heart beats;

look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear! And with one blast of his
breath he extinguished the flame. As in the hurricane that sweeps the
plain, men fly the neighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very
height and strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because so
much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last words of ahab's
many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay.



CHAPTER CXX. 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!



CHAPTER CXXI. MIDNIGHT—THE FORECASTLE BULWARKS


Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over
the anchors there hanging. No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as
much as you please, but you will never pound into me what you were just
now saying. And how long ago is it since you said the very contrary?
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.



CHAPTER CXXII. MIDNIGHT ALOFT—THUNDER AND LIGHTNING


The Main-top-sail yard.—Tashtego passing new lashings around it. Um,
um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What's the
use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don't want thunder; we want rum; give us
a glass of rum. Um, um, um!



CHAPTER CXXIII. 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 that accursed fish.—The very tube he pointed
at me!—the very one; this one—I hold it here; he would have killed me
with the very thing I handle now.—Aye and he would fain kill all his
crew. Does he not say he will not strike his spars to any gale? Has he
not dashed his heavenly quadrant? and in these same perilous seas,
gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding
log? and in this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he would have no
lightning-rods? But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to
drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?—Yes, it would make
him the wilful murderer of thirty men and more, if this ship come to
any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship
will, if Ahab

have his way. If, then, he were this instant—put aside, that crime
would not be his. Ha! is he muttering in his sleep? Yes, just there,—in
there, he's sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake
again. I can't withstand thee, then, old man. Not reasoning; not
remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou
scornest. Flat obedience to thy own flat commands, this is all thou
breathest. Aye, and say'st the men have vow'd thy vow; say'st all of us
are Ahabs. Great God forbid!—But is there no other way? no lawful
way?—Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What! hope to wrest this old
man's living power from his own living hands? Only a fool would try it.
Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes and hawsers;
chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would be more
hideous than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the sight; could
not possibly fly his howlings; all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable
reason would leave me on the long intolerable voyage. What, then,
remains? The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the
nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a
whole continent between me and law.—Aye, aye, 'tis so.—Is heaven a
murderer

when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering
sheets and skin together?—And would I be a murderer, then, if—and
slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded
musket's end against the door. On this level, Ahab's hammock swings
within; his head this way. A touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his
wife and child again.—Oh Mary! Mary!—boy! boy! boy!—But if I wake thee
not to death, old man, who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck's
body this day week may sink, with all the crew! Great God, where art
thou? Shall I? shall I?—The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the
fore and main topsails are reefed and set; she heads her course. Stern
all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last! Such were the sounds
that now came hurtling from out the old man's tormented sleep, as if
Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream to speak. The yet
levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel;

Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he
placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place. He's too sound
asleep, Mr Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell him. I must see
to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say.



CHAPTER CXXIV. 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.
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.



CHAPTER CXXV. THE LOG AND LINE


While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage, the log
and line had but very seldom been in use.

Owing to a confident reliance upon other means of determining the
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. 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.



CHAPTER CXXVI. 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 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, 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.



CHAPTER CXXVII. 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. 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!



CHAPTER CXXVIII. THE PEQUOD MEETS THE RACHEL


Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down
upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the time
the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the
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 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
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.



CHAPTER CXXIX. THE CABIN


(Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow.)
Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is coming
when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee by
him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my
malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most
desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall serve thee,
as if thou wert the captain. 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.



CHAPTER CXXX. THE HAT


And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a
preliminary cruise, Ahab,—all other whaling waters swept—seemed to have
chased his foe into an 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 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
somewhat;—it was strange, that this was the very man he should select
for his watchman;

freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted person's
hands. Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been
there ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so
often fly incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen
in these latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming
round his head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted
a thousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards,
and went eddying again round his head. But with his gaze fixed upon the
dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor,
indeed, would any one else have marked it much, it being no uncommon
circumstance; only now almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some
sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight. Your hat, your hat, sir!
suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who being posted at the
mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though somewhat lower than
his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing them. But already the
sable wing was before the old man's eyes; the long hooked bill at his
head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with his prize.

an eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to replace
it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be
king of Rome.

But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good.
Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it;
far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the
point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned,
falling from that vast height into the sea.



CHAPTER CXXXI. 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!



CHAPTER CXXXII. THE SYMPHONY


It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was
transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and
man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's
chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;
but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed
mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong,
troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. But though thus
contrasting within,

the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed
one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them. Aloft,
like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to
this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling
line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion—most seen here at the
equator—denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with
which the poor bride gave her bosom away. Tied up and twisted; gnarled
and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes
glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering
Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered
helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven. Oh, immortal
infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that
frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were
ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and
Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire;
sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of
that burnt-out crater of his brain. Slowly crossing the deck from the
scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the
water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove
to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air
did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his
soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and
caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw
affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob
over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet
find it in her

heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped
a tear into the sea; nor did all the pacific contain such wealth as
that one wee drop. Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily
leaned over the side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the
measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity
around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew
near to him, and stood there. Ahab turned. Starbuck! Sir. Oh, Starbuck!
it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day—very
much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first whale—a boy-harpooneer
of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—ago! Forty years of continual
whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty
years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the
peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep!
Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent

three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of
solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's
exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the
green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of
solitary command!—when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so
keenly known to me before—and how for forty years I have fed upon dry
salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul—when the
poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the
world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away,

whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and
sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage
pillow—wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I
widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the
madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with
which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly
chased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years'
fool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase?
why weary,

and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the
richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard,
that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been
snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me,
that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some
ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel
deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering
beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!—crack my
heart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey
hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus
intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a
human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to
gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright 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 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.



CHAPTER CXXXIII. THE CHASE—FIRST DAY


That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man—as his wont at
intervals—stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went
to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing
up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing nigh to some
barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that
peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living
sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner
surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane,
and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as
possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly
altered, and the sail to be shortened. The acute policy dictating these
movements was sufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a
long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and
resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished
metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep,
rapid stream. Man the mast-heads! Call all hands! Thundering with the
butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle deck, Daggoo roused
the sleepers with such judgment claps that they seemed to exhale from
the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear with their clothes in
their hands. What d'ye see? cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
Nothing, nothing, sir! was the sound hailing down in reply. T'gallant
sails!—stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides! All sail being
set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for swaying him to the
main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they were hoisting him
thither, when, while but two thirds of the way aloft, and while peering
ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the main-top-sail and
top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the air, There she
blows!—there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick! Fired
by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three look-outs,
the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous whale they
had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final perch, some
feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just beneath him on
the cap of the top-gallant mast, so that the Indian's head was almost
on a level with Ahab's heel. From this height the whale was now seen
some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing his high
sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into the air.

To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they had so
long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans. And did none
of ye see it before? cried Ahab, hailing the perched men all around
him. I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did,
and I cried out, said Tashtego. Not the same instant; not the same—no,
the doubloon is mine, Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none
of ye could have raised the White Whale first. There she blows! there
she blows!—there she blows! There again!—there again! he cried, in
long-drawn, lingering, methodic tones, attuned to the gradual
prolongings of the whale's visible jets. He's going to sound! In
stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck,
remember, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a
point! So; steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black
water! All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr.
Starbuck; lower, lower,—quick, quicker! and he slid through the air to
the deck. He is heading straight to leeward, sir, cried Stubb,

right away from us; cannot have seen the ship yet. Be dumb, man! Stand
by the braces! Hard down the helm!—brace up! Shiver her!—shiver her!
So; well that! Boats, boats! Soon all the boats but Starbuck's were
dropped; all the boat-sails set—all the paddles plying; with rippling
swiftness, shooting to leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A pale,
death-glimmer

lit up Fedallah's sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth. Like
noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea; but
only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew
still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a
noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter
came so nigh 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. 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 had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him
out of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the
sea. Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a
little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down
in the billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole
spindled body; so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose—some twenty
or more feet out of the water—the now rising swells, with all their
confluent waves, dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing
their shivered spray still higher into the air. So, in a gale, the but
half-baffled Channel billows only recoil from the base of the
Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit with their scud. 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.

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! 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.

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.



CHAPTER CXXXIV. 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. 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! 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 manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained chargers in the
field; the boats for a while eluded him; though, at times, but by a
plank's breadth; while all the time, Ahab's unearthly slogan tore every
other cry but his to shreds. But at last in his untraceable evolutions,
the White Whale so crossed and recrossed, and in a thousand ways
entangled the slack of the three lines now fast to him, that they
foreshortened, and, of themselves, warped the devoted boats towards the
planted irons in him; though now for a moment the whale drew aside a
little, as if to rally for a more tremendous charge. Seizing that
opportunity, Ahab first paid out more line: and then was rapidly
hauling and jerking in upon it again—hoping that way to disencumber it
of some snarls—when lo!—a sight more savage than the embattled teeth of
sharks! Caught and twisted—corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose
harpoons and lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came
flashing and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab's boat. Only
one thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached
within—through—and then, without—the rays of steel; dragged in the line
beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice sundering
the rope near the chocks—dropped the intercepted fagot of steel into
the sea; and was all fast again. That instant, the White Whale made a
sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines; by so
doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and Flask
towards his flukes; dashed them together like two rolling husks on a
surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in a
boiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of
the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly
stirred bowl of punch. While the two crews were yet circling in the
waters, reaching out after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other
floating furniture, while aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like
an empty vial, twitching his legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of
sharks; and Stubb was lustily singing out for some one to ladle him up;
and while the old man's line—now parting—admitted of his pulling into
the creamy pool to rescue whom he could;—in that wild simultaneousness
of a thousand concreted perils,—Ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed drawn
up towards Heaven by invisible wires,—as, arrow-like, shooting
perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead
against its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air;
till it fell again—gunwale downwards—and Ahab and his men struggled out
from under it, like seals from a seaside cave. The first uprising
momentum of the whale—modifying its direction as he struck the
surface—involuntarily launched him along it, to a little distance from
the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his back to it, he
now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from side to side;
and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip or crumb of the
boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and came sideways
smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work for that time
was done, he pushed his 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—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 wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while
still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his
scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its
dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.



CHAPTER CXXXV. THE CHASE—THIRD DAY


The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the
solitary 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 that 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. 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. 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! 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 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. 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, 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.



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
FA TES ORDAINED TO TAKE THE PLACE OF AHAB'S BOWSMAN, WHEN THAT BOWSMAN
ASSUMED TH E 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 T HE SUNK SHIP REACHED ME, I WAS THEN,
BUT SLOWLY, DRAWN TOWARDS THE CLOSING VO RTEX. 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, G
AINING 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 SAILE D WITH SHEATHED
BEAKS. ON THE SECOND DAY, A SAIL DREW NEAR, NEARER, AND PIC KED ME UP
AT LAST. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing
search after her missing children, only found another orphan.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Moby-Dick or The Whale" ***

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